Gaurav Seth replaces Danish Khan at Sony

Meanwhile Khan, erstwhile senior vice-president and marketing head of Sony Entertainment Television, moves on from the channel after spending a decade at Sony.

In a recent development, Sony Entertainment Television has made a major change in its senior marketing team, following the exit of Danish Khan, erstwhile marketing head of Sony. It is learnt that Gaurav Seth, senior vice-president, marketing, SET Max will now also handle the marketing of Sony, the Hindi GEC from the MSM stable. The news was confirmed to afaqs! by Neeraj Vyas, AVP and business head, SET Max.

Max, the Hindi movie channel and IPL broadcaster, will get a new marketing head in a couple of months.

Seth will take care of the two mandates until Max makes an appointment to take over marketing. Subsequently, he will move on to concentrate on Sony.

Seth, who joined Max in 2008, says that he expects this to be a great cross-genre learning experience for him. He adds, "Though this will be my first stint in marketing original content, that too fiction shows, it will be a challenging experience to market a product which is created on the basis of research on the audience's expectations."

He reasons that while marketing any media product, one competes for mind space and time of the consumer, and hence competition is never limited to any particular genre.

He believes that apart from the audience profile, the USP of the story has to be sold well.

Sources inform that Khan will join another GEC around January, 2013.

Interestingly, Seth has always been associated with sports. He started his career with ESPN-STAR Sports as marketing manager in 1997. Staying there for six years, he shifted to Altavista Inc as country head in 2003. He was responsible for brand development, website traffic growth and advertising revenue.

This was a comparatively shorter stint and he moved on to join Zee Telefilms (now ZEEL) as vice-president, marketing in 2004. At Zee, he took care of the group's sports brands and business.

Seth then moved on to join Indian Cricket League, India as vice-president in 2007. He headed the marketing and communications role for the newly-launched Indian Cricket League, a venture of the Subhash Chandra-led Essel Group.

Merely a couple of months after that, he moved on to join Vyas Giannetti Creative Sports as business head in 2008. At the end of 2008, he joined Sony as senior vice-president, marketing, SET Max.