9XM, the music channel, has initiated a special offering for aspiring young models. The channel will give four models an opportunity to ‘jump the queue’ for the auditions for the Fact Miss Teen India, a beauty pageant-cum-reality series to be aired on Hindi GEC 9X.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on Friday, May 15, 2009 appointed Shailesh Rao, Managing Director, Google India, as Chairman, and Ambareesh Murty, Country Manager, eBay India, as Vice Chairman. Sanjay Aggarwal, General Manager, Operations, IRCTC, one of the largest e-commerce sites in India, has been appointed Treasurer of the Association.
Amul has initiated a total makeover of its largest selling product, Amul Milk, to connect with the youth. A new TVC shows youngsters and kids showing a clear preference for Amul Doodh over any other beverage, with a funky, catchy beat that has just one line repeated by various voices, “Dude, where’s da doodh?”
NDTV Ltd and The Hindu have joined hands to launch Chennai’s first and only city-specific English news and entertainment channel ‘NDTV Hindu’, which hits the airwaves from today. The channel will cover breaking news and current affairs as well as user-friendly information about the happening places in Chennai.
In the run-up to the launch of its new CRM and loyalty practice, Dentsu India has roped in Satish Sathyanarayana as Chief Operating Officer. Sathyanarayana would head this soon-to-be launched specialist agency, which would operate both in the digital and offline space. His last stint was with Wunderman India, where he was CEO, overseeing the business operations for India.
T3, the gadget lifestyle magazine from Infomedia 18 Ltd, has launched its new-look issue this month. The whole magazine has been overhauled from top to bottom and new easy-to-understand sections have been added.
Following a multi-agency pitch, Advertising Bureau & Consultants (ABC), a Kolkata-based INS accredited agency, has bagged the creative duties of Sony 8 and Channel Eight Motion Pictures. The creatives would be led primarily by outdoor and supported by print.
Whatever the figures say, no one can deny that Hindi dailies rein over the readership and circulation charts. But it’s a paradoxical situation that while Hindi publications are gaining circulation, their readership findings are showing a decline, for which survey agencies have their own reasons, says Vineet Sethia, Director, NaiDunia Media.
With the entire country all geared for counting of votes today, TV channels have gone on an overdrive to bring vote by vote account to viewers. The southern channels have lined up an impressive list of programmes, news bulletins and live updates, besides roping in psephologists and senior journalists to analyse the results.
“The Indian advertising industry needs to acknowledge the role of execution and, therefore, needs to put in a lot of effort in that regard… as an industry in India, we put in lesser effort on execution as compared to international agencies. Hence, this could be one of the reasons why India scores lower in the international awards front,” says Aniruddha Banerjee, President & COO, Publicis Ambience.
Social portal MySpace has appointed Amit Koshal as Senior Business Development Manager – Mobile for India operations. Koshal brings with him rich expertise in the mobile space with more than five years of experience in the Mobile Value Added Services like Content and Gaming with specialisation in the field of Mobile Social Networking services. In his new role, Koshal is responsible for spearheading the mobile strategy for MySpace India. Prior to joining MySpace India, he had served as Head of Business Development for Asia Pacific & Latin America Regions at ACL Wireless Ltd. At ACL, he was responsible for new deals and strategic alliances in APAC and Latin America. Before ACL, he was with Reliance’s mobile gaming company, Jump Games, where he was responsible for partnerships and business development.
GE Capital has appointed Anish Shah as its President and CEO in India, effective immediately. Shah will lead all of GE Capital’s consumer and commercial financial services in India, including strategic partnerships such as SBI Card. He rejoins GE Capital from Bank of America, where he had led their Debit Products business in the US. Shah has worked extensively in the US and in India during his career. Prior to Bank of America, he had held several leadership positions with GE Capital, including Director, Global Mortgage, and Senior Vice President, Marketing and Product Development at GE Mortgage Insurance. Shah had also held several key assignments with Bain & Company and Citibank.
Richard Pinder has stepped up to take sole leadership of the Publicis global network in May 2009, which, with 9,000 employees in over 80 markets, is the founding pillar and largest agency network of the Publicis Groupe. He is a member of Publicis Groupe’s P12 Management Board and reports directly to Maurice Lévy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe. He was appointed COO of Publicis Worldwide in October 2006 and has been part of Publicis Groupe since its acquisition of Bcom3 in 2002. Pinder’s career in advertising spans over 20 years. Since early 2008 he has focussed the Publicis Worldwide network on creating contagious ideas that change the conversation around clients’ brands. Before joining Publicis, Pinder was President of Leo Burnett’s EMEA region, where he re-established the network’s growth track by focussing Leo on creativity and broadening its holistic offer through the strengthening of Arc, the marketing services arm of Leo.
Solutions | Digitas has brought in Sunita Prakash as Associate Vice-President - FMCG. In this new role, Prakash will be responsible for building and managing a growing and profitable business hub in the FMCG sector at Solutions | Digitas. The marketing service company has a strong portfolio of clients in the FMCG sector with clients like Pepsi, Nestle, ITC, and Mars (Pedigree), among others. Prakash will aim for dominant share-of-wallet with these clients. She will be reporting to Senior Vice President Vikram Alva and will be based in Delhi.