MAM
Spikes Asia calls for entries
MUMBAI: The Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity, Asia Pacific’s awards and festival for the creative communications industry, is now open for entries for its 2013 awards.
Entries are being accepted into a total of 16 categories: film, print, outdoor, radio, media, direct, promo and activation, digital, print and poster craft, film craft, design, pr, mobile, integrated, branded content and entertainment and creative effectiveness.
Nine juries will be present in Singapore, home to Spikes Asia, to judge and award work entered from across the region. Winners of this year’s awards will be revealed and honoured at the annual awards ceremony which will bring the Festival to a close on 17 September.
“It’s exciting opening for entries for a new year. We get to see the trends and initiatives that are coming out of the region; a region that is currently experiencing huge growth and development, and is setting the creative bar high. It will be interesting to see who emerge as the winners of Spikes Asia 2013,” Lions Festivals chairman Terry Savage said.
A number of special accolades will also be presented including, network of the year, independent agency of the year, Spikes Asia agency of the year, media agency of the year and the Spikes Palm Award, which is given to the most awarded production company. The Spikes Asia advertiser of the year, given to clients who have distinguished themselves by the quality of their campaigns or who inspire innovative marketing of their products or services, will also be honoured on stage.
This year, the media agency of the year Award has been realigned so that only a media agency will be eligible to win the award. Advertising agencies, clients, media owners and others can continue to enter and win a Spikes Media award but they cannot compete for the media agency of the year honour.
All of the shortlisted work will be on display through exhibitions and screenings throughout the Festival offering attendees the chance to see a showcase of the best work coming out of the Asia Pacific region.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
