MAM
Sam Ahmed moves to Mumbai as Rediffusion VC and CCO
MUMBAI: WPP‘s communication agency Rediffusion has appointed Sam Ahmed as vice chairman and chief creative officer. He currently lives in Dubai but will now move to Mumbai from where he will operate in his new role at the agency.
Ahmed has spent 14 years at Y & R, Dubai where he was credited with making Y&R the No. 1 agency in Dubai in creative rankings and the 3rd most creative agency in the world. He has worked on brands like Ford, Nestle, Pepsi, P&G, Colgate-Palmolive, Citibank, Harvey Nichols, Skoda, Land Rover, Jaguar, Sony Ericsson, Du Telecom, Zain Telecom, HTC, Apple and World Gold Council. He has also been a consultant for the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed‘s executive office on several Dubai projects including DIFC and Burj Khalifa.
Rediffusion chairman and managing director Diwan Arun Nanda said, “It is good to have a person of Sam‘s credentials lead the Creative Team at Rediffusion. He is one of the world‘s most awarded creative people. We searched the globe for such a creative talent. Sam is empowered to lead our team to achieve great creative heights with work that helps strengthen our clients‘ brands even further.”
Ahmed said, “One of the reasons I left advertising is that the focus had shifted, it had become more about making money and less about ideas. I have always believed that only great ideas make a lot of money for your clients and your agency and when the Chairman of a legendary agency offers you a challenge to make Rediffusion the Number 1 creative agency in India, you don‘t ask too many questions, except where do I sign? I have some of the most amazing brands at Rediffusion to work with and I am really excited.”
Sam joined the advertising and communications industry at the age of 21. He was 24 when he won his first design award and by the time he turned 28, he was creative director of Y&R, Dubai. He was made partner and regional executive creative director of Y&R Brands for the region by age of 31. In 2009, Sam founded the Creative Club of Dubai.
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.
