MAM
Dentsu Aegis Network wins big at Asian Customer Engagement Forum Awards
MUMBAI: Dentsu Aegis Network exhibited enormous dominance at the Asia Customer Engagement Forum (ACEF) awards that were held on 25 April at Taj Lands End in Mumbai.
While Dentsu Aegis Network’s iProspect Communicate 2 was named the Most Admired Agency in digital marketing, Carat Media Services India/psLive was named the Most Admired Agency in events and promotions.
Posterscope India bagged the award for the Most Admired Agency in out-of-home media as well as the Most Admired customer-engaging agency in retail touch points & merchandising.
Additionally, Posterscope APAC regional director Haresh Nayak was honored with the Outdoor advertising professional of the year award.
Posterscope India bagged a total of 27 awards including eight golds, 12 silvers and five bronze metals along with the agency titles. It was their work for clients such as Mother Diary, Philips, Nissan, Disney, Mattel, beam Suntory, Datsun and Movies Now, which brought home the awards in the following categories – effectiveness, creativity and successful use technology in retail, outdoor and ambient spaces.
Carat was awarded a total of seven wins- five Gold and two Bronze. The Philips Aquatouch ‘New way to shave is here’ campaign was awarded Gold for Promotion using Events.
Philips LED lights ‘Change karo save karo’ campaign won Gold for successful use of technology. The overall activation was done in tandem with their sister concern PSLive, which is into all things activation.
Philips Trimmers bagged Gold for Best use of Celebrity Endorsement. The Philips Airfryer campaign added yet another Gold to the tally under Creativity on Television category. The fifth Gold came in the form of The Most Admired Agency for Events and Promotions.
Carat also won two Bronze metals for Philips Kerashine Range and Preethi Blue Flame Gas Stove launch campaigns.
iProspect Communicate 2 picked up a total of four metals across various categories. The Big Bazaar ‘Everything for Nothing’ campaign was awarded a Gold metal for ‘Promotion using Digital Marketing’.
The agency also picked up two awards in the Successful Use of Technology category, a silver and a bronze for their Cleartrip and Koovs campaigns, respectively. In the Online Media category, iProspect Communicate 2 picked up a bronze medal for its work for HDFC Bank.
Amongst the other Dentsu Aegis Network agencies, Isobar India won the Silver in the promotions category for Digital Marketing for its work on Microsoft Lumia. Vizeum won a Gold for Viacom 18’s MTV Campus Diaries under the events category.
Dentsu Aegis Network chairman and CEO, South Asia Ashish Bhasin said, “I am thrilled to know that the Dentsu Aegis Network has been able to achieve such recognition at a pan-Asia level. Sustaining customer engagement in this competitive market is a key task for our clients and I am happy that all our Dentsu Aegis Network companies have worked together to achieve this.”
“It is a further testimony to our unique one P&L operating model, whereby we are able to provide our clients all the benefits of specializations without the hassles of dealing with silos. Heartiest congratulations to iProspectC2, Posterscope, Carat, psLive, Isobar, Vizeum and to Haresh Nayak for their respective wins. This further strengthens our position as the only network in India that can provide all marketing communications and media services, of world standards, under one umbrella,” added Bhasin.
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.
