MAM
Craft Worldwide goes global, sets up 2 offices in India
MUMBAI: McCann Worldgroup has consolidated its production assets under a single business unit called Craft Worldwide and has launched it globally including India with offices in Mumbai and Delhi.
The agency with a client-centric operating model and an emphasis on the craft of execution will have a network of integrated production hubs in 23 markets, capable of producing every type of print, digital and video media available.
Apart from Mumbai and Delhi, Craft’s main offices are located in New York, London, Singapore, Toronto, Manchester, Paris, Milan, Oslo, Manila, Bucharest, Santiago, Budapest, Johannesburg, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Detroit, Bangkok, and Melbourne, with plans to expand further in 2013.
All Craft Worldwide offices are linked through an innovative technology platform, called the Craft Cloud.
“Success in global adaptation and production requires the dedication of true craftspeople who care deeply about their clients’ brands and who work tirelessly to drive maximum savings for our clients,” said Craft Worldwide CEO Fred Schuster. “We have assembled a team of the industry’s best, each with a rich and robust background in advertising, adaptation, design and production.”
Craft Worldwide currently offers clients capabilities in a number of key areas:
– A marketing operations consulting group that develops go-to-market models that yield maximum efficiency
– An adaptation design capability that extends the reach of existing tactics into new audience and communication segments, while maintaining brand consistency
– A world-class translation offering providing translation, transcreation and cultural consulting services
– Access to a distribution network that can deliver a final asset to literally anywhere in the world
– A technology platform that streamlines these capabilities and links them together through a cloud-based, highly secure interface
To deliver these capabilities, Craft currently employs more than 570 full-time employees and is already working for many of the world’s leading brand marketers, such as Coca-Cola, L’Oréal, Aldi, General Mills, and Microsoft XBox, as well as supporting the Commonwealth Agency.
With its global launch, Craft Worldwide becomes McCann Worldgroup‘s eighth major marketing solutions offering. “Craft is the perfect example of how we can leverage our talent, our global footprint and our ability to work quickly and cost-efficiently to drive our clients’ businesses forward,” said McCann Worldgroup Chairman & CEO Harris Diamond.
“One key differentiator for Craft is our ability to design bespoke operating models for our clients. These unique plans leverage our vast network of low-cost hubs and have proven success both in maintaining brand consistency and in driving maximum efficiency,” explained Craft Worldwide COO Quinn O’Brien.
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.
