Spikes Asia 2012: Kassaei, Proctor, Manikas named as first jury presidents

Kassaei, chief creative officer of DDB Worldwide, will lead the Film, Print, Outdoor & Radio and Integrated Jury. A veteran of TBWA Worldwide, Barci & Partner and Springer & Jacoby before joining DDB, Kassaei and his team are recipients of more than 2,000 national and international awards including 40 Cannes Lions in the past five years. He has made it his mission to ignite a new creative revolution at DDB and for the industry as a whole.

"I am looking forward to a lot of innovative and inspiring ideas of international endurance," Kassaei said. "Asia is going to play a very important role—not only in terms of the economy, but also in creative terms—for our industry and for business overall."

Proctor, president of GroupM Global, will lead the Media Jury. In his current role, which he assumed in January, Proctor oversees GroupM's global media agencies: Mindshare, Maxus, MEC and MediaCom. In 1997, having already served for five years as CEO of JWT, he launched Mindshare Worldwide, WPP's first media planning, buying, and research agency.

"There is no doubt that [the media] sector has gained hugely in importance as the media landscape has become much more difficult to navigate," he said. "One thing that reflects that importance is the quality of entries into the industry awards."

The Spikes Asia Advertising Festival is a collaboration between the Lions Festivals, organisers of Cannes Lions, Dubai Lynx and Eurobest; and Haymarket, publishers of Campaign Asia Pacific.