MAM
Build creativity around brands across platforms: Holm
MUMBAI: Brands have to learn to be creative across all platforms so that they can engage today’s youth, the most important segment that marketers need to chase to successfully sell their products.
“You need to play the plot with creativity and remember to use all the screens. Today’s youth is a multi-tasker and to grab their attention you have to be present on all the screens they use. Each screen from the desktop to the iPhone have a unique technology that can be leveraged to engage the consumer,” said Rovio Asia SVP Henry Holm.
Speaking about the “O-O-O” theory, Holm said it is a different take on the 360 degree marketing strategy in that it shuffles between online presence, offline connect and back to online. This works well with brands which operate in the online space. While the digital space is where the product or service exists, the offline space is used to create touch and feel experiences which make an imprint on the consumer’s conscious and engage them. Once the offline exercise is carried out, the consumer may directly follow up by going online or the brand may provide an incentive to do so.
Apart from activiations, a brand may collaborate with other compatible brands or go the licensing and merchandising way. Many brands have taken the L&M route to increase consumer engagement and involvement. The trick is to find a way to harness fan value, mutual partner benefit and brand fit simultaneously, Holm elaborated while speaking at the MTV Youth Marketing Forum.
Rovio Entertainment, the developers of the Angry Birds game, has had a huge success ride in the past decade. Holm shared the brand’s experience with marketing for the youth along with their key learnings.
Though it may feel like the game has been around for quite some time, the journey started a mere two and a half years back. “Since the beginning our aim has been to concentrate on the characters and create a connect with the audiences through our online-offline-online strategy,” said Holm. “While exciting features may help grab eyeballs, unless a fan base is built, the success will be short-lived.”
Rovio carried out an activation in association with T mobile in Spain (Terrassa near Barcelona) where a real life Angry Birds stage was set up. Players could aim the birds on the evil pigs on the iPhone installed at the site and the bird’s trajectory would be simulated in real life on the stage.
The activation not only caught the fancy of the people on that day, but the videos of the event filmed by participants went viral and resulted in significant visibility for the brand. The players were stimulated by the game and went online to relive the experience in the digital space, Holm said.
AD Agencies
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.
