Selection of the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Awardee is process driven, without bias

In 1988 for the first time, AAAI thought it fit to honour outstanding professionals who had contributed to the growth of the industry, and the company they ran, with what was then called AAAI Premnarayan Award.  There was no calling of nominations, and the recipient was determined by a small subcommittee of the Executive Committee.

In 2008 the award was renamed as AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award.  At that time, we introduced a proper nomination form which looked for several details like:

• Over twenty-five years as practitioner of advertising and must have been or is in the top management position;
• Has been or continues to be an active participant in industry bodies and or made significant contributions in shaping the industry priorities which enabled the advertising industry to grow, prosper and become more professionalized;
• Should individually be known for her/ his integrity, ethical practice and leadership qualities;
• Has contributed to her/ his Company/Companies growth by innovative thinking and taking them in newer directions;
• Has been involved in projects of social consequence which will be seen as a role model for the industry at large;
• Seen as an industry veteran.
• In exceptional cases where an individual has made a significant contribution to the industry or its ecosystem, adherence to one or more of the above criteria may be relaxed.

The nomination form is sent to all members of AAAI seeking nomination after providing for a few weeks’ time to nominate.  All the nominations received are carefully reviewed by the President and the Secretariat and the nominees are presented in a tabular format with several aspects of each nominee listed for comparison.  This tabular statement is sent to the identified jury members for them to review the nominees details prior to the jury meeting.  

As in the past, this year too, the Board of Directors approved the nomination form for sending it to our members. This request was sent on 2nd June 2026 seeking worthy nomination on or before 30th June 2026.  We received five nominations in the names of Mr C V L Srinivas, Mr Sandeep Goyal, Ms Anupriya Acharya, Mr Prasanth Kumar and Mr Santosh Desai.  From the past nominations, the erstwhile jury had suggested that we consider these five names in the  following year (which is the current year): Mr M G Parameswaran, Mr Nakul Chopra, Mr Ashish Bhasin, Mr Tapas Gupta and Mr L V Krishnan.  In all we had 10 nominees to consider the winner from.  Two of the current jury members Mr Prasanth Kumar and Ms Anupriya Acharya did not want to be considered for the award and therefore their nominations were not considered. In effect we had eight active nominees to choose from.  

Ever since the nomination form was issued there has been a serious attempt at lobbying by Ms Tanya Goyal to give this award to her spouse Mr Sandeep Goyal.  She spoke to the President of AAAI on a few occasions insisting that Mr Goyal should be the worthy recipient of this award.  When he told her that it is for the jury to decide she somehow decided that he was against Mr Goyal’s nomination and said that there is no transparency in the selection process.  At her request and to allay the doubt of Ms Goyal, the President invited her on 30th June 2026 to be part of the jury.  In addition to the earlier appointed jury she also was taken as an additional jury member and all mails sent to jury members obviously were also sent to her.  

AAAI had always been very transparent in its dealings.  The initial names of jury members have been on the website immediately after they have been announced on the first meeting of the new Board in September 2025. To say that the jury names have been shrouded in mystery is far from true. The process followed is also very transparent.  At the Jury meeting, every jury member was asked to pick two names from the nominated names based on their study of their contribution to the industry and their own companies. The top three names based on such voting got discussed threadbare and a decision was arrived at collectively.  The jury believes that when it comes to qualitative assessment of a nominee, it is best that a healthy discussion helps them arrive at a right decision.  No two nominations are like to like for assigning marks or points for each criterion and therefore the jury members always preferred a qualitative assessment than a quantitative one.  This is the normal process that is followed by many established awards across the world including our own prestigious ones. 

The jury members (other than Mr Prasanth Kumar who had to stay away for some personal reasons) met yesterday and completed the pleasant task of picking the 2026 awardee.  The name will be announced after getting the concurrence of the awardee in a few days’ time.

The last couple of days has seen some news against the AAAI process claiming it to be not transparent and without professional integrity.  Nothing can be further away from the truth. To prove this further AAAI has engaged a professional institution to audit the process on how the awardee has been determined. This would also prove that of the jury members have any vested interest in favour of any nominee and it would be unfair to the winner and the other nominees to cast aspersions on their deliberations.  

Ms Tanya Goyal wanted to be part of the jury process and AAAI would have liked her to see for herself how the jury deliberated and decided on the winner.  She prejudged the process as something that would be unfair and dramatically declared that she would not be part of the jury which she was very keen to be part of initially.  

Ms Goyal’s only goal was to get the award in favour of Mr Sandeep Goyal.  She deployed every trick in the book that lowered the prestige of the award. She claimed that the process of determining the awardee is shrouded in mystery.  This is neither good for the eventual winner or for the volunteering jury members who have set aside their valuable time to pour over details of every nominee.  

The articles published had certain industry spokespersons talk against the process.  AAAI does not know who they are and would welcome an opportunity to meet such people in person so as to take them through all the documents involved in determining the eventual winner.  

We know in election politics, the losers always complain about the electronic voting machines (EVM) saying it is rigged.  The same machines are perfect if their candidate has won.  Similarly on SIR, when ineligible voters were removed from the voters list – if that led to winning of their party members, SIR served its purpose and if the party members lost, the complaint would be that the true voters were removed from the voters list.  Unfortunately, Ms Goyal is in that situation and is calling out nonexistent issues in determining the winner of this year’s AAAI Lifetime Achievement Awardee. 

AAAI is always open for new ideas and better ways of doing things. And any such ideas must come from a clean heart; not with vested interest.