MAM
Mountain Dew launches summer campaign with Hrithik Roshan
MUMBAI: PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew unveils its new brand campaign featuring Hrithik Roshan.
The new Mountain Dew commercial created by Taproot India creative director Agnello Dias and directed by Prakash Varma is about embracing courage and overcoming one’s apprehensions; it embodies the brand’s philosophy of ‘Darr se Mat Daro, Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai’.
The film shows Roshan facing his fear of the deep blue sea and taking a plunge into the icy waters from a cliff. This is the first campaign that Roshan has shot with Mountain Dew coming on board as brand ambassador this February.
PepsiCo India category director- Flavours Ruchira Jaitly said, “We are excited about the new summer campaign by Mountain Dew, with our brand ambassador Hrithik Roshan. This campaign is true to the brand philosophy ‘Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai’ and brings alive how one can face the worst fears and vanquish them. It was a challenge to shoot this ad, given the location and the need to look authentic, and we had the perfect partner in Hrithik, who went all out to make the dive come alive. We look forward to a strong surround campaign to bring alive this new creative. ”
Dias said, “Everybody feels fear. To be courageous is defined by one’s fear rather than the fact that they feel no fear at all. Hrihitk’s personality in real life and on-screen is well rounded and multi-dimensional. That’s a great thing about him because he can be vulnerable and fearful like a normal person and transform into a heroic and fearless performer the next moment. He has the ability to carry off both with equal ease.”
The on-air campaign will be supported by robust outdoor, online and on-ground activation.
Mountain Dew is also the Broadcast Partner for Pepsi IPL 2013, and will leverage the presence on this impactful summer property with the new creative.
In the ad film, Roshan is seen enjoying at the beach with his friends who urge him to come for a swim. But Roshan, who has an immense phobia of deep water, predictably refuses. Not being able to even justify his fears to himself, he takes a swig of his Mountain Dew. After a while, to everyone’s shock, Roshan is seen atop a cliff, poised to jump into the abyssal ocean. It is this moment when he is on the brink of overcoming his worst terror by taking that one leap of faith, which destroys his fear completely rather than just fighting it.
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.
