Radio Indigo has unveiled a unique concept in the Bangalore market, wherein corporates can win free lunch on Fridays, every week. Corporates and offices stand a unique chance to win a free lunch, which includes Biryani, soft drinks, and desserts, courtesy Ammis Biryani.
Amway India Enterprises Pvt Ltd, touted as the country’s largest direct selling FMCG company, has set itself a growth target of 22 per cent for the fiscal year 2010. Last year (2009), the company claims to have recorded a sales turnover of Rs 1,407 crore.
Bharti Airtel Ltd has appointed Ogilvy Africa BV as its marketing services partner for Africa. This follows the completion of Airtel’s acquisition of Zain Group’s mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa on June 8, 2010.
Dentsu India launched the ‘Dentsu Social Media Handbook’ on the occasion of its 7th Anniversary in Delhi recently. The Handbook was launched by Gurdeep Singh, COO, Aircel, and Yuzuru Kato, Head, Global Business Management, Dentsu Inc. Also present at the launch were Sandeep Goyal, Chairman, Dentsu India; Rajesh Aggarwal, President, Dentsu India; and Krishna Prasad, Chief Experience Officer, Dentsu Digital.
Tomomitsu Taue has joined PerceptH as Senior Vice President. Taue has had a wide range of experience in the areas of Account Servicing, Strategic Planning, Sales Promotion and Public Relations. He will report to Prabhakar Mundkur, CEO, PerceptH, and operate out of the Bangalore office on the Toyota and Canon accounts. Prior to joining PerceptH, Taue was Director - Regional Account Planning Division at Hakuhodo Communications Asia Pte Ltd in Singapore, where he was heading the regional account team for South East Asia on Canon and Toyota.
Mudra North & East, a unit of Mudra India, has recently appointed Raylin Valles and Vandana Katoch as Creative Directors. After the appointment of Neville Shah, Valles and Katoch further boost the agency’s creative clout. They join Anil Verma, ECD, Mudra North & East. Valles joins from Publicis, Delhi, where he had worked on brands such as Aviva, Maggie, Nestea and HP. Katoch joins Mudra North & East from Contract Advertising, Delhi, where she had spent 14 years working on a variety of brands such as Domino’s Pizza, Jaypee Group, CRY, Spice Mobiles, Honda, Whirlpool and ESPN.
Red FM has announced the appointment of Krishna Menon as National Activation Head & Station Head, Mumbai, and Anand Raj as Station Head, New Delhi. Menon brings with him experience in sales & business management of about 11 years, whereas Raj was earlier involved with the national promotions and client solutions portfolio for Red FM in Mumbai for the past two and a half years.
The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) has invited sealed tenders from interested parties for advertisement display rights on vertical faces of the superstructure of the obligatory span of Everard Nagar flyover on the Sion-Panvel Highway.
Big Street, the OOH arm of Reliance Broadcast Network, has announced its latest win – the 483-strong bus network of the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking. This includes 60 low floor intra-city JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission) buses and 40 AC buses.
After over a year of conversations, Mediabrands has finally announced its digital plans in India. Making the announcement, Michael Roth, Chairman and CEO, Interpublic Group said, “This is exciting for us since India is one of our key markets from an IPG perspective. This adds to our presence in the market, and more importantly marks our digital plans in India. This reinforces our commitment in India.”
Of the 58 entries sent from India in Films Lions, only five have made it to the shortlist. Ogilvy & Mather has two for Breakthrough Trust, titled ‘Software Engineer’ and ‘Bus Driver’ making one broad entry. Ogilvy has one more standalone entry for Fevicol, titled ‘Moustache’. Creativeland Asia has two pieces of work ‘Tummy’ and ‘Waterhose’, making one broad entry, for Parle Agro.
The Integrated shortlist is not out yet, but the conversations all around have been on Aman ki Asha. The work done by TapRoot for The Times of India was received extremely well at a session, but has so far not picked anything in any of the categories. Integrated Lions is where Camp India’s hopes are pinned now.
Last time, I wasn’t sure why birds of the same feather flocked together, that is, why Indians here in Cannes were sticking together? May be, I’ve found the answer. In an alien land, particularly when you don’t know the language the local people speak, you are more or less playing dumb-charade with them. And when you see some Indian faces, you are drawn towards them, writes Dhaleta Surender Kumar.
The one thing I have learnt this year at Cannes is that whatever one does, one has to be able to be able execute a unique idea on scale and engage consumers in large numbers if we want to have any chance of winning big. In India, generally speaking, we either deliver great reach but without a winning idea, or we create a great idea as a mere one off, writes Pratap Bose, COO, Mudra Group and CEO, Mudra Max, in his blog exclusively for exchange4media.
Of the various trends seen at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010, one of the prominent conversations was how well India’s youngest creative independents have done at the festival. From being Jury Member to speaking on the Cannes stage, which has been rare for India, to winning metals, agencies like TapRoot and Creativeland Asia have made a mark on the festival.
“I would like to introduce a new compensation model that will serve both agencies and clients,” said Michael Roth, Chairman & CEO of Interpublic Group (IPG), during the session ‘What’s Next for Marketing?’ on Day Five of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010. The other speaker in the session was Brian Perkins, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Johnson & Johnson.
Mediabrands is finally in India, and the route that it has taken is its digital asset Reprise. Reprise is the formalisation of an existing relation between Lodestar UM and Interactive Avenues. The two entities have been working together for the last 18 months. Some details changed, which includes a change in the 51:49 percentage shareholding pattern, Reprise is finally operative in India. But more importantly, Mediabrands is operative in India now.
LIC Nomura Mutual Fund has assigned its creative duties to RK Swamy BBDO while media mandate has been handed to Media Direction. Though the account size couldn’t be ascertained, it is believed to be substantial. Sangeetha N, President (West) & Executive Creative Director, RK Swamy BBDO, has confirmed the development.
After shaping his illustrious career for more than 36 years, Chintamani Rao retires from Times Global Broadcasting on June 25, 2010. Rao had joined Times Global Broadcasting in February 2008 and has played an important role at Times Now and in the launch of ET Now.
The fifth day of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2010 saw Marc Pritchard, Global Marketing and Brand Building Officer, P&G, address the audience on the challenge of shifting from marketing to serving consumers. exchange4media caught up with Pritchard and Sumeet Vohra, Marketing Director, P&G India, on various issues relating to agency relations, marketing and what it meant for clients to be at Cannes Lions.
<p align=justify>Clients need to do what they need to do. What happens often is that the next pretty girl is whispering sweet nothings in the clients’ ears and the client is intrigued by the possibility, and would trigger a pitch to explore it. It is absolutely true that the clients know what the capability of the incumbent is. Some clients today believe that even if they are perfectly satisfied with their agency, they have a statutory obligation to review the media… It used to be that unless something went terribly wrong, the client didn’t initiate a review. Today, clients initiate reviews whether something is wrong or not. Very often they significantly underestimate the trauma to the entire system on both sides.