MAM
Contract Advt bags Rs 40m account of Shringar Cinemas
MUMBAI: This sure is a first of sorts when a film company involved in the movie exhibition business has engaged a professional advertising agency. In a multi agency pitch involving Bates, Percept and Contract Advertising, Shringar Cinemas Pvt. Ltd, the exhibition division of Shringar Films has signed Contract Advertising to handle its creative and media responsibilities. According to Shringar Cinemas director Shravan Shroff the account is pegged at Rs 40 million. The contract comes into effect from the first week of June.
Apart from interesting creatives for the company, what gave Contract the edge over the others was that they understood the movie business well and were total movie buffs.
Announcing the decision, Shroff said, “Contract Advertising has had a successful history in partnering businesses from relatively new industries and we are very happy to be working with them as we take the Fame brand to bigger heights. Entertainment is a serious business today and the era of marketing cinema halls through posters has gone. Today a multiplex is a brand, and thus we believe, there is a need of a professional advertising agency who can communicate our core values to our consumers.”
Speaking to indiantelevision.com about the need for Shringar Cinema to hire an agency for itself, the company’s head of marketing and sales Deepak Netram said, “We require advertising that will most effectively address our audience. We wanted someone who understands the idiosyncrasies of the movie business and can connect with the audience. Since we are not the run-of-mill kind of multiplex, we wanted someone who could partner us in communicating the same.”
Shringar Cinemas under the leadership of Shroff launched the first ever state-of art five screen multiplex of Mumbai-Fame Adlabs. Presently the company is working towards expanding its operations with launches in Surat, Nasik and Kolkata and two new multiplexes in Mumbai (Malad and Kandivali) by the end of 2004.
Contract Advertising Mumbai head and senior VP Rajiv Sabnis said, “We were very impressed with the vision of the management of the Fame brand and felt that in the long run, they will have a dominant national presence and hence the need to build a differentiated brand in the business of entertainment. This is the reason that Contract decided to pursue a partnership with Shringar Cinemas.”
In tune with the Company’s motto of providing “Best in Entertainment with World- class Service”, Shringar Cinemas has aligned the organisation, its people, processes and infrastructure to the needs of the patrons.
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.
