Super Jury to give verdict on controversial ads tomorrow

Once the Super Jury to this year’s controversial Goafest Creative Abby’s 2013 announces their verdict it will be curtains down to the ever on-going Creative Abby’s this year. It may be recalled that to address some 18-19 complaints of various participants and to debate on the awards withdrawn, the Awards Governing Council (AGC) headed by Shashi Sinha had constituted a Super Jury.

The Super Jury has members of all the 11 verticals under the Abbys. Included are Prasoon Joshi, president, South Asia, McCann Worldgroup, also the chairperson of the integrated jury; Sonal Dabral, chairman & chief creative officer, DDB Mudra, also chairperson of the outdoor jury; Agnello Dias, co-founder & chief creative officer, Taproot, also head of the print jury; and Senthil Kumar, national creative director, JWT, also chairperson of the film jury.

The decision of the Super Jury will be final and binding on the AGC. It may be noted that in terms of controversies, this year’s Goafest has really been full of surprises with some of the big names in advertising coming under the complaints list.

The Super Jury is following the guidelines for giving its decision and this is being supervised by KPMG and the AGC, in the presence of some of the AGC members. Sources say that Shashi Sinha, chairman of AGC is travelling, so are some other members.

It is expected that the meeting is still on at the Liquid Lounge in south central Mumbai, the verdict is likely tomorrow. It remains to be seen how the Super Jury has voted in this regards. The news will be out tomorrow and the verdict is with the AGC already. Whatever is the outcome, it will put to rest all the controversies and the advertising fraternity can put Goafest behind and get back to their work. A point of note is that some of the big names are part of the Jury and their agency has been under a scanner at the same time, so the decision will be tough as it affects not only the morale of the employees but also the reputation.