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Ad reels and recall: Senthil Kumar reveals what set the jury screens ablaze at Goafest 2025
MUMBAI: In a session that played out like a director’s cut of India’s most memorable commercials, VML India CCO Senthil Kumar took the Goafest 2025 audience inside the jury room for a deep dive into what makes an ad truly work. The verdict? If you’d willingly watch it again, it’s doing something right.
Speaking under the session banner ‘What Ignited the Jury Room?’, Kumar opened with a simple litmus test: “The best ad films aren’t just one-watch wonders. A great film has repeat value”.
Kumar walked attendees through a curated list of top-performing ad films that had not just caught the jury’s eye, but had also burned themselves into the audience’s collective memory.
One of the top contenders was the Lahori Zeera commercial. “Every frame had the brand. That’s rare today”, Kumar said, noting how strong visual branding contributed to high recall.
Another winner was the Veeba Desi Chinese spot, which cleverly flipped expectations. “Chinese characters behaving like Indians—it’s fresh, culturally playful, and paired with a sticky soundtrack. That’s what lands”, he said.
He also tipped his hat to the Snickers ad directed by Rohit Shetty. While Kumar admitted it wasn’t a novel idea globally, its execution was unmistakably local and creatively bold. “’Grab a Snickers’ may not be new, but how you grab attention is”, he said.
In the Dream11 campaign, Kumar praised its sharp scripting and cast synergy. “It’s not easy to pull off dialogue-led storytelling with both actors and cricketers, but this one had audiences asking, ‘Aapki team mein kaun hai?’ on loop”.
He rounded off with the Adani campaign highlighting rural electrification. “’Pehle pankha aayega, phir bijli aayegi’ wasn’t just a line, it was a layered narrative of transformation”. Kumar added.
Throughout the session, Kumar emphasised one consistent metric: resonance. “An idea may be clever, but if it doesn’t move you—or make you laugh, pause, or hum—it’s just noise”, he concluded.
Goafest’s jury, he noted, rewarded ads that nailed both craft and clarity, but above all, evoked genuine emotion or reaction. In the scroll-and-skip era, Kumar reminded creatives that the real test of storytelling lies in its staying power.
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Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
