MAM
Levi Strauss re-launch Dockers with ‘Never Iron’, high pressure ad-campaign
BANGALORE: Aiming for an aggressive growth in the urban retail market, Levi Strauss’ Dockers has launched its newest offering ‘Never Iron’ – the 100 per cent cotton trousers.
The trousers have been engineered with a proprietary fabric and finish that is meant to give the trousers a straight from dry cleaner look.
This launch will be backed by the release of the ‘Dress to Live’ television commercial that has been recently released in the US. India is the only country outside of the US to launch Dockers ‘Never Iron’ pants and release the ‘Dress to Live’ commercial simultaneously with the US.
The launch of the ‘Never Iron’ pants and the commercial will be supported in retail with a seamless experience for the consumers. Point of purchase will play a key role in highlighting the product features and new news from Dockers.
The company plans to kickstart the ‘Never Iron’ campaign in Bangalore first primarily focussing on outdoors.
The theme of the ‘Never Iron’ TVC captures the need to look good, but does so in the context of one’s own individual worth. It is a clothing specific version of ‘you at your very best’. ‘Feel Good Look good’ is the spirit that Dockers ‘Dress to Live’ tries to capture.
A web advertising campaign is also on the anvil and ads will feature on portals such as Yahoo.co.in, Rediff.com, Moneycontrol.com, and Ciol.com . A brand new look to the Dockers section in exclusive stores in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore is also in the offing.
The creatives for the TVC has been done in the US, the media is to be handled by Mindshare. The ad budgets for Dockers are Rs.15 million for June 2005, of which 60-70 per cent would be spent on television. Ad budgets for a Diwali campaign are yet to be finalised.
The total ad-spends for Levis brand is pegged at Rs.120 million. The third brand in the Levi Strauss stable is the recently launched Signature brand.
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.
