Date-wise News

The UB Group has appointed Fraser Castellino as Chief Operating Officer of the Group’s sports marketing business that currently includes sporting interests such as the Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL cricket team, McDowell Mohun Bagan football team, Kingfisher East Bengal football team, Kingfisher Force India Formula One team, and Kingfisher Cricket Academy, Bangalore. Castellino will be responsible for all commercial, administrative and sponsor-promotion activities, whilst each team will retain its sporting management organisation as currently existing. The marketing divisions responsible for The UB Group’s brand association with such sporting activities shall remain unchanged. Commenting Castellino’s appointment, Dr Vijay Mallya, Chairman, The UB Group, said, “The UB Group has significant interests in various sports, and with the appointment of Fraser, we hope to significantly enhance the value of the sporting activities in which we currently have interests. The UB Group Companies ar

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:43 AM

Marks & Spencer Reliance India Pvt Ltd (Marks & Spencer India) has appointed Nandini Sethuraman as Head of Marketing, India. Sethuraman, who will be based in Gurgaon, will report to CEO Mark Ashman, and will be responsible for all marketing, corporate communications and CSR initiatives. She joins Marks & Spencer India from Spencer’s Retail, where she successfully spearheaded repositioning and visual identity initiatives, and also built Spencer’s private label programme. Sethuraman is a seasoned marketer with over 15 years’ experience and has held a variety of leadership roles at international companies, including IKEA, Pepsico and Hershey’s in markets such as Canada, the Middle East and India.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:42 AM

Japanese design agency Basco’s Inc has launched its operations in Mumbai to service the Indian domestic markets, specialising in new product development and all aspects of commercial design.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:23 AM

Rediffusion Y&R’s Chief Strategy Officer, Arvind Mohan, has been appointed to the Global Planning Board of Young & Rubicam. The Global Planning Board has been formed to create a unified way of thinking globally across all the Y&R companies, to literally be the think tank for Y&R as well as across all its brands and markets.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:22 AM

Will haphazard surveys and questionable findings continue to drive the Rs 10,000 crore print advertisement industry? Or are there alternatives available to this, asks Manajit Ghoshal, CEO, Mid-Day Infomedia. INS has taken steps in the right direction to set this anomaly right by constituting a committee to give guidelines for such surveys to the National Readership Study Council, which conducts the NRS.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:06 AM

Hindustan, the Hindi daily from HT Media Ltd, launched its Allahabad edition on January 29, 2009. This is the paper’s sixth edition in Uttar Pradesh, the other five being from Lucknow, Varanasi, Meerut, Agra and Kanpur. Besides Uttar Pradesh, Hindustan is also present in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Delhi-NCR and Chandigarh.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:05 AM

Yahoo! India has taken an initiative to bring creative minds of the advertising industry together and share their best works. Uncannies, as the initiative is called, is open to creative agencies and individuals from print, television, radio, outdoor and the online medium.

exchange4media Bangalore Bureau Jan 30, 2009 7:04 AM

Nearly a decade ago, an email traveled at snail’s pace, taking up to six hours for it to appear in your inbox. Today, infotech is one of India’s biggest growth sectors and increasingly earning new respect for the country abroad. This sector is attracting significant attention as well as offers a wide gamut of publications for different readers.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:03 AM

Tarun Mehra, who was Business Head of Zee TV since January 2006, has been shifted to its new division. Currently, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd COO Nitin Vaidya and Programming Head Ajay Bhalwankar are looking after Zee TV. Vaidya has confirmed the development, but refused to divulge any other information about the new division.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:02 AM

There is an emerging popularity of Indian social networking sites, along with their global counterparts, among the Tier II and Tier III cities. In a bid to channelise this popularity, these sites are donning a more local image, driving their focus more on audio and video content, thereby bringing down the dependence on English language.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:01 AM

In a town hall address to all its employees, India TV’s Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Rajat Sharma, asserted that 2009 would be one of the best years of India TV, and that the company would not have any layoffs or pay cuts. He also said that India TV would launch two new channels and other media ventures in the year. Sharma also spoke on the shifts that he had noticed in audience viewing preference, where “hard news is back”.

Noor Fathima Warsia Jan 30, 2009 7:01 AM

While a lot has been written about how the slowdown is adversely impacting different sectors, the situation is not without some positive developments taking place along side. Print players, too, have had to bear the burden of the slowdown coupled with hike in newsprint costs. But the focus of this report is on bringing out some of the strongest positive aspects of this slowdown for the print industry.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 7:00 AM

Both from the domestic and international points of view, I am as enthusiastic about India as I was 18 months ago. There are different sets of clients that are coming, but they are there, and the task is to have that sensitivity and have a good enough product that gives a relevant return on investment to the advertisers. The two characteristics that we see are that a number of corporates are cutting down the number of media partners they are working with, but there are other companies that are increasing their spends even as they are asking for better ROI, accountability and value. That is where we need to be able to demonstrate and articulate the value of advertising on BBC.

e4m Desk Jan 30, 2009 12:00 AM