MAM
Emirates launch a new phase of Shares a Smile with Arsenal
MUMBAI: Middle east airline Emirates has unveiled a new phase of its global Share a Smile campaign in partnership with Arsenal Football Club.
With the help of Emirates‘ multilingual cabin crew, Arsenal players Mikel Arteta, Lukas Podolski, Wojciech Szcz?sny and Theo Walcott share some football phrases in their own languages whilst showing off their football skills in a series of light-hearted videos.
Emirates Share a Smile was launched in February. The first phase of the campaign featured 29 videos in 14 languages showcasing members of its cabin crew expressing quirky and unusual expressions and greetings from around the world.
The campaign was created by Emirates to help “globalistas” connect with each other through sharing the humourous, videos with their friends and family.
Emirates divisional senior VP corporate communications Boutros said, “Emirates and Arsenal have been working together since 2004 and constantly look for new and innovative ways in which to extend our partnership.”
Arsenal head of global partnerships Vinai Venkatesham said, “Football is a global sport, and with its multilingual international outlook Emirates‘ Share a Smile campaign is the perfect match for engaging with football fans around the world. The videos were filmed on a snowy English day and despite the weather the players had great fun showing off their tricks alongside the Emirates team and we hope our fans around the world enjoy watching them.”
Emirates and Arsenal have a long standing partnership and in December 2012 the airline extended its shirt partnership with the English Premier League club until the end of the 2018-19 season. As part of the deal Arsenal‘s home will continue to be known as Emirates stadium up to 2028. The companies‘ relationship also extends across a number of other areas including a grassroots football project.
Opened in October 2009, Arsenal Soccer School based in Dubai at The Sevens, Emirates‘ purpose-built sports facility, the school aims to develop football talents in the UAE and surrounding Gulf region through top-class training methods.
“Share a Smile” is the latest extension of Emirates‘ global brand platform ‘Hello Tomorrow‘. Launched in April 2012, the platform aims to inspire people across the world to explore and connect with each other across cultures and borders. To date, the videos have been viewed by nearly one million people worldwide.
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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.
