MAM
VMate’s #SunnyKaNewYearCall campaign reaches over 2 million users
MUMBAI: VMate’s #SunnyKaNewYearCall campaign is growing stronger day by day. Even after a robust participation, new users are still bidding to win a date with Sunny Leone. Creating videos with hilarious memes, funny expressions, macho attitude, ravishing style and many more have taken the whole experience a notch higher for both creators and users.
VMate, a short video trending platform collaborated with Sunny Leone to introduce a first-of-a-kind interactive video sticker for Indian users to celebrate the New Year. As a big surprise for the fans of Sunny and VMate users, #SunnyKaNewYearCall campaign went viral instantly and till date, more than 55,000 videos have been created.
Furthermore, over 1.5 million social media users are talking about the campaign and top YouTubers such as Ashish Chanchlani, RVJC media and Funcho, etc. are even making creative videos on their channel, generating more curiosity for the whole event and making the campaign an instant hit amongst online users.
VMate Associate Director Nisha Pokhriyal said, “The response has been phenomenal, the videos around the campaign are getting viral and are trending on social media platforms. This is already a proof of the acceptability of the campaign in the masses. This is definitely very inspiring for our team to bring out the best of campaigns for our users.”
With the innovative interactive video sticker, VMate has raised the bar and has successfully democratized the advanced technique of video making and editing. Once a user selects the Sunny Leone call sticker, it will appear as if Sunny is making a video call to the user. The sticker takes all over the video screen and mimics the video calling feature in smartphones wherein Sunny is talking to the user from her home. Sunny can be seen sharing her plight with the user about having no one on the New Year’s Eve for celebrations. As the call proceeds, the users can ask Sunny to join him/her to celebrate and welcome 2020 by making a few dance moves together on the video call.
Many people have taken screenshots of their video call with Sunny to generate curiosity among their friends and network. In fact, some users have creatively used the sticker to go beyond the format of video sticker, making it more entertaining and funnier.
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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.
