MAM
Leo Burnett India shuffles its team; Pops is creative head India Subcontinent
MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe‘s creative agency Leo Burnett India has announced a restructuring in its ranks in order to transform itself into a new age communication agency.
Leo Burnett India NCD KV Sridhar, popularly known as Pops, will now hold the mantle of chief creative officer, India Subcontinent. Nitesh Tiwari has been promoted to take on the post of Leo Burnett India chief creative officer.
Tiwari has been a part of the Leo Burnett family for almost a decade and has worked for a wide range of clients, including Tide, Heinz, Sony Entertainment Television, Reliance Mobile, McDonald‘s, Perfetti Van Melle and Bajaj Electricals.
Pops said, “The core of our consumers across product categories is becoming younger and younger with every passing year. So it is only fair that we have young creative leaders who speak the language of youth and understand new-age challenges for brands and businesses.”
Earlier for agencies in India TV advertising was the core of marketing plans and specialist services were bought from smaller independent shops. Their clients are now demanding new ways of approaching advertising suited to the rapidly changing environment.
“They are demanding advertising platforms that truly integrate their brand communications across channels as diverse as traditional media, digital and modern retail. This transformation is extremely exciting. Changing our core while growing fast requires foresight, meticulous planning and its relentless execution,” said Leo Burnett India Subcontinent chairman and CEO Arvind Sharma.
Leo Burnett Worldwide chief creative officer Mark Tutssel said, “The infusion of fresh new blood into our industry is vital for its long-term health and prosperity. This new generation is tomorrows‘ world thinkers- bold, brave and curious. They naturally defy the status quo and open up infinite possibilities for modern day communication.”
Leo Burnett Asia Pacific president Jarek Ziebinski said, “Business growth in India is coming from innovative thinking that keeps the youth at the centre and technology as the backdrop. Our creative restructuring in India is in step with that growth story and I am completely convinced that the youth will fuel growth of India as well as of Burnett in the near future.”
Other promotions at Leo Burnett include the elevation of Vikram Pandey (a.k.a Spiky) as executive creative director with focus on Tata Capital and HDFC Life. Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari has been promoted as executive creative director and will continue working on Sony Entertainment Television. Vicky Bhambhani takes on the new role of regional creative director on Tide.
Abhishek Sinha, Nikhil Mehrotra, Piyush Gupta and Shreyas Jain have all made it to the creative director circle.
While Sinha will be working on P&G Tide and Shiksha, Mehrotra will work on brands like Bajaj Electricals and Complan. Gupta will be working on Tata Capital as creative director and Jain will now focus on HDFC Life and Limca.
Leo Burnett has also roped in talent from across the industry including Timsy Gupta, Rishi Agarwal, Sapna Aluwalia and Rajneesh Ramakrishnan. Gupta comes in from DDB Mudra Mumbai and has been appointed as creative director. She has worked across agencies like Grey Worldwide, McCann Mumbai, Contract Mumbai and DDB Mudra Mumbai and will be helping chalk out a path for Uninor as CD.
Agarwal who joins from McCann Erickson Delhi has worked on campaigns like Coca-Cola ‘Jashnmana le‘, Nescafe Sunrise, Dulux ‘boxing gloves‘. Some of the other prominent brands that he has contributed significantly towards include HBO, Jammu and Kashmir Tourism and Dainik Jagran. He also joins as CD on Uninor.
Ahulwalia has received wide recognition for the work she has done on brands like Fiat, Tata AIG, Virgin Mobile, BBC World and Birla Sun Life Insurance. She will be a creative director on McDonald‘s.
Ramakrishnan has worked across various agencies including Ogilvy & Mather, Creative Land Asia and handled brands like Cadbury confectionaries, Bajaj Pulsar, Castrol, Odonil, Kotak Securities, Citigroup Global Services(e serve), Frooti, Bloomberg UTV. He has joined as a creative director on McDonald‘s.
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.
