AD Agencies
Brands take centre stage at Mipcom Cannes 2025
PARIS: Brand money is flooding into television. At Mipcom Cannes this month, the world’s largest TV market is rolling out the red carpet for corporate storytellers with the first international edition of BrandStorytelling, a summit that has spent a decade building its reputation at Sundance.
The two half-day event on 13 and 14 October brings together an unlikely crowd: global brands like Ancestry and Indeed, creative agencies including Dentsu and McCann, and heavyweight studios such as Banijay, Fremantle and BBC StoryWorks. Their mission is to turn corporate cash into compelling content—and to do deals that make it happen.
Rick Parkhill, the producer and media entrepreneur who founded BrandStorytelling, reckons the sector has come of age. “Brands are increasingly behind some of the biggest stories on our screens globally,” he says. The event’s expansion from Park City to the French Riviera suggests he’s onto something.
Among the speakers are Doug Scott, founder of Unxnown and an alumnus of Endeavour and Ogilvy, and Kim Miller Olko, global chief marketing officer at Toys”R”Us and president of its in-house studio. Representatives from over 20 organisations will take the stage, from the Branded Content Marketing Association to entertainment giants like UTA.
Mipcom Cannes director Lucy Smith says the “overwhelming response” from the industry confirmed the appetite for a dedicated brand-content forum. The summit promises to unlock new funding streams and co-production opportunities at a time when traditional television budgets are under pressure and brands are hunting for more sophisticated ways to reach audiences.
The event, sponsored by Fell + Co., Storybones Media and IPG Mediabrands Entertainment is part of Mipcom’s broader embrace of the creator economy. Last year’s market drew over 10,500 delegates from more than 100 countries—a captive audience for anyone peddling the promise of brand-funded programming.
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.
