MAM
Genesis Burson-Marsteller announces senior appointment
MUMBAI: Genesis Burson-Marsteller announces the appointment of Vijay Sankaran as Director, Digital Strategy, heading GBM Digital Studio, a Centre of Expertise that provides specialised services and counsel to meet the needs of our clients.
“Vijay’s appointment reflects Burson-Marsteller’s commitment to strengthen focus on building digital strategies that meet the needs of our clients. Vijay is a key addition to our leadership team and he will provide critical support in articulating digital concepts and solutions in a clear and compelling way to our clients.” says Nikhil Dey, President, Genesis Burson-Marsteller, India & South Asia.
Yu Yu Din, currently Head of Digital, is relocating to her home country, Myanmar. She will be moving on from the consultancy by the end of 2014. Vijay will spearhead GBM Digital Studio and drive the opportunity space for Genesis Burson-Marsteller and its clients’ digital presence; creating innovative ideas that bridge digital and public relations as well as digital and marketing, to provide solutions and services that are driven by consumer insights. GBM Digital Studio comprises of a strong team of digital strategists, creative specialists working on digital and social media mandates for clients across corporate and financial, brand and consumer, telecom and technology, and health and wellness practices.
Commenting on his new role, Vijay says, “Digital is a force multiplier for our business of integrated communications. Genesis Burson-Marsteller has successfully embedded digital strategists in each practice to drive campaigns for our clients. My focus is to take our solutions to the next level with strategic and creative programmes that go beyond siloed social platforms. I am very excited about our unique GBM Live! Newsroom – a cross-functional team led service that delivers real-time media and social insights to help create more agile content and act as a crisis management command centre. Digital will also be supported by GBM Content and Design Bureau, another Centre of Expertise at GBM, for multimedia content, with a team of in-house specialists that include graphic designers, former TV producers, editors and videographers.”
A seasoned communications professional, Vijay brings with him a wealth of 25 years’ experience, spanning advertising, digital marketing, public relations and social media. Before joining Genesis Burson-Marsteller, Vijay worked with Social Wavelength, a social media agency as Director, Digital Strategy and Planning. He has also worked with Edelman PR as Head Digital and Nokia Siemens Network as Head Social Media, a global role. At Urja Communications, he started as an advertising Creative Director, reinvented himself as an Interactive Creative Director and digital evangelist during the dotcom era, helping drive the agency’s transformation into a full-service digital agency. He later moved into a pure digital strategy role.
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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.
