MAM
Levi’s ad draws ire of US Safety Coalition
WASHINGTON: The latest train television commercial by jeans manufacturer Levis has come under a cloud. US’ Operation Lifesaver (OL) which is a non-profit rail safety group, and its partners from the highway and rail safety communities have urged Levi Strauss to pull its latest television ad, Horsebecause the commercial encourages risky behaviour around trains.
The ad features a model on a dark horse coming out of a railroad tunnel. Stopping her steed in the middle of the tracks as a train rapidly approaches, she rides directly into the path of a train. Miraculously, the model manages to fly over a multi-car train without a scratch.
This is not the first time that a Levis ad has provoked controversy. Four years ago, Levi produced Trainthat enticed young people to create their own cutoffs on the tracks. Operation Lifesaver President Gerri Hall said, “I don’t want to believe that Levi Strauss would intentionally produce an ad that would influence youth to put themselves in harm’s way. However, this is exactly what this ad does. It trivialises the dangerous, illegal and all-too-often tragic activity of playing on railroad tracks.”
In a letter addressed to Levis, OL has cited US government figures showing more than 5,000 pedestrians have been killed since 1990 while trespassing on railroad tracks and property. Modern trains are quieter than in the past and they cannot stop quickly to swerve to avoid someone on the tracks.
Four years ago, Levis bowed down to protests and developed an edited version of the Trains ad. The US Federal Trade Commission insisted that Levi’s edit the portion that demonstrated how to make shorts out of jeans. Their concern was that teens and pre-teens would get on the tracks to mimic the ad.
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.
