Santosh Padhi, chief creative officer & co-founder of Taproot Dentsu in Mumbai, has been named jury president of the Outdoor Lotus and Press Lotus juries.
“It’s always a privilege to be associated with AdFest, a festival I love more than most other shows. Nothing can get better than this – I’m a passionate print lover and to lead two of my favourite categories is a real pleasure. I’m delighted and looking forward to taking this opportunity forward,” Padhi commented.
Paddy, as he is known, began his advertising career as an art graduate with DDB. He spent ten years at Leo Burnett as executive creative director and the national head of art.
Eight years ago he began a new creative venture, Taproot India, which is now Taproot Dentsu.
Taproot Dentsu has risen to become one of India’s most prominent creative agencies, notching up many accolades along the way. In its very first year, it was rated the #1 Independent Agency from India at Cannes and ranked among the Top 20 Independent Agencies in the World in the Cannes Survey. It was also ranked Best Performing Agency from India at AdFest 2010 with a haul of Gold Lotuses to its credit.
In 2013, the agency topped the Gunn Report and was crowned Creative Agency Of The Year at AdFest, making it the first-ever Indian agency to win this title. Meanwhile, Taproot has rated in the top three awarded agencies in India for the last eight years consecutively.
“In recent years, I have seen Paddy collect so many trophies and achieve so many successes as the founder of Taproot Dentsu. It is truly an honour to welcome one of our favourite friends back to Adfest to lead two categories that he has well and truly mastered,” stated Jimmy Lam, AdFest President.
Taproot is the agency behind one of the world’s most celebrated print campaigns for Conqueror Papers, and the I’m Mumbai TV Campaign for The Times Of India. More recently, Padhi says that he is most proud of the highly awarded Adidas Odds campaign for Para-athletes.
The 2018 ADFEST Lotus Awards are open for entries until January 12 (remote categories only) or 19.
AdFest 2018 runs from March 21 through 24 in Pattaya, Thailand.
Other AdFest jury presidents so far are:
Adfest: Colenso BBDO CCO, Levi Slavin, is jury president of Film & Radio
