Category: MAM

MUMBAI: Mantri Developers have unveiled their new corporate identity and logo to reflect its expanded strategic focus from a realty brand to an aspirational luxury brand.
 
The new logo is inspired by the signature of the company‘s founder and & managing director Sushil Mantri. Elegantly crafted with fluid lines, the new logo is a seal of the trust that the customers and partners have reposed in the brand. The strong colour of the logo connotes the spirit of enterprise, excellence and energy. The logo guarantees that Mantri will always stand by and honour their commitment and promises.
 
Said Sushil Mantri, “We are proud to unveil our new corporate identity which reflects the company‘s evolution over the past 11 years to a contemporary and forward looking brand. Today at Mantri developers, we are full of promise for the future as we confidently poise ourselves for exciting opportunities for developing our business with a competitive advantage. We believe that our new identity will help us determinately position ourselves for success with our new logo symbolising products and services of the highest standards of quality and integrity for our customers.”

MUMBAI: Milestone Brandcom, the ten-old-month out-of-home (OOH) agency promoted by founder and managing director Nabendu Bhattacharyya, has already reaped Rs 700 million worth of business and now aims to touch Rs 1 billion billing in the first year of operations. 
 
The agency claims to have worked with over 30 clients, some of which are AOR businesses while others are project-based.

Says Bhattacharyya, ”All the brands we are working for are large multinationals. Our list of clients include Binani Industries, Colors, Dish TV , ITC (FMCG), ET Now and Times Now , Tanishq and Zoya in Mumbai , ICICI Prudential, Axis Mutual Fund , Dhanlakshmi Bank, Axis Bank, Franklyn Templeton , DSP Black Rock, Sri Adhikari Bros, Croma, Sakshi, eBay, Sahara TV and obviously the Vodafone airship project for first time ever in India. The first half of the calendar year has been excellent for us.”
 
According to Bhattacharyya, within the OOH category, telecom is the highest spender with 45 per cent spends followed by financial category at 23 per cent and media and entertainment at 16 per cent.

“At Milestone, however, financials contributed the highest followed by infrastructure and then media and entertainment. We have pitched for a couple of telecom businesses and are expecting results soon. Maybe in the next one year, the category contribution scenario will change,” he says. 
 
Bhattacharyya informs that the western region followed by the northern belt will remain the largest contributor towards out-of-home advertising.

“Over 70 per cent of OOH spends happen in these two regions and potentially will remain as the highest OOH contributor in importance and spends,” he opines.

Milestone, which currently has six offices, plans to add 20 offices.

Says Bhattacharyya, “We are now a 40-strong team and will expand to over 100 people in one month’s time, gearing up for the larger challenges in the OOH industry.”

Milestone launched its retail division, LastMile, about three months back. “This division has progressed descently, working with over 10 brands with a 10-member team. Now we are looking at expanding to activation and sports marketing in the next six months,” Bhattacharya adds.

MUMBAI: A new global marketing campaign from Xerox, the most ambitious the company has ever created, explores how it helps iconic brands with business process and document management, freeing them to focus on what matters most – their real business. 
 
The campaign takes brand characters out of their expected roles and shows them doing business processes such as invoicing or digitising documents with exaggerated results. The campaign demonstrates there are better ways for companies to handle back office work – by innovating and partnering with Xerox.

Xerox CMO Christa Carone says, “We’re fortunate to have great client partners who worked side-by-side with us in showing how their businesses benefit when Xerox is doing what we do best. Along with the innovative use of brand characters, we’re cutting through the clutter with innovative media, like interactive billboards, and attention-grabbing digital units. It’s all about communicating the new Xerox in fresh and engaging ways to disrupt legacy perceptions of the Xerox brand, and turn up the volume on the breadth and depth of our services and technology.” 
 
Print, television, Web and airport advertising will kick off in the US on 7 September and in Europe later this year. This will be complemented with a rich multimedia experience at RealBusiness.com. The site, scheduled to launch on 7 September, showcases examples of Xerox helping clients get back to real business.

Marriott International senior VP, global marketing Susan Thronson says, “Xerox transforms the way we work, managing more than 11 million global invoices so we can focus on better serving our guests. This campaign shows what two customer-centric companies can do when they speed up time-consuming business processes and focus on their core business. For us, that’s providing exceptional guest service. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

In addition to Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Target and Procter & Gamble, Xerox’s Real Business campaign spotlights its work with The New York Mets, Ducati and the University of Notre Dame, with more brands to come. The goal: show how Xerox is not only a leader in document technology, but also in business process services.

In February, Xerox closed on its acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), the largest diversified business process outsourcing (BPO) firm in the world. Its expertise is in automating work processes and providing BPO and IT outsourcing services that range from processing more than 1 million credit card applications and 12 million student loans each year to providing HR services for more than 4.4 million employees and retirees annually. The acquisition tripled Xerox’s services business and transformed the company into a $22 billion global enterprise for business process and document management. 
 
The campaign begins to broadcast the breadth of Xerox’s portfolio with television, print and digital media buys and by incorporating high-tech interactive billboards that use motion-sensing and touch-screen technologies. The dynamic RealBusiness.com campaign website, will integrate customer testimonials and offerings, from IT outsourcing to finance and accounting, document management and human resources support.

The multi-million dollar global campaign is one of the company’s most significant in history. The integrated initiative is created by Xerox’s global ad partner Young and Rubicam, with the digital units and campaign website experience developed by VML. And MEC, Xerox’s global media agency of record, provided all media strategy, planning and buying.

MUMBAI: Global market research firm Synovate has promoted Enrique Domingo to CEO for Synovate Iberia and Latin America. He previously served as managing director for Synovate Iberia. 
 
Domingo replaces Ignacio Galceran who will leave Synovate at the end of this month.

Domingo will continue to be based in Madrid, working closely with the local Iberia and Latin America management teams. 
 
Said Synovate strategic units & global business planning CEO Brent Stewart, “I‘m thrilled that Enrique has taken on the Iberia and Latin America CEO role here at Synovate. Enrique has always stayed close to research and to clients even while occupying senior roles in management. This type of focus makes him the perfect choice to continue to build our client relationships in Latin America and Iberia, maximising the knowledge and connections between these regions, and delivering the best research to our clients to help address their most pressing business issues.” 
 
Synovate has offices in eight countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru) and in two countries in Iberia (Spain and Portugal).

MUMBAI: Cricket manufacturer BoomBoom has suspended its sponsorship of Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Amir following the allegations of match-fixing in the Test series against England.
 
BoomBoom could also cancel the agreement with the Pakistan team for kit supply only four months into a two-year deal. That deal includes plans to build a cricket academy in Karachi.

Amir‘s image has already been removed from the company‘s website, state media reports.
 
BoomBoom understandably does not want to be associated with any whiff of corruption or suspicion of foul play.

BoomBoom MD Ali Ehsan says, “While the suspension of our commercial involvement with Mohammad Amir is not a step we take lightly, we nevertheless feel that it is the right thing to do while a judicial process unfolds and innocence or guilt is established.” 
 
He also says that BoomBoom is also reviewing its position as official kit supplier to the Pakistan Cricket Board.

MUMBAI: After losing two mighty accounts, Rediffusion-Y&R has won the creative duties for Hometown, a retailer of home-making and home improvement solutions and products from the Pantaloon Retail brand. 
 
The size of the business is estimated to be Rs 300 million, much lower than the Colgate and Airtel accounts that the agency recently lost.

The Hometown account was contested last month by many agencies that include Lowe, McCann, Ulka and O&M. Leo Burnett is the incumbent agency. 
 
The account will be handled out of Rediffusion-Y&R’s Mumbai office with immediate effect.

Says Rediffusion Y&R Mumbai EVP and branch head Nisha Singhania, “Our consumer understanding and insights along with strategic intent for the brand helped us clinch the business. We look forward to a fruitful relationship with the Future Group.”
 
Rediffusion-Wunderman, Rediffusion’s direct marketing and CRM practice, has already been working on the Hometown brand.

Rediffusion-Y&R’s creative mandate on the brand will help create synergies that will be gainful to the brand’s progress.
 

MUMBAI: The Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) have taken a knock from the cricket genre so as to shed 111 GRPs (gross rating points) in the Hindi speaking market for the week ended 28 August.

On an All-India basis, the genre share of the GECs has moved down from 30.8 per cent in the previous week to 28.8 per cent during the week, registering a 6.5 per cent fall in the overall television viewing pie.
 
Meanwhile, the sports channel genre has witnessed a major boost for the week, thanks to the India-Sri Lanka-New Zealand series. The cricket match on Saturday attracted huge audiences to Ten Sports and DD1, pushing up the Sports genre share to 4 per cent of the overall TV viewing pie. The genre saw almost a 74 per cent jump from the 2.3 per cent share that it had in the prior week.

Media observers, however, believe that the GECs have not seen any ratings fall but have rather come back to the base ratings after a week of spikes as a result of special programming.
 
“Star Plus, Colors and Sony Entertainment had specials lined up in the week before, which had propelled their ratings. The current week‘s ratings are without such special programmes,” a media observer commented.

Star Plus, which shed the maximum (38 GRPs) points during the week, still remained at the top spot with 331 GRPs followed by Colors with 290 GRPs (a fall of 26 GRPs). Zee TV, again showing the strength of its stable base, sustained at the third spot with 235 GRPs, a fall of nine GRPs over that of the previous week‘s tally.
 
Sony Entertainment Television, which had aired the grand finale of Indian Idol 5 in the previous week and pocketed 29 GRPs from the event, shed 21 GRPs in the week and remained at number four with 182 GRPs.

Meanwhile, the other channel genres which saw growth were Hindi News – 4.3 per cent (from 4 per cent), music – 2.8 per cent (from 2.6 per cent) and cartoonanimation – 5.4 per cent (from 5.3 per cent). However, the Hindi movie genre saw a decline from a relative share of 10.3 per cent to 10 per cent while the English movie genre fell from 0.75 per cent to 0.68 per cent.
 

MUMBAI: The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) has announced the Young Spikes Integrated Competition for 2010. The competition will challenge young advertising professionals in India to develop an innovative strategy. State Bank of India is the sponsor for the competition.

A team of two will have to submit a presentation board summarising the campaign along with at least one or two pieces of supporting material, in response to the brief given under, and this will be presented to and judged by a panel of experts.
 
The theme for the competition is, “Driving traffic discipline in Young India”. The task is to persuade young, urban, Indian youth below 34 belonging to Sec A, B, and C, residing in metros and class 1 towns to follow all traffic rules and adopt a certain traffic discipline with a view to reducing travel time and making travel safer. The indicated budget is Rs 200 million spread over six months – 1 October, 2010 to 31 March, 2011.
 
The selected team will get an opportunity to participate in Young Spikes Integrated Competition, to be held in Singapore, as part of Spikes Asia, Asia‘s prominent Advertising Festival, during 19-21 September, 2010.
 
The final winning team will be presented with a gold medal at the Spikes Asia Awards Ceremony along with delegate passes to Spikes Asia 2011.
 

MUMBAI: Pernod Ricard, a major worldwide player in wines and spirits, through its brand Seagram‘s Fuel, has inked a marketing association with the English football club Liverpool FC.

Under the association, Pernod Ricard will be a regional marketing partner of Liverpool FC in India. 
 
Announcing the tie-up, Pernod Ricard India vice president- marketing Bikram Basu said: “This is Fuel‘s first involvement with sports in India, and it‘s fantastic to be associated with Liverpool Football Club. They are a distinguished Club with highly talented players, and supporters worldwide. The combination of the Reds and Fuel starts a winner.” 
 
Added Liverpool Football Club commercial director Ian Ayre: “This deal represents a further commitment to engaging with our fans in India and reflects the rapidly growing popularity of the Barclays Premier League, and in particular Liverpool FC, within the country.”
 

MUMBAI: Big CBS Networks, the equal JV between Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd (RBNL) and CBS Studios International, has appointed McCann Erickson to handle its creative mandate, following a multi-agency pitch. The other agency that participated in the final round of the pitch was Rediffusion Y&R. 
 
Big CBS Networks will own and operate a portfolio of primary linear pre-programmed television channels in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan.
 
The themed channels will be targeted at India‘s fast-growing, upwardly mobile population and will be branded Big CBS Prime (English general entertainment channel), Big CBS Spark (English youth channel) and Big CBS Love (English entertainment channel for women).