MAM
Effies 2014: It was the night of ‘Men in Black’
MUMBAI: The stage was set as the who’s who of the advertising world ascended to celebrate the best work of the year gone by at the Effies 2014.
“The Gold standards we are have set will secure that these awards are the most coveted and the most admired in our communication business,” said the Ad Club president Pratap Bose in his opening speech, while emphasising that the results will have the direct implications on 2015 Global Effie rankings at the individual office level. “And I must share that two out of three in 2014 global ranking are from India,” he added.
Amidst loud cheering, Ogilvy & Mather, which was superseded by Lowe Lintas + Partners in the race last year, was back with a bang to be the Agency of the Year at the Effie 2014 awards.
The men and women in black earned a total of 173 points and bagged two Gold, eight Silver, and 16 Bronze Effies. Bournvita (Best on-going campaign category) and Google (Digital: Online/Mobile Communication category) took home the two Golds.
Last year’s winner Lowe Lintas + Partners came in second with 142 points. The agency won the maximum number of Gold medals i.e. seven along with six Silver and eight Bronze Effies.The Gold wins for the agency came for Idea and Tata Tea (Best on-going campaign category). The work for Idea also won a Gold in the Services category.
McCann Worldgroup India came in third with 90 points earned from two Gold, five Silver and eight Bronze. There was a tie between JWT and Soho Square with 34 points. The agency bagged Gold for Havells’ #RespectWomen entry (Consumer Durables category).
Hindustan Unilever with a total of 64 points including two Gold, four Silver and four bronze Effies became the Effie Client of the Year.
The Grand Effie went to Soho Square for its campaign ‘The Political campaign that Created History’ for Bharatiya Janata Party.
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.
