Sonal Dabral is a creative consultant based in Mumbai, India. He recently quit advertising to pursue his passion for writing and film direction.

Sonal is the former Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy South and South East Asia. Over a 30-year career, Sonal has led agencies to creative glory in three different markets across Asia.India, Malyasia and Singapore. In 2007 Sonal led Ogilvy Singapore to become the 3 rd most awarded agency in the world at the Cannes Lions 2007.

Sonal is also passionate about teaching and advising young creative talent and is a visiting faculty at some of the top institutes in India.

A popular speaker, Sonal is invited to speak at major festivals and events across the globe. He likes to speak on subjects covering Creativity, Storytelling and Advertising. His current favourite topic is “Advertising Single Malts and Blackjack’, a talk about his three passions and the life lessons he has learnt from them.

In 2017 Sonal was chosen as the Creative Director of the year by the International Advertising Association (India chapter).

Sonal’s work has earned numerous awards at top global advertising award shows. A respected juror he has judged or chaired almost every major international and regional award show including the One Show, Cannes lions, D&AD, LIA, the ANDYs and Spikes Asia. He was also invited to be the President of the of Direct Lions Jury at Cannes Lions 2020.

Since going independent, besides working on a couple of pet feature film projects, Sonal has made good use of the Clovid lockdown to start his own chat show on creativity, advertising, marketing and beyond, called ‘Streaming with Sonal Dabral’. It can be found on his YouTube channel.