MAM
JWT discloses theme for Portfolio Night 11
MUMBAI: Portfolio Night has grown to be a global event, reaching creative hubs in every continent in an evening where the best of the present meet the best of the years to come. Now in its eleventh year, the event brings together thousands of young creative’s, hundreds of creative directors, dozens of city hosts in cities around the world, and a select few global sponsors, all in a one night only event across the planet.
JWT India brings to light the theme and its first video for Portfolio Night 11, scheduled to be held at the JWT India office on 22 May.
Given that aspiring advertising students foster a multitude of misconceptions about the industry and its people, JWT has suitably chosen their theme for this year’s Portfolio Night as ‘An Eye-Opener’. The entire concept is built around the hash tag #WhatIThinkAboutAdvertising. Students were asked to use this hash tag and tweet @pnmumbai11 their thoughts on what they think advertising is all about.
“Bust the myths and unveil the truth in the most realistic, simple fun way, that’s the effort on the “Eye Opener”. The truth may be a bitter pill to swallow but just like your work it’s time to come face to face with what advertising and you are really worth,” said JWT India national creative director Tista Sen.
The campaign will include social media, posters, TVCs, hoardings and radio spots on Radio Mirchi. As part of the overall campaign, a few advertising students were asked what they thought about advertising and these videos were seeded on the Portfolio Night Facebook page, urging people to tweet about what they thought about advertising.
The craziest of these tweets were selected to create posters, films and radio spots for JWT-Portfolio Night 11 campaign. The people whose tweets are being selected will be given prizes.
JWT- Portfolio Night 11 promises an evening with the country‘s top creative directors like Prasoon Joshi, Piyush Pandey, Ashish Khazanchi, Sonal Dabral, Amer Jaleel, Manish and Raghu Bhatt, Malvika Mehra, Santosh Paddy, Russel Barett, Carlton D’Silva, K S Chakravarthy (Chax), Ravi Deshpande, Josy Paul and Sagar Mahabaleshwar.
Scheduled to take place simultaneously in over 20 cities on this date across the world, including Athens, Austin, Beijing, Boston, Costa Rica, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Paris, Sao Paulo, Stockholm, Tokyo and Toronto amongst others, Portfolio Night is an annual property of ‘ihaveanidea’, the creative founders and the world’s first and largest community of the international advertising industry.
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.
