MAM
Cannes Lions 2019: Dentsu Webchutney bags 3 Lions
MUMBAI: Dentsu Webchutney, the creatively-led digital agency from the house of Dentsu Aegis Network, has bagged 1 Silver and 2 Bronze Lions at Cannes Lions 2019.
The agency won a silver for Swiggy’s ‘Voice of Hunger’ campaign in the Social and Influencer category. Meanwhile, it scored a bronze in the Direct Lions category and another bronze in the PR Lions category for its ‘Code Name: Uri' executed for the film URI: The Surgical Strike.
Commenting on the achievement, Dentsu Aegis Network CEO Greater South and chairman and CEO India Ashish Bhasin said, “Dentsu Aegis Network leading with 19 shortlists and now Dentsu Webchutney winning three metals today further endorses our view that 3-5 years from now, there won’t be anything like a digital agency. All agencies will have to be digital. Old world, legacy creative agencies will vanish. Am particularly happy with Dentsu Webchutney’s performance, across categories and a big congratulations to Sidharth and Team Dentsu Webchutney.”
Dentsu Webchutney co-founder and CEO Sidharth Rao said, “It’s surreal to us at Dentsu Webchutney, but there’s much that’s gone on behind the scenes in terms of building the right set of teams across locations, striving hard to win the client roster that we have today. I believe all of that has come together now. For now, we will continue to double down on what we’ve been doing, and look forward to even more killer solutions to bring to the table here next year. An area of incredible focus is telling our research and strategy story even better, we lead the business in terms of our thinking and our clients know this, but the ecosystem still looks at Dentsu Webchutney at a pure-play creative agency. We’re ready for brands with outlandish ambitions for what’s possible. Stay tuned.”
With 19 shortlists across direct, outdoor, social and influencer, mobile, brand experience and activation, media and creative e-commerce, Dentsu Aegis Network has emerged on top of the India tally at Cannes Lions 2019.
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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.
