MAM
BBC World TV campaign puts Dubai in limelight
MUMBAI: The Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM) recently conducted a three-week-long advertising campaign on the BBC World TV that gave millions of viewers across the world a visual feel of the trading hub of the Middle East during peak-time programmes.
DTCM manager media and advertising Ahmed Al Tunaiji said, “The campaign forms part of the aggressive marketing agenda the department has set for itself to promote Dubai in overseas markets. The campaign added punch to the ongoing initiatives in established and emerging source markets.”
Tunaiji added that the commercials were broadcast before and after the programmes. BBC World TV has a gigantic reach in over 260 million households in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, including 945,000 hotel rooms, 18 airlines and 14 cruise ships, informed an official release.
The department added four new exhibitions to its list of overseas promotions this year to enlarge the scope of its marketing agenda. The BBC World TV campaign comes in the wake of enormous interest in Dubai coming from different parts of the world, the release says.
The department had conducted an extensive television campaign early this year – in time with the beginning of the holiday season in many parts of the world.
DTCM has had an office in India for the last seven years which has been functioning as an initial contact point and query-processing centre for the Indian travel trade interested in doing business in Dubai.
The release informs that the Indian office aims at promoting commerce and tourism, through the organisation of marketing activities such as presentations, roadshows, advertising, brochure distribution, direct sales meetings and media education programmes, which include familiarisation visits for business and travel journalists to Dubai.
Owing to its excellence at marketing ‘Discover Dubai’, DTCM India was recently adjudged the ‘Best International Tourism Board in India’ by the Indian travel industry at the Galileo Express Travel and Tourism Awards in New Delhi, says the release.
DTCM aims to play an important role in boosting bilateral ties by promoting a widespread awareness of the opportunities Dubai has to offer in both business and tourism.
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.
