The Kerala State Awards were given away recently. Announcing the awards on November 15 at a well-attended ceremony, Kerala Education and Cultural Minister MA Baby informed that 15 telefilms, three tele-serials and five tele-series had come up before the jury for consideration in the story section.
Britannia has launched an interactive online contest, ‘Say Cheese with Britannia’, for growing kids and adults to experience the mouth-watering delicacies that can be created with the Britannia Milkman Cheese range.
Starting midnight of November 19, 2008, English news channel Times Now went live across all 6,000+ widgets and Nautanki.tv home site. Times Now has started with three shows that have a strong following amongst viewers, like ‘The Newshour’, Times Now’s flagship primetime show hosted by Arnab Goswami; ‘No Full Stops’, a weekly wellness guide, which focuses on ways to start living healthy; and ‘The Foodie’, a food-cum-travel show hosted by Kunal Vijayakar. Times Now plans to expand its offering in the coming weeks.
Out-of-Home Media India Pvt Ltd has joined hands with Inorbit Mall in Mumbai’s Vashi area to expand its screen network. OOH Media already has over 51 screens at the Inorbit Mall in Mumbai’s Malad area since it started operations. This new addition at the Vashi mall will strengthen OOH Media’s network at malls by another 40 screens, taking the total count in this cluster to 762 screens across the country.
After unveiling their new identity last week, Bharti Enterprises is now showcasing its brand belief ‘Big transformations through brave actions’ via a 90-second TV spot. The spot, conceptualised by PerceptH, highlights Indians who have made India proud through the ages and whose brave actions had altered the course of history. The film features Aryabhatta, Sushruta, Jagdish Bose, Vinod Dham and Mahatma Gandhi.
The standoff between the Federation of Western India Cine Workers (FWICE) and the producers has been sorted out. It is understood from sources close to the development that the strike has been called off. When asked, a few broadcasters said that they had not officially heard about this yet. A formal communication from the producers is expected only by 6.00 pm today.
At this time of economic slowdown, where various sectors facing a standstill of sorts, a new debate is emerging in the advertising fraternity. Are clients looking at leaving the huge commissions and expenses that come with a large agency and move their businesses to mid-sized agencies? Even as many may be thinking on those lines, exchange4media finds out from industry experts that the switch is not already happening on ground.
The Western Railways in Mumbai has once again called OOH advertising players to bid for the 7-year sole/bulk advertising rights for the entire suburban section of Mumbai Division from Churchgate to Dahanu. The minimum bid price/ license fees for the tender has been fixed at Rs 40.5 crore per year, bringing the total amount to Rs 283.5 crore.
Guided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Safe Injection Policy, SafePoint Trust, a UK based charity, has launched an intensive awareness campaign in India on the dangers of using unsafe injections. The total campaign spend for the week for the launch of the awareness campaign is over €700,000 Euros and is touted as one of the biggest media spends in India for the launch week.
Femina has launched a new title, ‘What to Wear’, targeted at the 25-plus Sec A metro style-conscious woman. Priced at Rs 30, ‘What to Wear’ is currently being given complimentary with Femina in metro markets including Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
Vaishnavi Corporate Communications has been assigned the media relations and corporate communications mandate for Emerging Media and Team Rajasthan Royals. Vaishnavi will commence work with immediate effect and continue till the end of the second season of Indian Premier League in June 2009.
Zenith Optimedia, a unit of Publicis Groupe, has bagged the media duties of MicroMax, a company creating life-enhancing mobile phone solutions and wireless technologies, and Bharat Hotels. The accounts are worth Rs 20 crore.
The standoff between the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) and the producers has led to 10 days of repeat programming on primetime Hindi GECs. The ‘grace period’ given by the advertisers to the broadcasters to resolve the issue gets over on November 19. From November 20, advertisers and agencies would get into bilateral discussions with the various broadcasters to seek compensation on the days when their ads were shown on repeat programming.
LiveJournal.com, the San Francisco based global blogging platform, marked the next phase of its development in India by launching a number of new India focused communities designed to provide forums for user-generated content. To coincide with these plans LiveJournal also announced that Suhel Seth had accepted a position on its global Advisory Board.