MAM
Scarecrow gets serious in Delhi, appoints Anindya Banerjee as ECD
MUMBAI:Scarecrow Communications has roped in Anindya Banerjee to head its creative function in Delhi as executive creative director.
Until now, the agency’s Delhi clients such as Religare and Bharat Petroleum were handled from Mumbai. With Banerjee on board, Scarecrow is intending to compete more effectively with Delhi-based agencies in new business pitches.
Banerjee moves in from Law & Kenneth and has nearly 14 years of experience in agencies such as Ogilvy, Contract and Publicis.
Says co-founder Manish Bhatt,” Andy will provide great creative leadership in Delhi. His equity comes from the work he has done, not from PR. He will also attract great talent and will make Scarecrow Delhi a happy, non-political, creative place to work in.”
Banerjee has several successful campaigns on brands such as NIIT, Nestle, IBM, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Vodafone, Dabur Vatika, Allen Solly, LG Phones, Perfetti, Maruti, Unitech and Lotus Herbals.
States Banerjee,” I have known Joy, Manish and Raghu for almost 15 years. And every time we have worked together, there was a vibe. And a joie de vivre that emanated from the sheer happiness of creating wonderful work without losing out on the objective of the campaign. In any case, I have always believed in the power of the independent agency, so when this opportunity arose, I grabbed it.”
Also, amongst Banerjee’s two widely recalled campaigns have been the ‘Me and Meri Maggi‘ campaign and the relaunch of Limca.
Says founder-director Raghu Bhat,” Andy brings many things to the table – subversive creativity, speed of thinking, a cool head primed by experience, bounce-backability, integrity and absence of ego. Hopefully, we should be able to announce a big signing in Delhi in the next few days.”
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.
