Category: MAM

NEW DELHI: The Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) expects the business in the current financial year to increase by 20 per cent to Rs 6 billion.
 
DAVP director-general Frank Noronha said the Directorate had already achieved a business of Rs 4 billion in the current financial year in the release of print and audio visual advertisements. 
 
“We had touched the figure of Rs 5 billion. We expect to end up with Rs 6 billion this fiscal,” Noronha added.
 
DAVP, the only advertising agency in the country reaching the remotest corners, had increased its business by 200 per cent over the last five years.
 

NEW DELHI: Weber Shandwick was ranked as one of the top 10 “Agencies of the Decade” by Advertising Age.
 
In explaining this ranking, Advertising Age recognised the firm’s accomplishments over the past 10 years, its leading client relationships and vast global footprint.
 
Weber Shandwick CEO Harris Diamond said, “To be named an ‘Agency of the Decade’ by Advertising Age, coupled with our ‘Agency of the Year’ awards around the world in 2009 is a true tribute to our people, to our creativity and to the strategic insights we bring to our clients.” 
 
This Advertising Age distinction adds to Weber Shandwick’s unprecedented string of international industry awards this year including: ‘Global Agency of the Year’ by The Holmes Report, PRWeek UK ‘International Agency of the Year,’ the gold medal winner for PRWeek’s 2009 ‘Global Agency Report Card,’ ‘Agency of the Year’ by the European Excellence Awards, ‘International Agency of the Year’ by the UK Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and an inaugural Cannes Lions Advertising Festival award for best PR-led integrated campaign.
 

MUMBAI: Ignitee Digital Solutions has appointed R Sreekant as general manager- business development for the northern and eastern regions.

Prior to this, Sreekant was assistant vice president for north and east regions at Hello FM 106.4. 
 
Said Ignitee Digital Solutions national business director Shankar B, “We are aggressively looking towards expanding our base in the northern and eastern parts of the country, as these markets have immense potential. Following the path of the growth, it was extremely essential to have an experienced professional like Sreekant, who will act as a driving force in enhancing business in these markets.”  
 
Talking about his mandate Ignitee Digital Solutions, Sreekant said, “My role at Ignitee would be to develop business in the northern and eastern markets and I look forward to contributing in expanding the company‘s operations in these regions.”
 

MUMBAI: Reliance Media World‘s FM radio network Big 92.7 FM has entered into an advertising alliance with Radio Dhamaal and Rangila FM.

With this deal in place, Big FM offers advertisers the opportunity to cover 52 cities across India, reaching out to deeper pockets of the country.
 
With Radio Dhamaal‘s presence in Ahmednagar, Dhule, Jalgaon, Jabalpur, Karnal, Muzaffarpur and Rangila FM‘s presence in Raipur, Big FM will offer advertisers the key markets of Maharashtra, northern & central India

Big 92.7 FM CEO Tarun Katial says, “Radio Dhamaal and Rangila FM have a strong presence in Maharashtra and Central India. With a fair share of ad-spends flowing into these regions, this alliance helps us enhance the reach of our offering to advertisers and further consolidates our position vis-?-vis competition. Having 52 stations enables us to deliver greater value to our advertisers and strengthens our ability to help build their brands across markets.”
 
An estimate from Adex Analysis for the July-Sep 2009 quarter indicates that the market of Maharashtra alone attracts a share of 16 per cent of all advertising spends in the country. Having a network offering which now boasts of five cities in Maharashtra, as well as having the highest number of FM stations in the central Indian market of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will certainly enable more network sales, said the press statement.

BAG Network head network sales Sanjeev Kalia says, “We had evaluated various options and found that Big FM were most appropriate partners for sales alliance as most of our stations do not compete with each other in the cities we are present . It is a well thought strategy which allows Big FM sales team to package our non competing stations in their deals to garner better market share and at the same time both teams will handle their sales independently.”
 
“The strategic alliance with Big 92.7 FM will usher in a very exciting phase of mutual growth. Rangila FM in Raipur will benefit from the presence of national brands facilitated by Big FM whereas advertisers will now be able cover a huge landmass in the most potential state in Eastern India through a single window,” says Rangila FM MD S K Jain.

This alliance also allows for business opportunities from Big Rural, a business division that has been providing advertisers a unique platform to reach out to their audiences in rural India. With a dedicated team working on rural activation properties in tier II and III cities, conceptualizing events that can be amplified on radio, this alliance throws open newer markets for advertisers to reach out to.
 

MUMBAI: Network18 has entered into a co-marketing agreement with the professional networking platform LinkedIn for the Indian market.

The alliance is aimed at exploiting content integration and brand building opportunities between LinkedIn and synergistic brands within the Network18 stable.

The alliance, led by CNBC-TV18 and Moneycontrol, will focus on online and on-air initiatives in the areas of business news and information, issue-based research, personal finance and professional networking.

The alliance initially includes integration of business and finance content from Moneycontrol on LinkedIn and community-generated content from LinkedIn on CNBC-TV18. 
 
TV18 business media director Ajay Chacko says, “We believe that this partnership will create value because of the substantial content and audience synergies resultant from a combination of LinkedIn and Network18 brands. We see a great opportunity in jointly developing offerings for various key business communities including corporate leaders, professionals, SME‘s and management students.”

The bipartite agreement is the first media partnership announced by LinkedIn in India and is part of the company‘s strategy to growing brand awareness among professionals in the country.
 
Says LinkedIn India country head Hari Krishnan, “We believe that this alliance will be instrumental in strengthening LinkedIn‘s presence in India and driving awareness about key issues amongst India‘s professional audiences.”

The partnership has been flagged with the launch of the ‘CNBC-TV18 LinkedIn‘ poll along with traffic development and co-promotional initiatives with Moneycontrol.com.

MUMBAI: citizen dentsu, Dentsu India‘s specialised division for social communications, has been assigned Delhi government‘s Civility Campaign.

Led by the Directorate of Information and Publicity, the Government of Delhi‘s Civility Campaign comes as a precursor to the Commonwealth Games 2010. 
 
citizen dentsu‘s mandate will include all creative and media duties for this initiative. For the same, the agency has devised a 360 degree, multimedia campaign structured at drawing the attention of citizens in Delhi to civic sense.

Said Dentsu India chairman Sandeep Goyal, “It is a never before effort by the Delhi Government to address certain deep rooted behaviour patterns typical to Delhi‘s civic mindset. It is a slow burn exercise but I am certain that our efforts will contribute towards changing these habits and mindscapes for the better.”
 
Said Dentsu India executive vice chairman and chief creative officer Gullu Sen, “The objective of the Civility campaign is to bring about heightened awareness of civic sense among citizens of Delhi while sensitizing civilians to the city‘s heritage and encouraging them to be part of preserving the same.”

When quizzed on the size of the campaign, principal secretary in the chief minister‘s office PK Tripathi said, “There is no fixed budget for the campaign. We will intensify the campaign over the next few months and will release money depending on the various media used for it.” 
 
“We have just begun introducing the ‘Ladli‘ mascot and the campaign will gradually get intensive and advertisements will appear in newspapers, TV and billboards,” he added.

MUMBAI: With recession creating roadblock across every economy and with consumer pockets going hollow, year 2009 was the most unfurnished testing ground for the Indian advertising industry, battling every step to survive just right. And thus, while few have dived into the submarines underwater, few did emerge as winners of their existence.
 
According to the Brand Equity Ad Agency Reckoner (BEAR) review for 2009, Ogilvy has emerged as the leader of the creative agency flock in the top ten survey that the country has best.

Following next is JWT, while Lowe and Mudra occupy the third and fourth spot respectively. Prasoon Joshi’s McCann Ericson stands tall at the fifth spot, while Rediffusion YR ranks sixth.
 
Meanwhile, as far as media agencies go, Mindshare has been crowned as first in the lot.

Lintas Media Group comes second while Sam Balsara’s Madison is ranked third.
 
BEAR claims that a total of 549 interviews were conducted, spread across six centres – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The maximum numbers were conducted in Mumbai (35 per cent), followed by Delhi (26 per cent) to account for the large population of media professionals in these cities.

Ad agencies:

Ogilvy

JWT
Lowe
Mudra
McCann Erickson
Rediffusion YR
Leo Burnett
Contract
RK Swamy BBDO
DraftFCB

Media agencies:

Mindshare
Lintas Media Group
Madison
Percept Media
Maxus
Mudra Max
Starcom
Lodestar Universal
ZenithOptimedia
Optimum Media Direction

MUMBAI: Media in the new digital age – that was the theme of the Media Thinkers Congress held at the St Regis Hotel in Singapore, organised by Media magazine last week. The thinking behind the congress was to get some insights into the current state of media and what will media be like in the future.

Barbarian Group strategic planning head Noah Brien said: “Media has proliferated. Today, everything is media: everyone is a media creator; people are uploading photos, links, writing blogs. More devices have come in for creating media, majority of the content being put up online is personal. Earlier, the content was not media shareable; the vast majority of content was never meant to be monetised. So that is putting pressure on the media world as traditional publishers, marketers and advertising agencies seek to understand ways of attracting these eyeballs which have been taken away by this non-commercial media.”

He added that lines are blurring for traditional media on another front. “Earlier, NBC fought ABC – they did not undercut their own media businesses… advertisers funded media products. Now, even advertisers are becoming media. Consider Johnson‘s babycentre.com which is bigger than the biggest parenting online media site called parents.com. Red bull has a site which rivals even ESPN‘s action sports site.”
 
Brien elaborated that distribution had also become disintermediated. “Where earlier it was owned by a few people and was an excellence skill set, now with Blogger, Youtube and Flickr, this has come to rest with everyone. Today, 20 hours of videos is uploaded to youtube.com every minute. There are close to 10 million hours of video on youtube.com enough for our entire lives.”

How do media companies deal with the web in this scenario? Brien believes that companies should go all the way or go niche. “In the digital age, you have to stay out of the middle; you are either mass or niche. Build on your prior success, on your audience. Media agencies and media owners need to buy equity in some of the startups who are coming in with innovations on the internet.”
 
PHD Australia managing partner Mark Holden spoke next about the rapid technological changes and how these are going to affect the media agency in the future. He began by saying that “if you can predict technology you can predict what media will look like and if you can predict media you can predict what the media agency will be in the future.”

Holden pointed out that by 2014 lithium sulphur batteries will provide 10 times the power they provide today and even wireless power should become a reality. “You will have wipo or wireless power zones then like you have wifi zones now. It will mean limitless possibilities for devices which depend on power,” he said.

He added that storage is going to become cheaper by 2015. “Today PCs with 1 terabyte (TB) harddrives are going for $500. By 2015, the price will be $500 for 3TB computers. By then, Google wave and cloud computing will be a reality.”

On the connectivity front, Holden said a majority of homes in developed countries will be on fibre optics with speeds of 100 mbps while 4G and Wimax will offer 50 mbps-100 mbps speeds.

Holden broke up viewing interfaces into portable, fixed and communal. On portable viewing interfaces, he was extremely bullish on foldable OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens bringing about radical changes in the way we use phones. “The phones of the future will have this two foot screen which will be unfoldable to watch a movie, and what have you.”

2015, according to Holden, will have seen the evolution of pattern recognition and correlation based software. “So, devices will know what you are interested in and overlay it over anything else.”

He revealed that LED contact lenses would further lead to a proliferation of augmented reality viewing options for advertisers. As far as fixed screens are concerned, Holden pointed out that most TVs would have Ethernet ports and hard drives, while 3D, ultra HD (exceeding the resolution of the human eye) would be the norm. “This will further enhance our experience and affect the way we consume TV,” he predicted.

On the communal screen front, he said that most screens will be digital with 3D and Super HD capability, while out-of-home screens will be multitouch and face-aware using Red-eye technology. Holden pointed out that the impact of these technological upheavals will be violent. “Because of the increase in media, there will be an increase in inventory, which in turn will lead to further ad funded opportunities and long form branded content. Advertisers will become prolific programme producers and agencies will need to have programme production capabilities. Additionally, they will have to invest heavily in social marketing.”
 
According to Holden, the mobile phone will become the marketing battleground by 2015 with it serving as a high reach and high segmentation medium. What will impact agencies more will be the blurring and convergence of media like online, TV, radio, cinema and the outdoors. “With one in every two ads being online, it will be the end of the era of ad delivery and the beginning of the era of ad serving to each medium,” he said.

“The CEO of a media agency in 2009 is CEO of a people-based business. In 2015, he will be a CEO of a software based business. Automation and optimisation software will take a lot out of the manual work which is resorted to now days.”

Holden believes that content and software development will become expected offerings of a media agency and they will have developed a new breed of social marketers who will maintain a database of consumers for social marketers. “There will be an increase in neuroscience research with planners training in behavioural economics and becoming marketing investment managers. Buyers will become data and software-based traders,” he said in closing. “Agencies will need to stay ahead of the curve. The views a little better there.”

MUMBAI: Tata Indicom has taken the radio route in a bid to expand its footprints in Gujarat. The telecom operator together with Radio One Ahmedabad has rolled out Tata Indicom Live, an interactive FM radio property.

The one-hour advertiser funded programme will be aired from Monday to Sunday at 10 am and will act as a platform for customers to get information on telecom and lifestyle.
 
“We were in talks with several radio players in the city including Radio City, Red FM and Radio Mirchi and finally chose Radio One. This is because they have a brand promise of playing 13 songs every hour and thus, listeners prefer to tune into this radio station for music,” says a source in the company.

The show aims at marketing entertainment and information. “This is a step which goes beyond call centers. Radio is a mass and a local medium and we can easily touch base with our consumers effectively,” adds the source.
 
Tata Indicom Live aims to play songs on a new theme each day. The tie-up is part of Tata Indicom‘s Gujarat circle initiative and the telecom operator is planning to do similar tie ups with other stations in the region. “Through this initiative pertaining to Ahmedabad, we are currently on the learning phase and after three months, we would be looking at going to different places in Gujarat,” adds the source.
 
When quizzed whether the telecom operator would be looking at extending such initiatives in other parts of the country, the source avers, ” This is part of the Gujarat circle. There is no clarity on if other circles would be interested in doing similar activities.”

MUMBAI: The recession plague may finally be sketching its way out of the Indian economy map, making way for the ad industry to once again fill up its hollow pockets.

According to the latest annual forecast released by Zenith Optimedia, the Indian advertising industry is poised to grow by 10.5 per cent (at current prices), declaring a step up over the 4.5 per cent growth that the industry registered this year over 2008.
 
The agency further predicts that advertising on TV, newspapers and magazines will grow at 11.6 per cent, 10 per cent and 11 per cent respectively.

Meanwhile, for radio, advertising is expected to grow at 14.1 per cent and internet at 16 per cent. However, cinema industry will see a at mere five per cent growth while outdoor is expected to grow marginally (two per cent).

Additionally, the report suggests that the Indian ad industry is expected to grow at a rate of 11.4 per cent and 11.8 per cent for the years 2011 and 2012 respectively.
 
Globally too, the advertising industry seems to be on an upswing, implying an end to a period of a worldwide economic downturn.

The Publicis-owned media agency network Zenith Optimedia foretells a 0.9 per cent growth in global ad spends in 2010 at $447.7 billion, up from the projected $443.7 billion spent this year.

“We expect the recovery to strengthen steadily as corporate and consumer confidence continue to improve, with 3.9 per cent growth in 2011 and 4.8 per cent growth in 2012,” the company said in a release. 
 
The global boost is expected to be driven by Latin America (8.1 per cent growth), Central and Eastern Europe (2.3 per cent) and Asia Pacific, excluding Japan (3.8 per cent).

“Plenty of markets in the developing world – particularly in Asia Pacific and Latin America – have continued to grow this year, and are already picking up speed after a slowdown in the first half of 2009,” the agency said.

Meanwhile, ad expenditure is expected to shrink 2.4 per cent in North America, 0.5 per cent in Western Europe and 3.2 per cent in Japan, before mild growth returns in 2011, the report reveals.