MAM
IPG, Omnicom in JV for $1 bn Chevy account
MUMBAI: In a first of its kind move, global giants Omnicom and Interpublic Group have entered a 50:50 joint venture to service the global creative account of General Motors‘ brand Chevy.
The JV, Commonwealth, will be led by a global advisory board of eight members including McCann Worldgroup South Asia president Prasoon Joshi.
The collaboration is between Omnicom owned Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which was previously Chevy‘s lead agency in the US and IPG’s McCann Erickson, the brand‘s lead agency in India, China and Latin America will be called Commonwealth.
The size of the account serviced by the JV is $1 billion. Prior to this Chevrolet employed 70 agencies across the globe.
The account was awarded to the two agencies after a multiagency pitch that started at the end of 2011. The other agencies involved in the pitch include Publicis Groupe and Cheil Worldwide.
The new business which will be based in Detroit, will develop creative campaigns across all media platforms for Chevrolet.
Earlier this year GM awarded the global media mandate to Aegis‘ Carat Media.
The global advisory board will oversee creative initiatives and strategy. Goodby Silverstein & Partners founder Jeff Goodby will serve as creative chairman while other members will include McCann Worldgroup Latin America chairman and chief creative officer Washington Olivetto and McCann New York and London chairman and chief creative officer Linus Karlsson.
These four creative leaders will work in collaboration on all major creative initiatives and resource allocations. Campaigns will be handled through global hubs, which will operate in Detroit, Milan, Mumbai and Sao Paulo.
According to the company‘s annual report GM spent $4.47 billion on advertising in 2011 most of which was used to market Chevy. The company said that cutting back on the number of agencies, and streamlining ad production and its media buying process could save the company $2 billion over the next five years.
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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.
