MAM
DMA: India unveils new brand identity
Mumbai: Direct Marketing Association: India (DMA: India) has donned a new ‘avatar‘ for its corporate brand to mainstream direct marketing as an overarching arm of marketing.
The logo has been conceptualised by DMA‘s creative agency RAPP. The new strapline of the logo reads ‘Marketing Made Smarter‘.
The new logo has a contemporary look and has used vibrant solid colors to enhance the position of authority and visibility. It has a speech blurb embedded in the D of DMA to signify its dialogue or communications objective, the company said.
DMA: India CEO Vatsal Asher said, “With direct marketing going digital, it was important to introduce a new positioning and a platform which resonates with the modern smart methodology of business. We wanted to give it a modern feel without changing the core identity. The new brand identity of DMA: India is based on the rebirth of direct marketing in the digital age and communications around it. We found the RAPP approach to be thorough and insightful. Their strategic thinking and drive gives us the confidence to believe that RAPP will be our creative partners in India and we are looking forward to making this convention popular in India with their help.”
Tribal DDB and RAPP India president Venkat Mallikarjunan said, “New age Direct Marketing agencies are taking ahead the good things about direct marketing like the discipline, the performance and ROI focus while not limiting themselves to direct mail as a medium. The re-crafted Direct Marketing agency is now a genuinely new age lead agency with significant skills in new media, new age engagement tools, and new age insight frameworks, as well as, brand thinking. The DMA: India wants to propagate this change and get brand and business leaders in India to take notice. At RAPP we have been the leading edge of this change across the world and are delighted to be partnering the DMA of India in this endeavor.”
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.
