THE Great Indian Brew Wars are all set to take off with FMCG major Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) gearing up to add more kick to its tea business by setting up a chain of branded tea parlours across the country, a la Barista and Café Coffee Day.
Berkshire Hathaway has announced an agreement to acquire Business Wire, a privately held company that is a leading global distributor of corporate news, multimedia and regulatory filings. Terms of the transaction were, however, not disclosed.
Swiss watch company Rado on Wednesday opened its first exclusive boutique in Chennai, a day after it launched a similar boutique in Delhi. The company plans to increase the number of exclusive boutiques from the present five to 15 by mid-2007.
The results of BBC World’s largest audience research project till date – Global Indian Survey – will be announced on February 8. The second phase of the Global Indian Survey will give a unique insight into the demographics and psychographics of this important section of society as well as an in-depth analysis of the global Indian’s mindset and behaviour.
S Yesudas, Director, Initiative Worldwide, Jakarta, proposes a simple tracking mechanism to provide for quality of exposure among the same base of audience measurement sample, besides TVRs, called SIT (Single-source Impact Tracker).
General Motors on Wednesday unveiled three new Chevrolet cars – the Chevrolet Aveo U-VA, Chevrolet Aveo and Chevrolet Optra SRV. All three vehicles will be built at GM’s manufacturing facility in Halol, Gujarat and will be available from April, 2006.
In an attempt to get closer to its readers, Seventeen India, a magazine for teenagers, has announced a unique contest called ‘Cover Girl’ hunt. This hunt is intended to be the magazine’s annual event.
MTV Networks India has appointed Srinivas Gopal as Director, Digital, Online, Interactive and Mobile. As Director, Digital, Srinivas’ key responsibility will be to position MTV, Nick and Vh1 as key players in the digital market space in India. Gopal moves to MTV from Times Internet Ltd.
OGILVY & Mather is planning to enter the arena of mobile marketing by associating with its client Hutch. There are plans to float a joint venture between Hutch and the agency's division OgilvyOne, with equal investment by both. A new division for mobile marketing would be launched during the course of the year.
Parle Biscuits, which recently launched Digestive Marie, has ensured maximum noise around it. Actress Kajol has been roped in as brand ambassador and Everest has created the launch campaign, which is divided in two phases – teaser and launch, of which the latter broke on January 18, 2006. The media is being handled by The Media Edge.
It was one serial that along with ‘Hum Log’ captured the entire nation’s attention and imagination in the 1980s, and now it is back to enthrall another generation of Indians. SaharaOne is bringing back Sippy Films’ ‘Buniyaad’ to the small screen from January 26, 2006.
The post-lunch sessions on the last day of Digital Summit 2006 saw corporate and Indian search engine honchos discussing what makes the five letter word ‘search’ so hot, to which one media planner added the ‘not’ factor.
Day Two of the Digital Summit 2006 saw interesting debates on the potential of the online medium from the marketer’s point of view. The first session of the day saw speakers brainstorming over whether media planners and marketers have set very high standard for the online media to deliver.
Though iRiver has been present in India since July 2005, the brand is all set to make substantial noise now and has signed up BEI Confluence to handle its overall advertising duties. The development comes in the wake of a multi-agency pitch. The account is pegged in the region of Rs 3-4 crore.
2005 was a good year for Chennai-based creative agency Rubecon Communications. Adding to Rubecon’s client list at the fag end of the year was Tamil Nadu-headquartered Paramount Airways. Rubecon has also launched its specialist graphic design agency, Blink.
Impact One-on-One speaker David Verklin, Chairman of Carat Asia and CEO of Carat Americas, is out to enthral the marketing, media and advertising fraternity on Thursday, when he gives a special talk on ‘What’s your favourite future?’