MAM
Publicis ropes in Saatchi’s Chris Foster as SVP global clients
MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe has appointed Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide chief operating officer Chris Foster to the newly created role of senior vice president global clients.
“Our clients are facing serious challenges due to technology and innovation in this ever changing world. Chris Foster will help our clients to extract the best from our talents and our formidable assets through integrated solutions. Chris has been deeply involved in the strategy and operations of several Groupe clients. His track record for growth and collaboration has defined his tenure and makes him perfectly suited for this role at this time,” said Publicis Groupe chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy.
Foster will report to Publicis Groupe chief strategist Rishad Tobaccowala and will begin in his Paris-based role on 1 September, 2015.
Currently responsible for the performance and operations for seven of the top 10 countries in the Saatchi & Saatchi network, and for significant global client relationships and management. He has been a senior leader at Saatchi & Saatchi since 1999 in North America, Asia Pacific and Greater China, as CEO of Fallon USA 2008-11, and as a member of the Global Leadership Team since 2011. He is an economics and philosophy graduate from the University of Western Ontario.
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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.
