Category: MAM

Starting off with a client base of seven, the new unit will be headed by LMG COO N P Sathyamurthy as chief executive officer while Lintas Media Group chairman and CEO Lynn de Souza will be responsible for the overall KI business.

Some of the businesses that have already moved under KI are Samsonite, Revlon, Austrian Airways, Qatar Airways, Computer Associates, Sharp Electronics, Four Seasons and Geodesic.

Said Lynn de Souza, “The thought process behind launching another media service agency brand, in addition to Lintas Media Group, was very clear to us. We have a large and strong base of home grown blue chip businesses. We now need to expand our offering to clients who work with a global template. Though not key to the character of KI, this does help avoid conflict that global businesses may have with our legacy accounts.”

Coinciding with the festive season, the campaign has been launched across the country for Suzuki GS150R, the new 150cc motorcycle from the Suzuki stable.

The offer revolves around tattoos- the current craze of the youth who are Suzuki‘s target group (TG). With every purchase of Suzuki GS150R, customers are given a specially designed ‘Drive Me Crazy‘ stick on tattoo which also contains an assured gift.

Said RK Swamy BBDO partner Sunil Kukreti,”Keeping in tune with the brand‘s tagline ‘Drive Me Crazy‘ we knew we had to come up with something that would excite today‘s youth and bring out a cult like feeling.

“After a lot of research, we zeroed in on tattoos which are in vogue from college students to Hollywood stars.”

The campaign will be supported by print advertisements, TV commercials and radio spots created by RK Swamy BBDO – Delhi.

Said Lifestyle chief marketing manager Shankar Suryanarayan, “Our groups annual ad spends in India are about Rs 200 million to Rs 220 million. Almost 90 per cent of our ad spends are on print. For the anniversary celebrations, we will launch a television commercial that will run on channels including English and Hindi news channels and music and regional channels like Sun TV, Udaya and Gemini.”

“Over the next 99 days, we have planned media spends worth Rs 35 million for brand building and customer offers and rewards that we have announced,” added Suryanarayan.

Currently, Lifestyle has 15 stores and nine Home Center (a two year old sub brand) stores in India. It plans to add nine-ten Lifestyle stores and two-three Home Center stores over the next 12 months on the way to a total store count of 44 by fiscal 2011-12 and has set aside capex of about Rs 4.5 billion for this.

MUMBAI: Out-of-Home Media (OOH) that specialises in out-of-home television advertising in India, is foraying into the healthcare and pharma segment.

To begin with, the company has tied up with various hospitals in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bangalore to install over 200 screens at the prime locations of the hospitals.

Consim Info is the top advertiser in the personal or matrimonial sector (in terms of number of campaigns) accounting for more than half of the advertising activity in this sector during Jun-August this year. In the travel sector, MakeMytrip is the category leader, contributing 23 per cent to the total online ad activity in the sector. Education is the third most advertised sector in the online space, led by Amity University (14 per cent).

Said The Nielsen Company associate director – online division Karthik Nagarajan, “Display advertising is expected to substantially expand in India, as internet penetration accelerates and given the substantially lower costs involved in advertising online. It is an industry that has seen rapid growth in the past couple of years and has the potential to give traditional forms of advertising a run for their money. Keeping tabs on ad spending and campaigns in this space, it is definitely going to help marketers plan their strategies accordingly.”

In terms of number of campaigns, the top two advertisers are Consim and People Interactive – both predominantly advertising for their matrimonial/personals business. Consim accounts for eight per cent of the total number of campaigns during June-August 2009 and People Interactive accounts for four per cent. Info Edge is the third biggest player (three per cent) advertising mainly for their employment business.

According to the Nielsen Online AdRelevance report, Times Internet, Yahoo and Sify were among the leading publishers for online display advertising in India. 24 per cent of all online campaigns during June-August 2009 included Times Internet properties. For Yahoo, that number was 21 per cent.

The size of the account is estimated to be in the region of Rs 2 billion.

Leaving aside television, the remaining media business for Aircel will rest with Starcom Worldwide.

Aircel is present in 17 telecom circles (including Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, North East, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal and Delhi). Also, with licenses secured for the remaining 10 of the 23 telecom circles, the company plans to become a pan-India operator by 2009-end.

Says Google spokesperson, “We are delighted to announce Nikhil Rungta as head of marketing for Google India. Nikhil will be based out of our Bangalore office and will be responsible for driving the strategy and execution of all marketing efforts to support Google’s sales verticals, products and partnerships in India.”

“With over 12 years of experience in sales and marketing, Rungta brings on board the combination of industry knowledge and thorough understanding of the consumer market in India,” he adds.

Earlier, Rungta was also associated with McCann Erikson as client servicing director, Shaw Wallace & Company as product manager and Dhar & Hoon Communications as account director.

In a bid to provide a brand identity to the product offering, the company has roped in Amitabh Bachchan to help build awareness for Max Vijay.

Says Max New York Life chief marketing officer Anisha Motwani, “Since Max Vijay targets more than 100 million underserved people, spread evenly across rural and urban markets, a key challenge for us was to develop a compelling brand proposition that the underserved segment across the country could identify with, irrespective of geographies, or the rural / urban divide. The brand proposition also needed to create a call-for-action to move the consumer out of inertia and start saving today for a more financially secure future tomorrow.”

“Superstar Amitabh Bachchan is the prefect ambassador to help build awareness and trust for Max Vijay. He enjoys a very credible patriarchal image, signifies ‘Vijay‘ over difficult real life situations and cuts across geographic and cultural boundaries”, Motwani adds.

The new proposition will be brought to life via a 360-degree high intensity marketing campaign encompassing print, radio, TV and outdoors. The campaign will also comprise below-the-line and CSR initiatives.

Ogilvy & Mather executive chairman and creative director -South Asia, “Max Vijay is meant to be a movement, a creator of hope and optimism among the underserved masses. Max Vijay will help the common man to achieve his dream – ‘aukaat par vijay‘, as every little rupee saved helps him to rise up in hierarchy.”

Designed by Ogilvy & Mather, the new campaign focuses on personalisation and also looks at letting existing and new users know as Yahoo can help people navigate all their services and information online. The campaign will also launch the new tools that look at aiding users customise Yahoo products such as Yahoo.com.

Said Yahoo! EVP and chief marketing officer Elisa Steele, “This is much more than an advertising campaign. It‘s about how Yahoo! delivers its promise to the market in everything that it does. Our brand strategy shows our commitment to delivering personally relevant online experiences.”

The company will use online, cable TV, radio, print and outdoor for spreading its new campaign awareness.