Category: MAM

MUMBAI: Indian FMCG marketers are looking at differentiated packaging to attract consumer attention, reveals the latest study by Datamonitor.

Food packaging across the globe has seen a shift over the past 30 years. Consumers‘ tastes and preferences are changing rapidly, whilst consumption patterns are seeing a radical shift. This results in marketers having to respond to this changing environment, states the study.
 
“Innovation in product packaging is central as they offer benefits beyond just being a medium to withstand storage and distribution challenges. Riding on the rapid shift in consumer graphics and spectrum in India, food packaging emerged as the new value differentiator for the FMCG companies in India,” says Datamonitor lead consumer consultant Pinaki Mukherjee.

The study points out that in the last couple of years, Indian FMCG sector has been marked with receding margins on the back of steep increase in the input prices as well as aggressive price competition at the retailing front. Favoured by highly positive income elasticity, international brands have intensified the competition at every segment of the industry and made the task at hand for the home-grown manufacturers more challenging.
 
Additionally, the consumer graphics and spectrum in India in the last five years have undergone a sea change. Consumers have become more informed, discerning and price sensitive. Their lifestyle transformed and lifestages have become much more complex and overlapping. As consumers have become more mobile and crunched for time, they have started seeking a number of auxiliary benefits such as convenience of consumption and usage.

The Datamonitor study revealed that consumer packaged good industry has had many reasons to celebrate this revolution as packaged food rapidly replaced loose staples and locally-produced eatables. The advent of organized retailing has also brought about the ‘shelf war‘ amongst the FMCG manufacturers. They are having to plan and optimize the usage of increasingly costlier shelf spaces at the organized retail destinations.

Mukherjee predicts that the role of packaging in food merchandising will undergo a lot of changes in the years to come. India is seen somewhere at the middle of the evolution stage in terms of food packaging when compared with the developed economies such as Japan, Germany and the US. And also the sophistication of packaging in India heavily varies across different food categories.

Although Indian manufacturers have brought about a number of innovations in food packaging, such as sachet, micro-packaging, etc., it has largely taken inspirations from the more developed Western economies to find out opportunities to differentiate their merchandise from the competitors through packaging.
 
Datamonitor analysis revealed four prominent trends driving the packaging innovations, namely convenience of usage, freshness and improved shelf life, sustainable and environment-friendly and packaging as a tool to position and promote the brand.

Datamonitor predicts a multi-dimensional shift in food packaging in India in the next five years. Advanced packaging techniques and concepts such as aseptic packaging and retort-able packages, although coming into existence, are yet to make a mark in India.

“Traditionally, product packaging has not been seen as a vehicle to promote the brand while it is changing now. For example Kissan Jams, targeted at the kids segment, is now using tube packages with catchy graphics to appeal the target audience, BRU Coffee‘s aroma-lock packaging appeals to the staunch coffee lovers, who worried about retaining the aroma upon multiple usage from a single pack. In the coming years we could see lot many such examples,” avers Mukherjee.
 

MUMBAI: Wieden+ Kennedy (W+K) has bagged the creative duties of The Park Hotel and will handle the account from its Delhi office. 
 
As part of its new mandate, the agency will be responsible for recreating the overall brand of the group along with the launch of its two new properties – The Park, Hyderabad and The Park, Kerala.
 
Says W+K managing director Mohit Jayal, “We met the client and understood their requirements that are needed to develop the brand. We are planning on the details of the campaign that is expected to break in the next two months.”
 

MUMBAI: Bloomberg UTV has appointed Manoj Padmanabhan as VP sales. He would be reporting to Bloomberg UTV business head Deepak Lamba.
 
UTV Global Broadcasting Ltd CEO MK Anand confirmed the development.
 
Under his new role, Padmanabhan would be responsible for the ad sales of the channel and will look at revenue monetisation.
 
Prior to this, Padmanabhan was Ten Sports director ad sales. He was also part of the core team when Zoom was launched.

MUMBAI: Indian TV guide company What’s On India has joined hands with Ormax Media to create a learning initiative on promotional strategies for television channels.

Ormax Media has been mandated to create specialised planning tools and techniques that will allow TV broadcasters to use the What’s On India TV guidance channel more efficiently. 
 
Says What’s On India CEO Atul Phadnis, “Internationally, a TV guidance channel is used by TV networks to distribute a host of messages to TV viewers, and most importantly to promote their channels and programmes. However, we realise that a TV guidance channel is a very different medium than other media currently being used by television channels, including outdoor, print and conventional television. In India, Ormax Media will be taking on the role to enable broadcasters to use our channel better. We have also licensed certain critical templates and planning tools from our TV guidance partners across the world to enrich this process.”
 
Ormax Media director Shailesh Kapoor adds, “The context and the uniqueness a channel like What’s On India brings with it, demands that it be used differently in a TV Network’s marketing and promotional plans. This difference will apply to various aspects of promo planning, like campaign period, types of innovations, day and day-part scheduling, recency and interactivity. Eventually, the purpose is to deliver an efficient eyeballs generating plan to the broadcasters advertising on What’s On India.”
 

MUMBAI: BBDO India has roped in Arindam Sarkar as vice president, strategic planning. 
 
Prior to this, Sarkar was senior planning director at Ogilvy Delhi where he was responsible for taking care of the Coke portfolio and the Max Life business.
 
Meanwhile, BBDO India strategy planning director Sangeet Pillai is moving back to the US after completing a successful two-year stint with Omnicom‘s youngest agency.

MUMBAI: Classmate, ITC‘s Education and Stationery Products, has roped in Yuvraj Singh and Soha Ali Khan as brand ambassadors for their entire product range.
 
Says Chand Das, chief executive of ITC‘s Education & Stationery Products Business, “Classmate aspires to be the most trusted student education and stationery brand. Both Yuvraj Singh & Soha Ali Khan are vibrant icons for the youth of today. They have believed in & pursued their own ‘big ideas‘, and today, both stand tall in their professions with multi-faceted personalities.”
 
The company recently expanded its portfolio with the launch of a range of stationery products such as pens, pencils and geometry boxes.

MUMBAI: In the wake of a multi-agency pitch, Maruti Suzuki has signed Denstu Creative Impact as its creative partner for its newly-launched multi purpose vehicle (MPV), ‘Eeco‘.

“The size of the account is close to Rs 300 million for a year,” informs Maruti Suzuki chief general manager marketing Shashank Srivastava. 
 
Backed with their national and international resources, Denstu Creative Impact showcased a powerful understanding of the product during the pitching along with new and innovative ideas. “We, thus, went for Denstu as our creative partner,” says Srivastava. 
 
Apart from Denstu Creative Impact, the other agencies that pitched for the account included Capital, Creative Impact, Percept Hakuhodo and Lowe Lintas.

Says Srivastava, “The campaign is a 360 degree plan that includes print, TVC, OOH and the internet. While the print ad is already out, the television campaign (TVC) will be launched next week.”
 
Lintas Media Group is the media agency for Maruti Suzuki.
 

MUMBAI: The Advertising Standards Council Of India (ASCI) is in the process of reviewing the Tata Sky complaint against competition brand Airtel Digital TV‘s “Dil Titli” commercials.

As per the Tata Sky grievance registered with ASCI, the advertisements are mislading since viewers are led to believe that Airtel Digital TV has superior picture quality because of MPEG4 or DVBS2. 
 
However, Tata Sky states that the claims are to be held in falsehood as MPEG technology is only used for compressing a large number of channels within a given bandwidth.

Says Tata Sky chief marketing officer Vikram Mehra, “While MPEG 4 is definitely superior to MPEG 2, 8it has nothing to do with picture quality. The technology is only used for compressing a large number of channels within a given bandwidth.” 
 
In December 2009, Tata Sky had registered its grievance against the ads, considered by the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC).

The letter from Tata Sky to ASCI informed that while the first ad, where Saif hunts down his childhood friend, has stopped airing from 30 September across all 89 channels (national nad regional channels, all genre), the second ad featuring a TV reporter is still running on cricket matches. 
 
The CCC decided to uphold the complaint as the advertisement breached chapter 1.4 of the ASCI code. The code states that advertisements shall neither distort facts nor mislead the consumer by means of implications or omissions. Advertisements shall not contain statements or visual presentation which directly or by implication or by omission or by ambiguity or by exaggeration are likely to mislead the consumer about the product advertised or the advertiser or about any other product or advertiser.

MUMBAI: In the wake of a multi-agency pitch, Mudra West has bagged the creative and media duties of Mexus Education, an education innovations enterprise from the Bilakhia Group.

This is the first time that Mexus Education has roped in an agency. According to industry sources, the account size is pegged at Rs 60 million for a year.
 
“Mexus Education is driven by the passion to create an educational model that can create an outstanding learning experience for the users. We saw the same passion being shared by Mudra. Their understanding of our objectives clearly tilted the scales in their favour. We are hopeful that this association will create the ‘Iken’ brand as a global leader in the space of education innovations,” says Mexus Education director marketing Saurabh Saxena.
 
Mudra West EVP Arijit Ray adds, “What Mexus Education is seeking to accomplish is really fascinating. Innovative and interactive learning techniques can really take the quality of education to the next level. We look forward to working closely with the brand team to create a communication plan that complements the initiative.”
 
Mudra West‘s key wins in the recent past include Inorbit Malls, World Gold Council, Femina and Filmfare. The agency also executed campaigns for Big Bazaar, Economic Times and Lavasa.

MUMBAI: Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) have weathered the recessionary storm and will be posting an ad revenue growth of 24 per cent this fiscal, according to a senior executive of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel).

Sports broadcasters failed to crack into the Hindi GEC space despite being blessed with a heavy load of cricket content. “Hindi GECs will end up with an ad revenue of Rs 24 billion in FY‘10, up from Rs 19.34 billion a year ago. Cricket under-delivered this year and failed to eat into the GEC market,” says Zeel chief revenue officer Joy Chakraborthy.
 
The downturn in the market also led advertisers to turn to GECs as they provided safer options of deliveries, Chakraborthy adds.

Another factor fuelling the growth is the rise of Colors, the entertainment channel from the Viacom18 stable. Industry sources say Colors has the potential of ending the fiscal at Rs 6 billion as it has overturned Star Plus to grab the No. 1 spot during the course of the year.
 
“Colors has more than compensated for the losses that could have come from the leading channels whose GRPs (gross rating points) dropped. The knock out of 9X also did not take monies away from the GECs,” says the head of a leading broadcasting company.

Some media analysts are more cautious in their estimates. According to one estimate, the ad revenue pie is expected to grow to Rs 23 billion in FY‘10, up 18 per cent from the year-ago period.
 
Chakraborthy expects the GECs to clock faster growth in the next fiscal with the expansion of the Tam panel into smaller towns and the improvement in the ad economy. “In these new markets, GECs are more accepted and consumed,” he avers.