MAM
Creative Coke pitch boards to continue till FIFA finals
The colorful and intriguing Coca-Cola pitch boards that have drawn notice from fans in each of the 20 FIFA World Cup stadia, will continue their existence at the venues till the 30 June championship match of the 2002 tournament.
Earlier, the pitch boards, with artwork created by consumers in nations competing in the FIFA World Cup were scheduled to be displayed only through the end of first-round matches.
Through the new Coca-Cola GO! Stadium Art Program, consumers for the first time ever helped create some of the sponsor billboards that traditionally border the pitch at each FIFA World Cup match. For the first time, stadium billboards at FIFA World Cup matches depicted more than a sponsor’s name and its logo or other trademarks. This is also the first time that consumers got involved in creating images for those boards.
Thousands of original, fan-conceived artworks were collected by Coca-Cola earlier this year from countries competing for the World Cup trophy. Only one creation was selected from each nation participating in the programme. Each country’s artwork is individually featured as part of the Coca-Cola billboard displays at FIFA World Cup stadia. The artworks correspond with the national teams playing in a particular match, so the two Coca-Cola boards are changed for each match.
In each special billboard design, the Coca-Cola trademark script sits alongside a horizontal outline of the company’s famous contour bottle, which served as the “canvas” for the publicly created images. Consumers and in some cases art students or professionals were asked to create works that conveyed a sense of national pride and enthusiasm for their country’s entry in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, says an official release.
Coca-Cola, one of FIFA’s longest-standing corporate partners signed an unprecedented, eight-year agreement as FIFA’s exclusive nonalcoholic beverages partner in 1998. The agreement includes sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup, the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking, the FIFA Confederations Cup and the FIFA World Youth Championship.
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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.
