MAM
IndIAA Awards to be held on September 16
MUMBAI: The India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA), launched the IndIAA awards “for real creative advertising that was backed by real budgets” last year. Nominations for the second edition were invited and unprecedented number of nominations was received and reviewed.
D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo India, Chaired a jury of senior business leaders, which included Shantanu Khosla, Crompton Greaves, VL Rajesh, ITC Foods, Geetu Verma, Hindustan Unilever, Sanjay Behl, Raymond and Amit Syngle, Asian Paints. The Jury members met and determined the winners in a process that was both objective and transparent.
D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo India, said, “We just finished seeing over 100 shortlisted commercials from 19-20 categories. We spend about 4 1/2 hours reviewing some outstanding work & some average work. We judged the commercials & the whole campaign under 3 parameters 1) does it make us think on the brand and the category in a fresh way 2) Is the benefit visualized brilliantly as a lot of it is in the audio visual medium 3) How campaignable is this. I must say that the whole process has been outstanding and the results have been pretty simple & clear. I wish all the winners the very best & for those who haven’t won, best of luck for the next time”
Pradeep Guha, Chairman, IndIAA Awards, said, “In our second edition, advertising campaigns that were released between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016 will be honoured in multiple product and service categories. To qualify for the Award, the campaign should have film (TV or Digital) as one of its elements. In each product or service category, no more than an overall winner was awarded. The awards ceremony is now slated for 16th September, 2016 at ITC Maratha, near Sahar Airport, Mumbai.”
Srinivasan Swamy, President, IAA India Chapter and SVP, IAA Global, added, “At the IndIAA Awards event, you will see campaigns that have been watched and loved, and went on to impress our stellar jury. Therefore, we will invite on stage all the co-creators of the campaign to accept the award. This will include the marketing team, the agency creative team, the media team and other agencies that contributed to the success of the campaign. A special website www.indiaa-awards.org now hosts all the nominees of the campaigns across 20 categories. Advertising and Marketing professionals can review the work and indicate their choices by clicking on the ‘like’ button.”
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.
