Category: Marketing

MUMBAI: Five entries from India have been shorted in the films category at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this year. 
 
These include two entries from Ogilvy & Mather for Breakthrough Trust, titled ‘Software Engineer‘ and ‘Bus Driver‘ and one entry for Fevicol, titled ‘Moustache‘. 
 
Meanwhile, two entries of Creativeland Asia for Parle Agro – ‘Tummy‘ and ‘Waterhose‘ – have made it to the shortlist. 
 
While this year, India has sent 58 pieces of work for the Films Lions category, it was 50 entries that were sent last year.

MUMBAI: Percept/H has named Tomomitsu Taue as senior vice president.

Prior to joining Percept/H, Taue was director – regional account planning division at Hakuhodo Communications Asia in Singapore, where he was heading the regional account team for South East Asia on Canon and Toyota.
 
Taue will report to company CEO Prabhakar Mundkur and operate out of the Bangalore office on the Toyota and Canon accounts.

Said Mundkur, “Taue has already been working with us since last year and it‘s wonderful to have him move to India now on a permanent basis.”
 
Added Taue, “I am very excited about working with Percept/H. I have been in India for the past 18 months, but now I move to India and Percept/H in a formal capacity.” 
 
Taue flagged off his career with Hakuhodo in Tokyo where he supervised Hakuhodo‘s projects in Japan and China besides looking after their international businesses. He spent several years with Hakuhodo in Thailand where he was in charge of the Japanese corporations‘ regional brand management and advertising tasks across the FMCG, electronics and automobile industry categories.
 

MUMBAI: Mediabrands, the media holding company within Interpublic Group, is setting up a joint venture company with Interactive Avenues to offer solutions in search and social marketing.

Mediabrands will hold a 51 per cent stake in the joint venture while the remaining 49 per cent will be with the digital marketing solutions company.
 
The JV, named Reprise Media India, will be headed by Anjali Hegde, one of Interactive Avenue‘s founding partners. He will report to the board as well as Mediabrands Asia Pacific Regional Leadership.

Reprise Media will offer a full scope of digital services which include digital media strategy and investment, digital creative development, campaign implementation and post activity analysis.
 
Interactive Avenues that has operations in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore will continue to operate as an independent digital marketing solutions company and provide complete support to this joint venture.

The transaction bolsters Mediabrands‘ digital offering and services for clients and reinforces the media holding company‘s efforts to expand and deepen its marketing services operations across India and Asia Pacific.

Final details of the transaction will be presented to the IPG Board next month. 
 
Said UM (Universal McCann) CEO Shashi Sinha, “With an online community of approximately 81 million, India represents one of the world‘s largest Internet markets. But behind this impressive number, India still remains a multi-faceted and highly complex digital landscape. With Reprise Media India, we have the digital marketing experts that can navigate the digital space effectively and offer our clients value for their campaigns, especially as this space reaches critical mass in the coming years.”

With approximately 1,000 media and marketing experts across the region, Asia Pacific remains a top priority for Mediabrands to help accelerate market share for its clients. Mediabrands‘ priorities in 2010 for Asia Pacific include supporting UM and Initiative‘s regional growth, launching a suite of new products and integrated services, and building regional operations for its specialist business, particularly Reprise Media (search engine and social media marketing), Cadreon (audience demand platform), Ansible (mobile marketing), Orion Trading (barter services) and Ensemble (branded entertainment).

In Asia Pacific alone, Reprise Media is established in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, and Australia. In 2009 Ensemble and Orion Trading launched divisions in Australia.

Stated Aditya Birla Group chief marketing officer – financial services Ajay Kakar, “The Aditya Birla Group is convinced about the power of the Digital medium and will aggressively use this medium in our marketing efforts. Reprise Media demonstrated a deep level of understanding of our business as well as expertise across all facets of digital marketing and we look forward to working closely with them.”
 

MUMBAI: Big Street, the out-of-home (OOH) arm of Reliance Broadcast Network (earlier Reliance Media World), has won the OOH contract of Chandigarh Transport Undertaking.
 
Chandigarh Transport has a fleet strength of 483 buses. This includes 60 low-floor intra-city JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission) buses and 40 air-conditioned buses.

The renewal comes after Big Street completed its two-year stint from 2008 to 2010. The latest tender is for a 2-year period until May 2012.
 
The buses will take Big Street’s reach not just within Chandigarh but across Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttaranchal and Uttar Pradesh (West) and will touch over 2 million people every day, posing as an excellent advertising tool, given its reach and impact within the cities.
 
Said Big Street, Big Live and Big Digital business head Rabe Iyer, ”This contract will ensure that we are one of the leaders in outdoor advertising space creating futuristic avenues for both current and prospective advertisers.”

MUMBAI: RK Swamy BBDO’s Media Direction unit has signed on Partha Ghosh as director – business development. 
 
Ghosh moves in from GroupM Motivator where he was general manager. He will be reporting to RK Swamy BBDO Media Direction president Les Margulis.

Partha has serviced clients such as DSP Black Rock, Unilever, Pepsi, Marico, Nokia, and Unicef.
 
“Media Direction has strengthened their position by winning a number of accounts in the past few months. My senior team members and I share a common vision for the company and I look forward to assisting the organisation in scaling new heights,” says Ghosh.
 
Les adds, “Ghosh will bring his experience and market knowledge to bear and move our new business efforts to overdrive.”

Media Direction is the specialist arm of RK Swamy BBDO providing integrated media solutions.

MUMBAI: India’s gold drought ended at Cannes on Wednesday. RMG India and Taproot India brought home the awards in the Press and Design categories as the total tally ended at 16 metals.
 
RMG, a JWT company, won gold for the Fuji film campaign which spun a visual drama around the product benefit. Taproot, on the other hand, bagged the gold for Transasia papers.

India also added two silver and two bronze Lions. Leo Burnett and Taproot won a silver each for Tide and Transasia papers respectively.
 
Bates 141 fetched a bronze for Virgin Mobile while Mudra DDB took the bronze for Bangalore Traffic Police.

India, thus, made an impact in the Press category, earning two gold, two silver and two bronze. 
 
In the Design Lions category, Publicis won gold for work on Publicis communications while Ogilvy won bronze for its work done for the Department of Post. The Grand Prix in the Design Lions was won by Happiness Brussels for Toyota.
 

MUMBAI: Zee TV ranks at the top as the channel having the strongest favourite characters, according to a study by consumer knowledge firm Ormax Media.

Zee TV’s characters have an overall 27 per cent share, while Colors lagged at 20 per cent and Star Plus at 18 per cent, Ormax said in its fourth edition of “Characters India Loves” (CIL) track.
 
Though Anandi, the protagonist of Balika Vadhu (Colors) retains her No 1 position, the rest of the top 10 list shows a dramatic shift.

The previous top rankers including Sadhana (Bidaai, Star Plus) and Akshara (Yeh Rishta, Star Plus) have gone to position 15 and 11 from second and third. Also, Ichha (Uttaran, Colors) has slid from fifth position to 13 in the latest report.

Contrary to two positions in the top-10 list of the previous quarter, Zee TV ups the scale and has five characters this time, including Archana and Maanav (Pavitra Rishta), Manu (Jhansi Ki Rani) and Remo and Terence (Dance India Dance judges).
 
The study measures the popularity of characters on Indian television. This edition reports the ranking of the 251 most liked characters across various channels on Indian television. The report also lists the top characters across gender, age, SEC and market segments.

Further, a section of the report illustrates reasons for likeability of the top characters.
 
The fourth track for CIL was conducted during May-June this year. Interviews were conducted among 2,500 respondents (70 per cent females, 30 per cent males) in the 15-44 year age group from SEC ABC across six cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Indore and Jalandhar.
 

MUMBAI: Surely it has basked in its magnificence for plenty – nine years of continued leadership at the top and then salvaging its lost glory from Viacom18‘s Colors after a year-long gap. But never has its achievements been such a historic feat since the first season of KBC.

Star Plus, now walking the path of a new self discovery with its rebranded look, has touched a new GRP high for the week ended 19 June with 445 points in its kitty. And to differentiate it further from the Hindi GEC gang, the channel has taken an exorbitant jump of 108 points in just one week to cross the 400 fence patch and break its own record since its KBC days.  
 

 
                                                                                                                Source: TAM 

What has primarily helped Star Plus to attain this huge jump is its weekend event, Star Parivaar Awards, that attracted 55 GRPs to the channel as it delivered a TVR of 7.2. The show achieved a peak TVR of 9.9 at 9.35 pm while the red carpet delivered 2.2 TVR (7:30 pm- 8 pm).

Said Star India EVP marketing and communications Anupam Vasudev, “Also, the new look of Star Plus has had huge sampling by new viewers while there has been an increased consumption from the existing viewers.”

The other element that has helped Star Plus to upgrade its GRP grades is its weekday prime time. The band delivery saw a positive high wherein shows either registered a healthy and upward viewership over the previous week or maintained stability.
 
 
Pratigya (Monday-Friday 10.30 pm) is at 5.1 TVR (4.8), the highest average for the show since launch that continued to lead the slot. Bidaai (Monday-Friday 9 pm) has also moved up the TRP ladder to post an average TVR of 5 (3.6). Its one hour special on Saturday delivered 5.8 TVR.

Additionally, the newly launched Ekta Kapoor produced Tere Liye (Mon-Fri. 10 pm) seems to have given the channel an incremental push as the show opened with a 4 TVR on Monday and averaged 3.8 TVR.

“We want to lead in every primetime slot. Tere Liye performed extremely well for us and is a good bet to eventually lead the 10 pm slot. We are also launching the new show Chaand Chhupa Badal Mein at the 8 pm slot as it is a weak band right now,” Vasudev said.

Star Plus had already begun experimenting on its programming content to understand the changing viewership patterns with shows like Bidayi and Yeh Rishta. “The shows fetched good eyeballs and the channel knew that “times are a changing”. It led to bolder formats with Aap Ki Kachehri and Sach Ka Saamna and now, with the reinvention of self, Star Plus seems to have bounced back with the audiences well,” says a top media executive on conditions of anonymity.

Fitting into the new image of the channel, Star chalked out an innovative strategy. The channel ran no commercial ads for 24 hours from Monday primetime but filled up the inventory with its own promos. “The exercise to promote ourselves during breaks began on Monday primetime and ran for 24 hours,” said Vasudev.

While Star Plus seems to have marked a clear top slot territory for itself, vibrant Colors is evidently losing its bright tint. The channel has dropped 12 GRPs over the previous week to score 276 points.

Except Balika Vadhu that posted 4.8 TVR (4.7), the highest rating on the show in the last 12 weeks, the other primetime shows including Uttaran at 3.9 TVR (4.4) and Na Aana is Des Laado at 3.6 TVR (4.4) slid downward.

Where the channel has actually gained eyeballs is the afternoon slot (30 GRPs, up from 19 GRPs in the previous week) and weekend movies (24 GRPs, from the previous week‘s 14 GRPs).

Kitchen Champion, the one-hour afternoon cookery show, rated 1.8 TVR in its launch week. 
 
Clearly, apart from its primetime shows, movies have always been a dependable GRP delivery for Colors and it telecast six of them during the week (five on weekend and one on Friday). There were three movies on Sunday that played breakless – Ajab Prem… on Sunday at 7.30 pm delivered 1.5 TVR, Bhootnath on Sunday at 12 noon delivered 1.2 TVR and Welcome on Sunday at 5.30 pm rated 0.8 TVR.

Other movies on the channel were – Jab we met (Friday 9.30 pm 0.6 TVR), Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (Sun 3.30 pm 0.6 TVR) and Life Partner (Saturday 2.30 pm 0.6 TVR).

There were also two event repeats on the channel with limited / no breaks – Maa Tujhe Pranam played breakless at Sunday 2 pm and delivered 1.1 TVR and Apsara Awards (Sunday 10 pm) played with 1 5 minutes break and delivered 1 TVR.

Zee TV also saw a drop of 25 GRPs (231 GRPs during the week) wherein the fall was primarily propelled by its weekday primetime bands. Its top rated show, Pavitra Rishta, fell to average 5.3 TVR (6.1 TVR) while Agle Janam is at 3.6 TVR (4.5 TVR). DID Lil Masters fetched an average TVR of 3.1 in the week (3.7 TVR last week). On the movie front too, the channel has lost 10 GRPs to lock it at just 5 points this week. The channel had shown Ishq at 4.30 pm on Saturday.

Overall, the channel genres which have grown this week are: Hindi GEC – 1374 GRPs (1338 GRPs), Sports – 187 GRPs (75 GRPs) and Hindi News – 147 GRPs (143 GRPs).

The genres which dropped are: Hindi movies – 439 GRPs (483), Youth – 121 GRPs (138) and Kids – 239 GRPs (290).
 

BANGALORE: In a bid to garner more eyeballs for its movie of the month ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ on 25 June, UTV Action has planned a multimedia campaign.
 
UTV Action’s initiatives for the ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ include 3D ads on the cover page of the daily ‘Midday’ in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Delhi to coincide with the newspapers 31st anniversary. The channel plans to distribute 3D glasses along with a copy of the paper. Radio One will be plugging the anniversary 3D issue of Midday.
 
Apart from this, the channel is conducting a host of online activities to promote the movie by conducting contests and awarding the winners with gifts. Outdoor hoardings are also being used to promote the film.

With an objective of creating an eye catching effect in Delhi, Pune, Chandigargh, Lucknow and Kanpur, the channel will be placing 10 men dressed in Kung Fu attire with every alternate person holding a placard stating the tune in time for the movie of the month.
 
“We plan to come out with innovative communications that have not been attempted by anybody else,” said UTV Action Associate VP for marketing Kunal Mukherjee.

MUMBAI: India has bagged four awards in the Outdoor category at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this year. 
 
Mudra DDB Group was awarded a Silver Lion for its work on the Bangalore Traffic Police and Ogilvy & Mather won a Bronze Lion for its work on The Economist. Creativeland Asia, on the other hand, bagged two metals – a Silver Lion for Parle Agro‘s Frooti campaign and a Bronze Lion for Cholayil (Medimix).
 
In the Radio Lions category, it was Leo Burnett that managed to bag the only metal for India. The agency won a Bronze Lion for its work on Bajaj Electricals, called ‘Pleasure of Mixing‘.
 
In the Media Lions category too, India managed to take home just one metal as Leo Burnett pocketed a bronze for its work on Tide.