AD Agencies
Praful Akali and Ashish Khazanchi appointed as jury chairs for Abby Awards 2024
Mumbai: Medulla managing director and founder Praful Akali and Enormous, founder and chief creative officer Ashish Khazanchi join as jury chairs for Health category and Still Print category respectively, at The Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show.
Medulla managing director and founder Praful Akali has been appointed Jury Chair of Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show in the newly created Health category.
Praful is among the most awarded healthcare creative professionals globally since 2015. He has had close to 50 shortlists and over 20 awards including a Grand Prix at the leading global awards Lions Health, Clio, Global, London Festival, and Spikes.
As one of the few creatively renowned professionals that has also worked as a client, last at Pfizer, Praful demonstrates how creativity and effectiveness work together.
In 2016, the Last Words campaign was published in the Gunn Report as one of the only 15 campaigns globally that won gold at the Lions and a marketing effectiveness awards show like the Effies. In 2017, Medulla repeated the feat with Last Laugh work which won a Grand Prix at Clio and two Gold at the APAC Effies.
Praful has led Medulla to win the Healthcare Agency of the Year in 2016 at Cannes Lions. Medulla has been the only agency globally to feature in the top three agencies of the year, each of the first three years of Lions Health. Medulla is also the only healthcare specialist agency in the list of the World’s Leading Independent Agencies 2018.
Praful has served as a jury member at Cannes Lions, LIA, Clio, Effies and the Global Awards. He has been a speaker at Cannes and other forums and his opinion pieces have appeared in several advertising and business publications.
In 2018, he spoke on the motto of Lion’s Health, life-changing creativity on the Lions Health Inspiration stage.
Enormous founder and chief creative officer Ashish Khazanchi has been appointed Jury Chair of Abby Awards 2024 powered by One Show in the Still Print category.
Ashish has worked in most of the major agency networks and on some of the biggest global, and Indian brands. He has taken Enormous from a startup to one of the leading independent creative agencies in the country. Ashish led Enormous to become the first independent agency to win a Grand Effie in the country this year.
Prior to this, Ashish was the National Creative Director, at Publicis Ambience. An MBA graduate from IIM Bangalore with over 30 years in advertising, he has created the iconic Jingalala campaign for Tata Sky and many others.
He has won over 300 awards with many international ones like the One Show, D&AD, Spikes and Cannes.
Ashish has held leadership roles in agencies like Y&R, Ogilvy, McCann and Publicis.
The Abby Awards powered by One Show will be held on the 29, 30, and 31 of May during Goafest 2024.
AD Agencies
Publicis Brazil’s creative chief Mauro Ramalho lands the jury chair at Abby Awards 2026
Mauro Ramalho brings 25 years of global advertising firepower to the new creative commerce, use of data and B2B category at Goafest
GOA: The Abby Awards 2026, powered by The One Club and The One Show, has appointed Mauro Ramalho, chief creative officer of Publicis Brazil, as jury chair for its newly launched creative commerce, use of data and B2B category. The announcement, made on 18 March, signals the awards’ intent to bring serious international muscle to a category that sits squarely at the intersection of creativity and commercial performance.
Ramalho is not a name that needs much introduction in global advertising circles. Over 25 years spanning three countries, he has worked at some of the industry’s most creatively restless addresses. At AKQA in San Francisco, he worked across McDonald’s, Nike, Fox, Target, Kraft Foods and GAP, and helped lead “The Lost Ring” for McDonald’s, one of the first alternate reality campaigns and among the most awarded projects of its era. He later moved to Organic in Toronto, bridging the Detroit and Toronto offices on Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler, before spending over a decade building CUBOCC into one of Brazil’s most iconic and innovative independent agencies, which subsequently joined the IPG network.
A stint at FCB followed, where Ramalho led integrated work bridging online and offline, before he joined R/GA São Paulo as vice-president and executive creative director, stitching together the São Paulo office with New York, London, Portland and California on global clients including Verizon, Google, Meta, Samsung, American Express and Heineken. He now heads Publicis Brazil as its chief creative officer.
His trophy cabinet includes Clios, Effies, TikTok awards and MMA Smarties, and he has served on juries at the Andys, TikTok and the Lisbon Awards.
The Abby Awards 2026 is scheduled to take place at Goafest 2026 on 20, 21 and 22 May in Goa.
For Indian advertising, landing a jury chair of Ramalho’s calibre for a category built around data-driven creativity and commerce is a statement of ambition. Goafest just raised its own bar.
