MAM
Ronaldo’s Coke snub kicks off a meme-fest
Mumbai: What seemed like a simple act by Portugal footballer Cristiano Ronaldo of moving aside two bottles of Coke and replacing them with a bottle of water at a post-match presser quickly metamorphosed into a sponsors’ nightmare at the 2020 Euro football league. For one, it cost the beverage giant a staggering loss of valuation pegged at $ four billion.
The incident also seems to have kickstarted a trend amongst the Euro 2020 players- with France’s Paul Pogba and Italy’s Manuel Locatelli following in the Portugal captain’s footsteps by taking a swipe at one of the official Euro 2020 sponsors and doing a ‘Ronaldo’. To the extent that the UEFA (The Union of European Football Associations) had to step in to ask the players to stop the ‘bottle removing’ trends.
But that didn’t prevent the opening of social media floodgates to an abundance of memes on the entire episode! Riding on the frothy meme-tsunami triggered by the football legend’s snub to the aerated drink, brands too launched a flood of witty, cheeky campaigns on social media.
There was of course, Amul topical doing what it does best – literally milking the matter – this time on ‘beverages and football…and on not bottling one’s feelings!’
This round on moment marketing was however won by Fevicol for nailing it with their on-point post.
Created by Schbang, the tagline featuring two bottles of the glue goes “Na bottle hategi, na valuation ghategi”
Online trading platform Upstox had a word of warning to brands on the placement of their products and for those trading in stock markets: “Stock markets are subject to Ronaldo’s risks, place your brand carefully”. Taking a dig at the Cola giant, it added, “It’s not only defenders who need to be scared of CR7”.
Portugal footballer’s healthy preferences found favour with diagnostic lab network Pathkind Labs, which posted : When a legend says it you do it. Stay hydrated. Adding a word of caution, ‘Summer is at its peak. Drink plenty of water and stay cool!’
Needless to add, packaged drinking water brand Bisleri was completely in agreement with the famous footballer’s views on the water. Bisleri endorsed his act of holding up a bottle of water to the cameras and making an appeal to drink water instead of sugary drinks. Leveraging the act to its advantage, it hilariously wrote, tagging the footballer: Christiano choosing water over soft drinks since 1985.
It also added, “Be smart like the G.OA.T -Quench your thirst with the right choice” possibly simultaneously taking a dig at another cola giant which had a tagline of ‘yehi hain right choice, baby’! Talk about hitting two birds with one stone, huh?
Parle’s Rola Cola added its two cents on the debate of soft drinks – saying ‘have a solid rola cola instead’
Manforce condoms too waded into the meme storm, with a creative saying ‘MAKE LEGENDARY CHOICES #Ifyouknowyouknow’
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.
