AD Agencies
Leo Burnett, BBDO shine at The Epica Awards 2016
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett India has bagged India’s sole gold at the 2016 edition of the Epica Awards for its ‘Reuniting Memories from 1947’ (Dastaan) campaign for OLX.
Excited about the wins, Leo Burnett south Asia chief creative officer RajDeepak Das said, “When we realised that OLX is the no. 1 marketplace for used goods in India and Pakistan, we saw an opportunity to help people reunite with their priceless pre-Partition belongings and memories; we received thousands of stories from both sides in no time.”
Additionally, its work for Bajaj V, ‘Sons of Vikrant’, too bagged a bronze. The Epica Awards celebrate work from advertising, design, media, PR and digital that has been chosen by renowned journalists from the marketing and communications fraternity, across the world.
The work for OLX bagged the Gold under the ‘Native Advertising’ category, while Bajaj V’s campaign won for ‘Films & Series’.
The wins have even played their part in helping Leo Burnett secure the coveted ‘Network of the Year’ title this year, by bagging 49 metals to its name including 12 gold.
On the other hand BBDO New York claimed the agency of the year title with 19 wins which includes a gold.
The Epica Awards were established in 1987, and is the only award that is judged by marketing and communications specialist journalists from over 60 publications, including magazines and websites, globally. The prize attracts entries from over 70 countries, each year. The ceremony was held in Amsterdam on 17 November.
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.
