MAM
ASICS India launches new campaign to kickstart upcoming sports season
MUMBAI: As the world’s most-awaited quadrennial sporting event commences on 23 July, Japanese multinational sports equipment brand, ASICS launched its ‘Celebration of Sport’ campaign.
Featuring youth icons and ASICS brand athletes who are representing India at the Tokyo Olympics – Manika Batra, Bajrang Punia, Ravindra Jadeja, Sakshi Malik, Karman Kaur Thandi, Rohan Bopanna, T. Gopi and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, apart from actor Tiger Shroff, the campaign attempts to build on the brand’s belief of achieving ‘Sound Mind In A Sound Body’.
Designed to defy convention and inspire today’s youth to choose well-being above anything else, Celebration of Sport is a series of three short films and highlights athletes celebrating the power of sports in the brand’s newly launched collection. Timed with the Tokyo Games and the upcoming sports season, the brand also wishes to highlight its commitment to nurturing the world’s youth through sports in order to contribute to society.
ASICS India and South Asia managing director Rajat Khurana said, “ASICS has been a proud partner in the success journey of several athletes. Each athlete has specific requirements and we work towards it to ensure that our association helps them reach newer heights and fame. While sports and games vary, the core spirit for us remains the same. Our brand films have been developed to create a positive impact of movement not just on the body, but also on the mind. It also highlights the overall well-being of winning at all costs spirit. We are happy to see many athletes from the ASICS family bringing glory to the nation on different stages around the world.”
Titled under the campaign, the sports brand also unveils its Autumn Winter’ 21 collection that encompasses more than five different sports, celebrating the power of all sports to uplift the mind.
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.
