27^th April, 2026; Mumbai, India: The Ad Club today announces the appointment of Shashanka Chaturvedi, Co-Founder of Good Morning Films, Sumona Sen, Sr Vice President – Network Marketing Strategy & Growth at Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. and Pallavi Chakravarti Founder and CCO, Fundamental, as Jury Chairs respectively for Video Craft, Broadcaster and Young Maverick Abby categories.

Shashanka Chaturvedi has been appointed Jury Chair at Abby Awards 2026 powered by The One Club | The One Show in the Video Craft category.

Shashanka Chaturvedi aka Bob, is a self-taught film maker. A passionate and exceptional storyteller, he has won close to 150 awards including 2 Gold Lions at Cannes – the first by an Indian director.

Besides the prestigious Cannes Lions, Bob has been prolific with metals at One Show, Adfest, Spikes Asia, Kyoorius and Abbys. His stellar work has led to Good Morning Films being lauded as the Production Company of the year in India in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

His innate understanding of Indian audiences and marketing strategies combined with his film making skills has contributed to notable success stories across various brands like Thums Up, Thar, Asus, Clinic Plus, Honda, Tata Safari, Bournvita, Cadbury’s, Vodafone, Bajaj to name just a few.

Bob continues to push boundaries by exploring various formats and besides advertising films he has directed music videos, short films and documentaries. His debut feature film Do Patti was Netflix India’s number 1 film in 2024 and also entered the Top 10 global charts for non-English movies.

The high creative bar he sets for himself and his non-compromising approach ensure that his films consistently maintain a level of excellence and effectiveness across brands, products and genres.

Sumona Sen has been appointed Jury Chair at Abby Awards 2026 Powered by The One Club | The One Show in the Broadcaster category.

Sumona Sen is a growth-focused marketing leader with over two decades of experience in building consumer-first brands and driving business transformation. As Senior Vice President – Network Marketing Strategy and Growth at Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., she has played a pivotal role in repositioning marketing as a core driver of revenue, market share, and long-term brand equity.

Her work combines deep consumer insight with data-led strategy to deliver measurable business outcomes—from scaling market leadership across regions to driving breakthrough launches. She has also been at the forefront of integrating analytics, MarTech, and AI-led solutions to build efficient, high-impact ecosystems.

A strong advocate for women in leadership, Sumona believes in building inclusive teams and creating environments where diverse perspectives thrive. Her leadership style blends empathy with decisiveness—driving high performance while bringing people along in the journey.

Pallavi Chakravarti has been appointed Jury Chair at Abby Awards 2026 Powered by The One Club | The One Show in the Young Maverick Abby category.

In love with advertising for over two decades now, Pallavi went independent in 2023. Her agency Fundamental has created culture-shaping work for WhatsApp, Airtel, Facebook, WeWork India, Adidas, Urban Company, Parle and more in just over three years.

In her previous stints across network agencies, Pallavi handled globally known accounts Instagram, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Uber, J&J, Unilever and P&G.   She featured on Campaign Brief’s list of India’s most awarded creatives in 2024, the 200 most-awarded ECDs in 2021 on The Drum World Creative Rankings and closer home, in the 2022 edition of Wonder Women 100 by indiantelevesion.com, a list celebrating leaders in creative arts.

From shows like D&AD, Cannes Lions, The One Show, Adfest Asia Pacific, Spikes Asia, Kyoorius and The Abby awards to effectiveness awards like Effies and Appies, her work has been recognised everywhere. With hundreds of metals to her credit, Pallavi was also the recipient of the Best Ad Screenplay plaque at the prestigious 2015 Dadasaheb Phalke Film Festival.

Pallavi has served on many juries over the years – at Cannes Lions, D&AD, Dubai Lynx, New York Festival, Global Awards, Gerety Awards, Kyoorius Awards and the Abby Awards.

She often mentors young talent through various industry initiatives. When not eyeballs deep in work, she enjoys a good horror movie or police procedural and has a special place in her heart for Hercule Poirot.

The post Shashanka Chaturvedi, Sumona Sen and Pallavi Chakravarti Appointed as Jury Chairs for the ABBY Awards 2026 Powered by The One Club | The One Show appeared first on India Communication Forum.

March 02, 2026; Mumbai, India: India’s premier body for advertising, marketing and media, The Advertising Club (TAC), has announced the introduction of new categories for Creative Abby 2026, further strengthening the awards’ commitment to global relevance and creative excellence. The updated Entry Form, reflecting all category refinements, is now live on The Ad Club website. The awards continue their partnership with The One Club | The One Show. 

The last date for submission is April 06, 2026, and work eligible to participate has to be released between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026. The results will be declared and presented at the Goafest 2026.

The Abby Awards Governing Council went a step ahead, this year. It invited a group of most awarded creative honchos of the Indian industry, who are also India’s best jury talent at global festivals, to give their suggestions on making the Abby Award more global and world aspirational. The group had rich discussions and from there emerged this year’s Abby Award Categories and the Judging process.

The new categories being introduced are:

1. Social Content and Influencer Marketing

This covers the growing world of digital creation, content collaboration and community building of influencers.

2. Creative Commerce, Use of Data and B2B

This covers the new innovative world of online and offline commerce and payment solutions, data driven innovation in channels, creative B2B and brand experience.

Both new categories are designed to reward craft and quality of impact rather than pure effectiveness or numbers as is the case with entries in Creative Abby.

Rationalization of some Digital Sub-categories

Seven sub-categories in the Digital Category have been removed as they had become irrelevant in this dynamic forever evolving vertical.

Merging of categories

Sustainability and Inclusion

Three existing categories which are the social good verticals have been merged into one Category. Green Abby, Red Abby and Diversity Equality, Inclusivity (DEI) have been merged into one Category called Sustainability and Inclusion. 

Mobile Category has been discontinued

This vertical has now become less relevant as Digital has all mobile related sub-categories. Besides Social Content and Influencer Marketing the new vertical takes care of most mobile originated digital content.

Further, recognizing the role played by clients whose brands have set creativity benchmarks and made their agencies famous, a category devoted to the client whose brands wins the maximum number of points called Client of the Year has been introduced.

There is further refinement in the computation of Creative Agency of the Year. Until now, this award earlier used to go to the agency with the maximum points in the 8 traditional creative categories viz Print(2), Film(2), OOH, Integrated, Audio, Digital. This has now been changed to award the agency with the maximum points in all 18 creative categories other than Video Craft (for film producers) and Young Maverick Abby.

Highlighting the evolution of Goafest and the ABBY Awards Powered by One Club, Dheeraj Sinha, President, The Advertising Club, and CEO McCann India, mentioned, “Goafest has always been synonymous with creativity, collaboration, and industry excellence. The ABBY Awards Powered by One Club continue to push boundaries, setting new creative benchmarks year after year. Abby Awards being in its 57th year, continue to raise the bar, and this year’s edition will be even more inspiring, bringing together the brightest minds in the industry.”

“We have introduced two new categories and merged, rationalized and deleted some categories. For the very first time we have partnered and co-created with creative luminaries of the industry for categories. We are truly grateful to the continued support of One Club and One Show towards conducting our judging process for the last 5 years. Our thanks to the widespread participation of both agencies and client companies year after year,” said Ajay Kakar, Chairperson, ABBY Awards 2026.

The 2026 Entry Form which has incorporated all the changes has now been uploaded on the website – https://theadvertisingclub.net/

The Advertising Club looks forward to the maximum participation of agencies and companies in the Creative Abby 2026 this year!

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