NEW DELHI: For a clutch of fast-food chains, the threat of big organised retail looms larger than life. It's the fear of losing key people across hierarchies that's ruffling many a feather. As the Wal-Marts, Starbucks and Reliances take hiring centrestage promising fat salaries, the pressure on brands like Pizza Hut, Barista, Domino's, Cafe Coffee Day and others is beginning to be felt.
NEW DELHI: The government proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009, through the state-owned telecom service providers BSNL and MTNL. While consumers would cheer, the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it.
With computers manufacturers failing to deliver proper after-sales services, new companies like iYogi have are providing customers total support for their computers. The company has shown such great prospects, and has now attracted investments from foreign investors like Canaan Partners and SVB Financial Group.
TargetSpot has announced an ad serving system that will allow businesses to create, buy and place their own advertising within streaming media. CBS RADIO has already signed on as one of several founding partners and will implement the technology at its more than 140 stations.
FILMY is all geared for the marketing of its upcoming Bhojpuri film ‘Ganga’. The campaign plans to take the 360-degree route. The channel is targetting the markets of MP, Punjab, Chandigarh, Delhi and Mumbai for this movie.
The Indian Merchants Chamber and CNBC Universe have tied up to launch a news ticker on the IMC building at Mumbai, which will provide live news headlines from business and markets, courtesy CNBC TV18 and CNBC Awaaz.
Kingfisher Airlines takes their war with Jet Airways onto billboards by taking a dig at the latter’s taglines. Kingfisher has been constantly changing its billboard signs at a particular place where it is positioned above Jet’s billboard.
Hyderabad-headquartered Rachana Television Pvt Limited is all set to launch two satellite channels by the end of June this year. One will be a 24-hour Telugu news channel, ‘NTV’, while the second will be a devotional channel called ‘Bhakti’. S.R. Ramanujan, who has served the Eenadu group in various journalistic positions for 28 years, eight of which were as Director (News) for all the eleven ETV channels, has joined as CEO.
Noshe Oceanic has bagged an ice-cream account recently, that of Lucknow-based Gloria Ice-creams. The agency will be handling both the creative as well as media duties. Percept earlier handled the business for a period of three years.
General Motors India has launched a unique marketing initiative in association with the film ‘Ta Ra Rum Pum’, which stars the ambassadors for Chevrolet Aveo, actors Rani Mukherji and Saif Ali Khan.
Spenta Multimedia has been appointed by the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India to publish its monthly magazine ‘Apparel’ from May 2007. The magazine will be available on newsstands and to all members of CMAI.
Reliance Money, a group company of Reliance Capital, has a new campaign. JWT is the agency and Tista Sen has worked on it. Future East Productions has produced the TVC with Ashim Ahluwalia as director. The 60-second film captures the confusion about investing one’s money in an appropriate fund.
Triveni Media Limited, which recently acquired the socio-spiritual channel Sadhna TV, is set to launch a national Hindi news channel and a bouquet of regional news channel in various states, cost of Rs 200 crore. Rahul Kulshrestha, Technical Director, Aaj Tak, and Satish. K Singh, Executive Producer, NDTV, are likely to join the group’s Hindi news channel as CEO and Director-News respectively.
Even as many in the industry wouldn’t stop talking about Ajay Vidyasagar moving out of STAR, STAR India has internally announced his elevation to President-Content and New Media. The Network has also made some announcements for its Legal and HR departments.
Paul Aiello can relax a bit with the appointment of Uday Shankar as COO for STAR India. However, for Shankar, the big challenge is not just to learn about the general entertainment space, but also to address the ‘exodus’ that STAR India is facing.