MAM
Interbrand appoints global CMO & North American CMO
MUMBAI: Interbrand, a brand consultancy, has named Graham Hales as its global chief marketing officer and Andrea Sullivan will be the new chief marketing officer of Interbrand North America.
Hales most recently served as chief executive officer of Interbrand London, while Sullivan served as executive director of client services and was responsible for client services and marketing for Interbrand North America. In their new roles, Hales and Sullivan will work closely to integrate marketing and business development initiatives to drive growth across Interbrand’s global network. Hales and Sullivan will work with regional managing directors to engage new clients while deepening relationships with existing clients, ensuring they continue to benefit from the firm’s strategic and creative offerings and services.
As CEO of Interbrand London for the past four years, Hales led key brand engagements with some of the firm’s most high-profile clients, including the BBC, British Airways and Samsung. Under his leadership, Marketing Magazine named Interbrand’s London office Agency of Year in 2011. Hales brings extensive global experience to his new role as Interbrand’s global chief marketing officer. He has helped to oversee the firm’s offices in Amsterdam and Mumbai and has also driven regional business development activity in the Middle East, Turkey and Scandinavia. Prior to serving as Interbrand London’s CEO, Hales was Interbrand’s global chief communications officer. While in that role, he was instrumental in helping to create original content around the firm’s annual ‘Best Global Brands’ report.
While serving as executive director of client services, Sullivan led the client services and marketing team and co-founded Interbrand’s global corporate citizenship practice. Additionally, she played a pivotal role in developing and promoting Interbrand’s thought leadership on a global scale, having delivered interactive experiences with partners such as the ANA, Cannes, Deloitte, Guggenheim, Harvard, Lyons, MoMA, NYSE, United Nations, World Business Forum and Yale. Sullivan was a founding member of G23, a landmark consultancy comprising top female leadership from within the Omnicom network. G23 was designed to lead Omnicom clients in activating the global female economy.
“It is a very exciting time in the history of Interbrand,” said Interbrand’s global chief executive officer Jez Frampton. “The promotion of both Graham and Andrea marks the first time that the firm has had two leaders in place to strategically foster and activate a global vision of marketing, communication, and business development. Graham and Andrea have been proven leaders of the business for many years and I congratulate them both on the next chapter of their careers at Interbrand.”
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
