Anastasia Produvnova
Strategy Director BBDO. Limited spots available

In this hands-on BBDO masterclass, we’ll take you through the full journey - from identifying the right strategic territory to stress-testing a finished positioning. We’ll explore where strong ideas come from: the consumer, the brand, competitors, and culture. We’ll look at well-known cases and put strategic tools to work on real brands brought by participants. Minimum theory, maximum practice: we’ll break down the approach → look at cases → try the tool → apply it to your brand. Want to put your brand positioning to the test? Send it to us in advance. We’ll select a few examples and look at them together - how clearly the positioning comes through, and what could make it stronger. Limited spots available

James Keng Lim
Creative Director Burson Singapore

Why do some global campaigns feel like clinical, copy-pasted templates, while others pierce straight through the noise to capture the global imagination?
The secret isn’t a massive media budget; it’s the “Cultural Slipstream.” Join James Keng Lim - creative provocateur, communication polymath and strategic disruptor - as he unpacks the mechanics of turning localised cultural codes into borderless human truths. Drawing on his wild journey - from throwing parties at 35,000 feet for a challenger airline, to mobilising a nation through a pandemic, and turning stigmatised health diagnostics into a globally top-ranked PR movement - James shares a practical playbook on how to mine your backyard for cultural gold. Learn how to think fiercely local, behave unapologetically bold, and make a global impact that cannot be ignored.

Anna Levant
Founder and CEO of RLVNT Strategy, Russia

How can you tell whether your investment in rebranding and brand communications has truly paid off? How do you translate brand perception and positioning into metrics that business leaders actually care about? In this session, we'll explore practical frameworks and real-world case studies from international companies to show how the value of a brand can be measured in business terms.

Taimur Ali Khan
Senior Marketing Deployment Manager

Most marketing ideas do not fail in the creative room. They gradually lose their power through approvals, handovers, budget decisions, agency-client misalignment and the realities of different commercial channels. Drawing on experience launching and deploying brands across Central Asia, the Middle East and Canada, Taimur will explain how marketers can protect the central idea while adapting it for local markets. The session will offer a practical framework for aligning creative, commercial, digital, trade and agency teams around one consumer outcome and ensuring the final execution remains as powerful as the original presentation.

Balreet Gill
Founder Sambal Lab, Malaysia

Experiential is no longer a channel but a brand behaviour system. In a world saturated with content and starved of feeling, the brands that win create moments people remember, rituals people adopt, and emotional truths no message can manufacture.

Thomas Hongtack Kim
Jury Chairman, Board Member Founder of 2kg, CCO and Partner at с, former Executive Creative Director at Cheil, South Korea

The landscape of marketing is shifting rapidly, driven by changes in how people consume content, the rapid advancement of technology, and the evolving nature of human trust. Here is a breakdown of four major topics for the future of marketing: Wise use of AI, The bundling of Audience Attention in the Age of Media Fragmentation, The Evolution of Influencer Marketing, and Real-world Human Experience. You’ll gain practical tips from these four topics that can help you find direction in an era of marketing chaos, where it’s easy to lose your way.

Lulu Lu
Chief Creative Officer at VML Taiwan

This talk begins with a seemingly simple yet deeply rooted cultural ritual: the fixed seating arrangement commonly found at Taiwanese family dining tables - an unspoken emotional order that quietly shapes everyday life.
Through a personal story of memory, family, and my father’s journey with dementia, I explore how the local behaviors we often overlook as “ordinary” can actually reveal profound emotional truths about human connection and belonging.
At a time when technology, innovation, and product features are rapidly becoming commoditized, this story serves as a reminder of what branding truly means - because the real power of a brand does not lie in what it sells, but in what it helps people preserve.

Insights from the International Jury. Members of the Jolbors Awards International Jury will share their expert perspectives on participants’ work - highlighting what makes an idea stand out, offering honest feedback, and sharing what it takes to make creative work resonate on the international stage. It’s an opportunity to see works through the eyes of leading industry experts, gain a fresh outside perspective, and discover how to make a strong idea even stronger.

Vidya Manmohan
Founder & Chief Creative Officer V4GOOD, UAE

When the world seems broken, know that it's your biggest opportunity.

Masaya Asai
Chief Creative Officer Droga5 Tokyo, Japan

When creativity merges with meaningful innovation and sustainable solutions, we redefine how local voices create global impact. This is about transforming traditions, pushing boundaries, and driving lasting change—proving that even the smallest stories can spark the largest global shifts.

Mayuri Nikumbh
Chief Design Officer Elephant Design, India

A reflection on the power of culture to inform, inspire, and enrich brand expressions, creating deeper connections between people, places, and stories. As cultures evolve and intersect in an increasingly interconnected and flat world, design serves as a bridge between heritage and contemporary expression. This perspective considers how cultural narratives shape the experiences, identities, and meanings that resonate across communities, offering new ways to understand the role of design in creating impact and relevance.

Raymund Sison
Founder, CEO, CCO Lennon Group, The Philippines

In a world dominated by artificial intelligence that gives everybody easy access to intelligence, the idiots will rise as some of the best creatives in the world.

Haysam Fahmy
Senior Vice President, Consumer Acquisition & Engagement Mastercard, UAE

In his presentation Haysam uses Mastercard’s iconic Priceless campaign as a case study to examine whether AI could create a truly enduring and culturally impactful brand platform. He looks over cultural impact and consumer needs, discussing rapid adoption of generative AI in marketing to answer whether AI can substitute human creativity in marketing and branding.

Atiya Zaidi
Chief Executive Officer/Chief Creative Officer BBDO Pakistan

History teaches us that any time new ideas come up we do a collective eye roll and reject them. Creativity needs courage to be born, and courage was already in short supply. Take a tour down history’s biggest innovation as we imagine what would have been AI’s response if it existed at that time and may be you will also arrive at the same conclusion as me that human instinct, courage, and even a little “stupidity” can create the breakthroughs AI never sees coming.

Butool Rizvi
Head of Marketing, Coca Cola Central Asia & Caucasus Region

How do some brands become so deeply woven into the cultural fabric of society that they stop being merely consumed and become a non-negotiable part of life.. of memories, moments, anecdotes and celebrations? How do they withstand fierce competition, changing generations and even seismic external forces such as a massive global boycott? Drawing on defining moments from her own career, Butool will explore how enduring brand relevance begins with a powerful alignment between what a brand stands for and what a society values. She will reveal what it takes to build deep, unflinching trust and true cultural intimacy: moving beyond the shortcuts of a “ChatGPT prompt,” immersing ourselves in the historical, cultural and social context, and uncovering human truths through deep ethnographic work.

Supparat Thepparat
Creative Partner&Co-founder, NUTs, Thailand

A tiger doesn’t become powerful by changing its stripes.
It becomes powerful by owning them. Thai creativity survives the global stage by making the world see why Thai is different.

Yulia Tushina
CEO of Creative Business at DASM Group

“Good enough for our market” is one of the most damaging mindsets in our industry. In my talk, I’ll explore why geography is no excuse for mediocre work and why being local should never mean lowering the bar. Through the story of our works, we’ll look at how ideas born in our part of the world can become part of global culture. But first, we must stop lifting the same comfortable weight: every new project should be bolder, sharper, and more ambitious than the last. The world doesn’t need our excuses. It needs powerful ideas. Being local doesn’t limit your scale. It’s the source of your uniqueness. The only real limitation is setting a lower bar for local work.

Farrukh Sharif
Creative Director and Partner at Synthesis Uzbekistan

We’re used to thinking of our market as small and isolated, and we often hesitate to put our work on the global stage. But this is how almost every region of the world sees itself. We’ll explore how international experience within an agency, combined with an outside perspective, can help us recognize what makes our work unique — even when it feels ordinary from the inside

Zarina Uspanova
Development Director at We Media Group

The big idea: To go global, we first need to stop thinking of ourselves as local. Our creatives, entrepreneurs, and professionals are already working around the world - something we see in our “Ours Around the World” series. Yet we still don’t tell enough of our stories to a global audience. Media can become a bridge between local talent and the world: discovering powerful stories, shaping them for a wider audience, and putting Central Asia on the global map. The key message: We don’t need to wait for the world to notice us. We need to start telling the world who we are.

Olegzhan Beketaev
Founder of the “My Name is Marketing” hub

Coming soon

Dasha Ovechkina
Associate Creative Director W+K Amsterdam, Netherlands

How to give people something to play with?
How do little jokes provoke big conversations?
Why should we take fun seriously?
This talk is about the power, the beauty, and the chaos of play.

Anastasia Produvnova
Strategy Director BBDO. Limited spots available

In this hands-on BBDO masterclass, we’ll take you through the full journey - from identifying the right strategic territory to stress-testing a finished positioning. We’ll explore where strong ideas come from: the consumer, the brand, competitors, and culture. We’ll look at well-known cases and put strategic tools to work on real brands brought by participants. Minimum theory, maximum practice: we’ll break down the approach → look at cases → try the tool → apply it to your brand. Want to put your brand positioning to the test? Send it to us in advance. We’ll select a few examples and look at them together - how clearly the positioning comes through, and what could make it stronger. Limited spots available

James Keng Lim
Creative Director Burson Singapore

Why do some global campaigns feel like clinical, copy-pasted templates, while others pierce straight through the noise to capture the global imagination?
The secret isn’t a massive media budget; it’s the “Cultural Slipstream.” Join James Keng Lim - creative provocateur, communication polymath and strategic disruptor - as he unpacks the mechanics of turning localised cultural codes into borderless human truths. Drawing on his wild journey - from throwing parties at 35,000 feet for a challenger airline, to mobilising a nation through a pandemic, and turning stigmatised health diagnostics into a globally top-ranked PR movement - James shares a practical playbook on how to mine your backyard for cultural gold. Learn how to think fiercely local, behave unapologetically bold, and make a global impact that cannot be ignored.

Anna Levant
Founder and CEO of RLVNT Strategy, Russia

How can you tell whether your investment in rebranding and brand communications has truly paid off? How do you translate brand perception and positioning into metrics that business leaders actually care about? In this session, we'll explore practical frameworks and real-world case studies from international companies to show how the value of a brand can be measured in business terms.

Taimur Ali Khan
Senior Marketing Deployment Manager

Most marketing ideas do not fail in the creative room. They gradually lose their power through approvals, handovers, budget decisions, agency-client misalignment and the realities of different commercial channels. Drawing on experience launching and deploying brands across Central Asia, the Middle East and Canada, Taimur will explain how marketers can protect the central idea while adapting it for local markets. The session will offer a practical framework for aligning creative, commercial, digital, trade and agency teams around one consumer outcome and ensuring the final execution remains as powerful as the original presentation.

Balreet Gill
Founder Sambal Lab, Malaysia

Experiential is no longer a channel but a brand behaviour system. In a world saturated with content and starved of feeling, the brands that win create moments people remember, rituals people adopt, and emotional truths no message can manufacture.

Thomas Hongtack Kim
Jury Chairman, Board Member Founder of 2kg, CCO and Partner at с, former Executive Creative Director at Cheil, South Korea

The landscape of marketing is shifting rapidly, driven by changes in how people consume content, the rapid advancement of technology, and the evolving nature of human trust. Here is a breakdown of four major topics for the future of marketing: Wise use of AI, The bundling of Audience Attention in the Age of Media Fragmentation, The Evolution of Influencer Marketing, and Real-world Human Experience. You’ll gain practical tips from these four topics that can help you find direction in an era of marketing chaos, where it’s easy to lose your way.

Lulu Lu
Chief Creative Officer at VML Taiwan

This talk begins with a seemingly simple yet deeply rooted cultural ritual: the fixed seating arrangement commonly found at Taiwanese family dining tables - an unspoken emotional order that quietly shapes everyday life.
Through a personal story of memory, family, and my father’s journey with dementia, I explore how the local behaviors we often overlook as “ordinary” can actually reveal profound emotional truths about human connection and belonging.
At a time when technology, innovation, and product features are rapidly becoming commoditized, this story serves as a reminder of what branding truly means - because the real power of a brand does not lie in what it sells, but in what it helps people preserve.

Insights from the International Jury. Members of the Jolbors Awards International Jury will share their expert perspectives on participants’ work - highlighting what makes an idea stand out, offering honest feedback, and sharing what it takes to make creative work resonate on the international stage. It’s an opportunity to see works through the eyes of leading industry experts, gain a fresh outside perspective, and discover how to make a strong idea even stronger.