MAM
Mobile Marketing Association India announces shortlist for SMARTIES™ Awards
MUMBAI: The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), today has announced the shortlisted entries for the 2018 SMARTIES™ Awards in India. From this list, the winners will be announced on 28th September at the MMA Forum to be held at Taj, Santa Cruz Mumbai.
90 entries were shortlisted from across industries from hundreds of entries. Back for its seventh season this year, the SMARTIESTM India Awards has grown rapidly, but remains focused on its core mission to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile in the region. The Awards is the world’s only global mobile marketing awards program that honours innovation, creativity, success and Business Impact.
Those shortlisted for this year’s Awards include global brands like Google, Unilever, 21st Century Fox, HSBC, Cadbury, Godrej, Patanjali, Coca-Cola, Diageo, PepsiCo amongst others leading national and international brands. The top agencies that worked with the 90 shortlisted brands include Mindshare India, Isobar, Interactive Avenues, Essence, Madison, and Omnicom Media Group etc. The full list of shortlisted entries can be found here. https://www.mmaglobal.com/india/smarties2018
A total of 12 senior level brand marketers made up the list of juries, namely, Siddharth Banerjee of Vodafone, Priya Nair of Unilever, Gaurav Suri of UTI, Shabnam Panjwani of Edelweiss Financial Services, Viral Oza of Lodha Group, Avinash Kumar of Patanjali, Sandeep Singh of Bira, Asha Kharga of Axis Bank, Kartik Jain of DBS Bank, Abhishek Joshi of SonyLiv, Vishikh Talwar of Millward Brown, and Nitin Agarwal of Hotstar.
“It was not easy judging the entries this year with new and innovative ideas put forth. The level of creativity brought to the table exceeded expectations as the standards of submission improve year on year.” said Priya Nair, Executive Director of Homecare Hindustan Unilever Limited, who was the jury chair at this year’s MMA SMARTIES™ Awards.
Across the categories like brand awareness, audio and video campaigns, brands had the opportunity to showcase their marketing and technological capabilities and compete amongst the best in the industry through the SMARTIES™ Awards. Entries were judged on creativity, execution, strategy, and most importantly, business impact.
“It’s not every day you get the best ideas and the brightest minds in the mobile marketing world in one room. The SMARTIES™ Awards is indeed one of a kind, with entries judged by senior level brand marketers and agency leaders. Through the awards and the Forum, we look forward to celebrating the powerhouse of talent in the industry,” said Moneka Khurana, Country Head, MMA India.
“As mobile continues to take a larger share of the marketing pie in India, we are seeing more marketers make the leap when it comes to reaching out to their customers. The SMARTIESTM Awards celebrates this move and acknowledge those who have taken the bold step to innovate and be creative in the space,” said Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director of MMA in Asia Pacific.
MMA has partnered with Millward Brown as the knowledge partner and observer for MMA SMARTIES™ India and will be presenting their insights of what it takes to win the esteemed metal at the SMARTIES™ Awards. Millward Brown will also present key insights at the MMA Forum to help marketers understand the key drivers in the ever-emerging landscape of mobile advertising and marketing.
“The annual MMA SMARTIES™ Awards is one of the biggest and most prestigious awards for marketers, and we are proud to have been a knowledge partner and observer over the years. Based on the quality of entries this year, I’m certain that we will be seeing the industry grow massively in the near future, “Vishikh Talwar, Managing Director South Asia at Millward Brown.
MMA has also partnered WARC to launch the first-ever Business Impact Index, to identify, rank and award agencies and brands delivering the highest level of business impact, by analysing winner and finalist data from all SMARTIES™ Awards globally. The results of these will be published early next year.
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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.
