MAM
Fierce competition for Zee accounts
NEW DELHI: It seems to be boom time for the advertising agencies. Some of the top agencies are vying for various Zee channel accounts said to be worth approximately Rs. 400 million.
Those in fray for the accounts include Rediff DY&R, FCB Ulka, Lowe, Contract and Leo Burnett. According to advertising industry sources, various agencies, including existing ones, made presentations yesterday for the accounts up for grabs at Zee’s office in Mumbai. Efforts made to elicit a response from Zee Telefilms proved futile.
Though the official budget is not known, but industry sources indicated that Zee’s account, collectively, is one of the largest accounts in the media world. It is also estimated that the total account would be approximately Rs. 400 million.
At present, Rediff DY&R, along with Contract and other medium sized agencies handle Zee’s creatives. Rediff’s PR division also used to handle Zee TV’s publicity, which it had bagged during the time Sandeep Goyal was the group broadcasting CEO. Earlier this year the PR contract came to an end and was not renewed.
Zee News recently signed on Leo Burnett as its creative agency, which was behind splashing a new look across Zee News logo and channel promotion with the tag `Hakikat Jaise, Khabar Waise’. The ad pitches are being made as Zee, led by the flagship channel Zee TV, has lined up various programming and marketing initiatives that kick off with the festive season in October.
One of the marketing and communication initiatives also include coming out with a new-look FPC (fixed point chart) for the main Zee channels, excluding the Alpha regional channels and the third-party ones like Trendz.
The FPC chart that now comes, beginning October, in the form of a magazine not only has the timings of various programmes, but highlights and pictures from serials and movies to make the experience of rummaging through pages more pleasant.
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.
