Reliance Gaming has appointed Quasar Media to handle both creative and media duties for the online promotions of its recently launched gaming portal Zapak.com. Industry sources pegged the account size at Rs 15-20 crore.
Hunter Douglas has appointed P.K. Sundaramoorthy as Managing Director for its India operations. Sundaramoorthy brings with him 14 years’ experience in corporate planning, project management, direct sales & marketing and supply chain management. He started his career with Indian Overseas Bank from where he moved to Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers before joining H&R Johnson (I) Ltd. Hunter Douglas, a Dutch firm, is engaged in the manufacture and marketing of window covering and home improvement products.
Gulf Air has appointed Richard Hirsch as Regional General Manager for the Indian subcontinent. He brings an experience of over 18 years with British Airways (BA) in various commercial roles. He has held several positions at BA's headquarters and overseas, which include strategic sales roles in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and UAE. Hirsch, based in Bahrain, will look after Gulf Air's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal markets.
Mukesh Anand has joined the Heroes Project, a non-governmental media campaign, as Creative Director, based in Mumbai. His task will be to develop a communication plan and manage the Project’s PSA campaigns and programming content, working closely with Ogilvy & Mather and content creators for TV software. Anand has been in advertising for around 10 years, and left his previous job at RK Swamy BBDO, Delhi, last year.
Sameer Bajaj, Manager, Corporate Communication, ESPN STAR Sports, has moved to the Corporate Communications department of IBM Daksh. Bajaj was with ESPN STAR Sports for more than three years.
Madison Media has undertaken some restructuring with the objectives of providing focused attention to large businesses and rewarding the senior level talent pool of Madison Media by giving them more authority and responsibility.
STAR has entered into a deal with Tokyo-based The New Media Group to launch its channels STAR Plus, STAR One, STAR News, STAR Utsav, Vijay, Sky News and Fox News in Jpan. These channels would be available on ‘World on Demand’ (WoD), a new IPTV and community platform that serves expatriate communities in Japan.
As if an indicator of what the future has in store, the last three years have seen brands gaining in their market share in commodities like atta, basmati rice, and edible oil.
The FMCG sector is living up to its 'fast moving' tag again, with the top 15 FMCG companies clocking sales and profit growth of 23% and 12% respectively for quarter ended September '06 compared with the previous corresponding period.
Retail chain Westside and Motorola India have joined hands to bring some fun with the ‘Westside & Motorola Style Showdown’, touted as one of the biggest youth events of the year. The event is being held in association with MTV. The event gets underway from November 3.
With the premiere of local acquisitions – ‘The Legend of Buddha’ and ‘Pandavas: The Five Warriors’ – in Tamil on November 5 and November 19, respectively, Cartoon Network would be catering to the Tamil audience in keeping with the Network’s overall localisation strategy for India.
Manu Agarwal, CEO of ANMsoft Technologies, feels that technology will be the key differentiator in the online travel business, with innovations making it easier for a user to conduct online transactions. ANMsoft is also gearing up to become a strong player in search engine marketing and search engine optimisation.
The Bombay Ad Club is organising an evening with the UK-based educational charity, D&AD, on November 8. D&AD works on behalf of international design and advertising communities. Its professionals would speak on ‘What can D&AD do for you’ at the meet.
TRAI has proposed to govern the commercial subscribers of TV channels in small commercial establishments under the prevailing tariff order for ordinary subscribers, whereas for hotels rated above 3-Star and other commercial establishments, agreement should be reached through mutual negotiation. The regulator has sought the comments of stakeholders in this regard by November 10.
The Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) 2006 is back in Mumbai and this time it has SifyMax, the broadband content portal from Sify Ltd, as its official broadband partner The LFW commenced from October 31 and will continue till November 4.
Sulekha.com, an online social media and local commerce destination for Indians, has received $10 million funding from Promod Haque’s global technology venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners.
South India has been witnessing heightened FM activity of late. The latest to join the bandwagon is the Muthoot Group, which will be launching its FM station in Chennai in January. The Group had won a license for Chennai in the second phase of FM expansion.
In a bid to make shopping an exciting experience and accessible from across the globe, Fabmall.com, a leader in India’s ecommerce industry, has partnered with Malayala Manorama to launch their new online venture, www.manoramaemart.com.
MindShare has appointed Pratibha Vinayak as MD of MindShare Sri Lanka. She is currently National Director – Investments for Unilever at MindShare India.
It fascinates and repulses in equal measure, but is hard to ignore and has become a staple diet of everyone’s media consumption. After being elevated to cinematic glory in Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Page 3’, the once single-page entity now has an entire magazine to itself, titled what else but ‘Page 3’. The tabloid is set to hit Delhi newsstands on November 5.
The Indian Express Group on Thursday announced a wide-ranging content agreement with The Economist magazine. As per the agreement, The Indian Express and The Financial Express newspapers and their websites will publish content, including special branded pages and supplements, from The Economist.
Artemis Health Sciences, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Apollo Tyres’ Onkar S Kanwar-controlled PTL Enterprises Ltd, has called for a creative pitch. The size of the business would initially be around Rs 2.5-Rs 3 crore, but given the magnitude of the project might go higher. The company is setting up its first hospital in Gurgaon by April 2007.
The Sun Network is flagging off its second phase of FM radio stations under the brand name 93.5 SFM on November 6, 2006 starting with Bangalore, Hyderabad and Jaipur.
The NRS and the IRS are the two syndicated studies that India follows. Publishers also carry out their own research, which is custom-made to their requirements. What we also intend to do now as a collective body such as AIM (Association of Indian Magazines), is to power our own research from a syndicated angle only to address the magazine space. We will have stuff like consumer insights that cut across all magazines, specific advertising categories that suit magazines more than other media forms and the like.