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Infectious Advertising’s Ramanuj Shastry joins NY Festivals Grand Jury 2024
Mumbai: Globally celebrated international advertising competition New York Festivals announced the appointment of Infectious Advertising’s Ramanuj Shastry as one of the Grand Jury members for its 2024 Advertising Awards. The NYF awards are held across regional, national and continental boundaries and provide a complete representation of the best in communications.
“Ramanuj Shastry brings over 25 years of creative leadership and industry expertise to the 2024 NYF Advertising Awards Grand Jury panel,” said Scott Rose, executive director of the NYF Advertising Awards. “His award-winning work has earned him a trophy shelf of accolades, and his experience crafting campaigns for prestigious global brands truly makes him an asset in honouring trophy-worthy work.”
Infectious Advertising creative chairman Ramanuj Shastry added, “Chuffed to be picked as a juror for the 2024 edition of the prestigious New York Festivals of Advertising. I am excited to see tremendous ideas from around the world and discuss them with some of the finest minds in the business. Eagerly looking forward to this!”
An alumnus (PRM-90-92) of IRMA (Institute of Rural Management, Anand), Ramanuj has more than 25 years of experience in advertising. He learnt his craft at Ogilvy and McCann and served as CCO at Publicis Ambience, Rediffusion Y&R and Saatchi & Saatchi (in that order) before launching his agency, Infectious Advertising with Nisha Singhania in 2013.
He has won several Indian and international awards and served on the film jury at Cannes Lions 2010. Ramanuj has more than 200 ad films to his name and some of the landmark campaigns he has worked on are ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’, Saffola – ‘Kal Se’ and OLX – ‘Bech De’. He was one of the Jury Members for New York Festivals 2021 as well!
The official deadline to enter the 2024 New York Festivals Advertising Awards is April 5 with a final closing deadline of April 26, 2024.
All entries into the 2024 NYF Advertising Awards competition will be judged by 400+
members of NYF’s Executive Jury and Grand Jury, a panel of prominent global creative minds, who collectively cast over 400,000+ votes to select the World’s Best Advertising.
The New York Festivals Advertising Awards competition receives entries from more than 60 countries. It is judged by more than 400 NYF’s Executive and Grand Jury members, who collectively cast their votes to select the year’s trophy-winning work.
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Paramount set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in $81 billion deal
Shareholders back merger, combined entity could reshape streaming and studios.
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… consolidation, Hollywood’s latest blockbuster might be happening off-screen. Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery have voted in favour of selling the company to Paramount in a deal valued at $81 billion rising to nearly $111 billion including debt setting the stage for one of the biggest shake-ups in modern media. The proposed merger, still subject to regulatory approvals, would bring together a vast portfolio spanning HBO Max, CNN, and franchises such as Harry Potter under the same umbrella as Paramount’s own heavyweights, including Top Gun and CBS.
At the heart of the deal is streaming scale. Executives have indicated plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single platform, potentially creating a stronger challenger to giants like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video. Current market data suggests HBO Max holds around 12 per cent of US on-demand subscriptions, compared to Paramount+’s 3 per cent, together still trailing Netflix’s 19 per cent and Disney’s combined 27 per cent via Disney+ and Hulu.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has signalled that while platforms may merge, HBO’s creative identity will remain intact, stating the brand should “stay HBO” even within a broader ecosystem.
Beyond streaming, the deal would redraw the map for film production. Combining two of Hollywood’s oldest studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., the new entity aims to scale output to over 30 films annually, while maintaining a 45-day theatrical window. Warner Bros. currently commands around 21 per cent of the US box office, compared to Paramount’s 6 per cent, underscoring the strategic weight of the acquisition.
But scale comes with scrutiny. Critics warn that fewer players could mean reduced consumer choice, rising subscription costs, and potential job cuts as the combined company looks to streamline overlapping operations while managing billions in debt.
The news business, too, faces a reset. CNN would join forces at least structurally with Paramount-owned CBS, raising questions about editorial independence and positioning. The merger has already drawn political attention in the United States, particularly given perceived ties between the Ellison family and Donald Trump, though the company maintains that newsroom autonomy will be preserved.
If approved, the deal would mark another milestone in Hollywood’s consolidation wave shrinking the industry’s traditional “big six” studios to a “big four”, with Paramount joining Disney, Universal, and Sony at the top table.
In an industry built on storytelling, this merger may well become its most consequential plot twist yet.
