MUMBAI: L&K Saatchi & Saatchi has come on-board as a lead agency for strategy and creative work for Mondelez Gum and Candy brands in India.
Saatchi & Saatchi China’s successful track record with Mondelez led to the decision to consolidate rest of the APAC gum and candy business with the agency. Saatchi & Saatchi will take charge of all gum and candy business for whole APAC region with key markets like China, Japan, Thailand and India and others, effective immediately.
Commenting on this win, L&K Saatchi & Saatchi India CEO and managing partner Anil Nair said, “Choclairs and Halls are iconic brands in India and we look forward to building a winning partnership with Mondelez in India. We are all very excited with the opportunity to create excellent work and together we hope to grow the brands and our clients’ business in India”
Commenting on new partnership, Mondelez India Gum, Candy & Powdered Beverages associate director Amit Shah said, “We look forward to creative excellence and work that will help grow and strengthen our brands. Saatchi & Saatchi has delivered impressive work in APAC region and we hope to see the same in India”
MUMBAI: D’lecta has appointed Havas Worldwide as its creative partner for its dip cheese, slice cheese and cream cheese ranges. The brand will be handled by the agency’s Mumbai office. The integrated mandate was won following a multi-agency pitch.
Confirming the appointment, D’lecta Foods managing director Deepak Jain said, “Havas understood the product and its creative demands and has presented an approach that is in sync with our product vision and ideology.”
Havas Worldwide India CEO Nirmalya Sen said, “With its commitment to innovation and great taste, D’lecta is well poised to give the long-established players in the category a run for their money. And we are delighted to have been chosen to partner D’lecta in this journey.”
Commenting on the association, Havas Worldwide Mumbai executive creative director Rayomand Patell added, “From the very first interaction, there was great chemistry in the room. Being a bunch of foodies, working on a cheese brand excited us tremendously. We look forward to making D’lecta a household name as respected as it already is in the food services space.”
MUMBAI: D’lecta has appointed Havas Worldwide as its creative partner for its dip cheese, slice cheese and cream cheese ranges. The brand will be handled by the agency’s Mumbai office. The integrated mandate was won following a multi-agency pitch.
Confirming the appointment, D’lecta Foods managing director Deepak Jain said, “Havas understood the product and its creative demands and has presented an approach that is in sync with our product vision and ideology.”
Havas Worldwide India CEO Nirmalya Sen said, “With its commitment to innovation and great taste, D’lecta is well poised to give the long-established players in the category a run for their money. And we are delighted to have been chosen to partner D’lecta in this journey.”
Commenting on the association, Havas Worldwide Mumbai executive creative director Rayomand Patell added, “From the very first interaction, there was great chemistry in the room. Being a bunch of foodies, working on a cheese brand excited us tremendously. We look forward to making D’lecta a household name as respected as it already is in the food services space.”
MUMBAI Thomas Cook (India) Ltd.(Thomas Cook) is witnessing strong delivery of its e-commerce strategy with focus on leveraging the rapidly growing digital native Indian consumer. Today, the company’s e-commerce (led by its portalthomascook.in) accounts for over 11 per cent of its overall travel business.
This season, to tap into the innate value seeker Indian psyche and inspire bookings, Thomas Cook India has unveiled a new campaign ‘Bachat Ka Baadshah’, with a range of great value holiday packages easily bookable onthomascook.in.
The campaign introduces a character called Bachat Ka Baadshah, with quirky, humour to drive home the benefits of being a ‘Smart Saver’ or Bachat Ka Badshah. The month–long campaign incorporates a healthy mix of, outdoor radio and digital focus, across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The campaign is also being promoted aggressively on social media via Twitter and Facebook contests.
Thomas Cook Technology & Shared Services president and group head Amit Madhan said, “Indian consumers today are looking at multiple options when planning their holiday, and our hybrid omni-channel ‘clicks n bricks’ strategy is hence working very well in our favour. As market leaders, Thomas Cook India’s objective is to give consumers what they truly want – a great value experience. Our ‘Bachat ka Baadshah’ campaign hence aims to optimise on the strong growth in traffic to our one-stop-shop portalthomascook.in and inspire demand by offering savings.
He added, “The special air inclusive packages that have been launched as part of the campaign, are simple and easy to book online via thomascook.in, and the special offers only serve to sweeten the deal!”
MUMBAI Thomas Cook (India) Ltd.(Thomas Cook) is witnessing strong delivery of its e-commerce strategy with focus on leveraging the rapidly growing digital native Indian consumer. Today, the company’s e-commerce (led by its portalthomascook.in) accounts for over 11 per cent of its overall travel business.
This season, to tap into the innate value seeker Indian psyche and inspire bookings, Thomas Cook India has unveiled a new campaign ‘Bachat Ka Baadshah’, with a range of great value holiday packages easily bookable onthomascook.in.
The campaign introduces a character called Bachat Ka Baadshah, with quirky, humour to drive home the benefits of being a ‘Smart Saver’ or Bachat Ka Badshah. The month–long campaign incorporates a healthy mix of, outdoor radio and digital focus, across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The campaign is also being promoted aggressively on social media via Twitter and Facebook contests.
Thomas Cook Technology & Shared Services president and group head Amit Madhan said, “Indian consumers today are looking at multiple options when planning their holiday, and our hybrid omni-channel ‘clicks n bricks’ strategy is hence working very well in our favour. As market leaders, Thomas Cook India’s objective is to give consumers what they truly want – a great value experience. Our ‘Bachat ka Baadshah’ campaign hence aims to optimise on the strong growth in traffic to our one-stop-shop portalthomascook.in and inspire demand by offering savings.
He added, “The special air inclusive packages that have been launched as part of the campaign, are simple and easy to book online via thomascook.in, and the special offers only serve to sweeten the deal!”
Mumbai, 18th April, 2016: Motivator, India’s fastest growing media agency (in the last 3 years) as per RECMA 2015 has created a one-of-a-kind campaign for FMCG major Himalaya with close collaboration with ESP Properties, the entertainment and sports arm of GroupM. The innovative strategy for Himalaya Men’s Face Wash will see the brand let go off its logo for the very first time. The campaign rides on a single word ‘Pimple?’, thereby creating intrigue and sparking conversations amongst viewers this IPL.
Himalaya Men’s Face Wash has doubled its market share in its respective product category to current 8% versus a year ago with a strong distribution and smart media planning processes. The brief was to build on the momentum for the brand, where Motivator’s Team Himalaya working on their Frugal Intervention thinking framework seems to have cracked something interesting in the logo attention economy.
The envisaged strategy is being seen as a move to leverage IPL as a platform to target Himalaya’s key consumers by associating with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) team. Through the innovative campaign, the problem being addressed by the brand is stated in a single word ‘Pimple?’ visibly inscribed on the caps of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team players.
All the team players will be seen sporting these caps in the ongoing matches of the tournament. This is further supported by the smart use of the lead players – Virat Kohli, Shane Watson, Sarfaraz Khan and Stuart Binny in a teaser film launched on Youtube video masthead and was timed to be played during IPL match breaks using special technology partner.
Giving his views on the overall strategy, Rajesh Krishnamurthy, Business Head, Himalaya said, “Sports sponsorship has always provided an ideal platform for engagement with Men. The Himalaya- Motivator- RCB Team however wanted to bring in innovation in this genre and developed a very engaging brand idea for IPL season. It provided us a great opportunity to build our brand in the growing men’s segment while creating excitement among the IPL fans. We are very excited with the way the campaign has shaped up, and we hope to build on the intrigue that we’ve created amongst viewers thus far.”
Adding on this, Ashwani Gandhi, Category Manager, Himalaya Men said, “It’s been an exciting campaign, performing beyond expectations. In this highly competitive Men’s category, we had to come up with an innovative way to communicate the core proposition of “Curing Pimples” and this idea does just that. With the various fields available for us to associate ourselves, sports was a natural choice and what better than Cricket. Cricketers are known for their performance, fitness, wellness and grooming quotient both on and off field. They become the ideal role model for young men to look upto when it comes to inculcating the habit of looking good and taking care of their skin problems. This communication blends perfectly our core proposition and this outlook towards cricketers, in helping us hit a sweet spot.”
Commenting on the unique campaign that has been rolled out, Zahid Shaikh, Head of South Operations, Motivator said, “In today’s day and age, branding has evolved to become more than just mere flashing of a logo. Moreover, audiences are increasingly connecting with brands on a conceptual level, rather than just plainly on a logo level, as the case has been traditionally. We are thrilled to see that the campaign has received an overwhelming response, ranking up 1.135 million views in just one single day on YouTube. It is further performing well on twitter’s trending charts, after creating a series of conversations on social media.”
“Consumer is exposed to several messages in a cluttered environment through the IPL season. If sponsorship has to work for the brand, it needs to be on the back of an innovative idea that links back to the brands promise. This is truly a brand innovation that spawned beyond just a logo presence and media spends,”opined Vinit Karnik, Business Head, ESP Properties.
Mumbai, 18th April, 2016: Motivator, India’s fastest growing media agency (in the last 3 years) as per RECMA 2015 has created a one-of-a-kind campaign for FMCG major Himalaya with close collaboration with ESP Properties, the entertainment and sports arm of GroupM. The innovative strategy for Himalaya Men’s Face Wash will see the brand let go off its logo for the very first time. The campaign rides on a single word ‘Pimple?’, thereby creating intrigue and sparking conversations amongst viewers this IPL.
Himalaya Men’s Face Wash has doubled its market share in its respective product category to current 8% versus a year ago with a strong distribution and smart media planning processes. The brief was to build on the momentum for the brand, where Motivator’s Team Himalaya working on their Frugal Intervention thinking framework seems to have cracked something interesting in the logo attention economy.
The envisaged strategy is being seen as a move to leverage IPL as a platform to target Himalaya’s key consumers by associating with Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) team. Through the innovative campaign, the problem being addressed by the brand is stated in a single word ‘Pimple?’ visibly inscribed on the caps of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team players.
All the team players will be seen sporting these caps in the ongoing matches of the tournament. This is further supported by the smart use of the lead players – Virat Kohli, Shane Watson, Sarfaraz Khan and Stuart Binny in a teaser film launched on Youtube video masthead and was timed to be played during IPL match breaks using special technology partner.
Giving his views on the overall strategy, Rajesh Krishnamurthy, Business Head, Himalaya said, “Sports sponsorship has always provided an ideal platform for engagement with Men. The Himalaya- Motivator- RCB Team however wanted to bring in innovation in this genre and developed a very engaging brand idea for IPL season. It provided us a great opportunity to build our brand in the growing men’s segment while creating excitement among the IPL fans. We are very excited with the way the campaign has shaped up, and we hope to build on the intrigue that we’ve created amongst viewers thus far.”
Adding on this, Ashwani Gandhi, Category Manager, Himalaya Men said, “It’s been an exciting campaign, performing beyond expectations. In this highly competitive Men’s category, we had to come up with an innovative way to communicate the core proposition of “Curing Pimples” and this idea does just that. With the various fields available for us to associate ourselves, sports was a natural choice and what better than Cricket. Cricketers are known for their performance, fitness, wellness and grooming quotient both on and off field. They become the ideal role model for young men to look upto when it comes to inculcating the habit of looking good and taking care of their skin problems. This communication blends perfectly our core proposition and this outlook towards cricketers, in helping us hit a sweet spot.”
Commenting on the unique campaign that has been rolled out, Zahid Shaikh, Head of South Operations, Motivator said, “In today’s day and age, branding has evolved to become more than just mere flashing of a logo. Moreover, audiences are increasingly connecting with brands on a conceptual level, rather than just plainly on a logo level, as the case has been traditionally. We are thrilled to see that the campaign has received an overwhelming response, ranking up 1.135 million views in just one single day on YouTube. It is further performing well on twitter’s trending charts, after creating a series of conversations on social media.”
“Consumer is exposed to several messages in a cluttered environment through the IPL season. If sponsorship has to work for the brand, it needs to be on the back of an innovative idea that links back to the brands promise. This is truly a brand innovation that spawned beyond just a logo presence and media spends,”opined Vinit Karnik, Business Head, ESP Properties.
MUMBAI OgilvyOne Worldwide’s has named Namrata Keswani as vice president and head of the Mumbai office.
Welcoming Keswani to her new role, OgilvyOne Worldwide India president Vikram Menon said “OgilvyOne has been India’s No. 1 Digital Agency for many years. Our flagship Mumbai office was recently ranked among the World’s 10 Best Digital Agencies. And to have Namrata now at the helm is truly exciting. Her varied experience across markets, brands and new media will be ideal, as OgilvyOne, Mumbai looks to set new benchmarks across the board.
Keswani said, “ OgilvyOne Mumbai has grown and transformed rapidly over the last few years into a leading digital agency. It’s a fantastic opportunity to be at its helm and chart its next chapter of growth. I hope to nurture a nimble, learning agency culture and ensure our clients see us as their partner of choice in this exciting, challenging environment where the digital landscape and consumer are evolving so dramatically.
This is a home-coming of sorts for Keswani, who began her journey with Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai, way back in 2003 where she proceeded to handle some of the agency’s most prestigious businesses. Among them were Asian Paints, Mattel, Unilever, Google, Cadbury, Taj Hotels and TBZ. She also spent a year and a half at Ogilvy Singapore where she managed the GlaxoSmithKline, American Express and Kimberly Clark businesses.
Her inherent leaning towards fashion and style, led her to the role of a Fashion Stylist at NBC in 2005 and more recently, at Condé Nast India where she led the Condé Nast factory – a content vertical for the publishing group.
MUMBAI OgilvyOne Worldwide’s has named Namrata Keswani as vice president and head of the Mumbai office.
Welcoming Keswani to her new role, OgilvyOne Worldwide India president Vikram Menon said “OgilvyOne has been India’s No. 1 Digital Agency for many years. Our flagship Mumbai office was recently ranked among the World’s 10 Best Digital Agencies. And to have Namrata now at the helm is truly exciting. Her varied experience across markets, brands and new media will be ideal, as OgilvyOne, Mumbai looks to set new benchmarks across the board.
Keswani said, “ OgilvyOne Mumbai has grown and transformed rapidly over the last few years into a leading digital agency. It’s a fantastic opportunity to be at its helm and chart its next chapter of growth. I hope to nurture a nimble, learning agency culture and ensure our clients see us as their partner of choice in this exciting, challenging environment where the digital landscape and consumer are evolving so dramatically.
This is a home-coming of sorts for Keswani, who began her journey with Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai, way back in 2003 where she proceeded to handle some of the agency’s most prestigious businesses. Among them were Asian Paints, Mattel, Unilever, Google, Cadbury, Taj Hotels and TBZ. She also spent a year and a half at Ogilvy Singapore where she managed the GlaxoSmithKline, American Express and Kimberly Clark businesses.
Her inherent leaning towards fashion and style, led her to the role of a Fashion Stylist at NBC in 2005 and more recently, at Condé Nast India where she led the Condé Nast factory – a content vertical for the publishing group.
MUMBAI: It’s not about commercial success; it’s about telling a story. It’s not about spending plenty, but it’s about innocently connecting one to nostalgia.
A brand from nowhere penetrated the Indian beverage market with a few never-heard-about drinks and in never-before-seen packaging and in no time emerged as a trend setter for others to follow. When it entered not many prophesised success, but as they progressed and hit a home run, they definitely piqued brand mavens’ interest.
Backed by Sequoia Capital start-up Hector Beverages’s Paperboat with a few million happy consumers has made a major mark in the $5.18 billion beverage market.
“956 happy people is the size of our company,” says Hector beverages CEO Neeraj Kakkar which somehow depicts the ethos the company follows.
There are three active plants in which both R&D and production takes place. The company raised about $30 million last year and pumped it into increasing manufacturing capacity.
“At this stage we are producing 420 bottles per minute. By June we will have our new plant in Mysore operating, that will spur up our production to 900 bottles per minute,” informs Kakkar.
Though Hector Beverages would like to grow further but at this stage the management is not looking to raise any further funds.
“There is no end to growth and we would like to grow further, but we have the money for now and we are not looking to raise more funds rather our focus is to launch new recipes,” says Kakkar.
Besides happy people and quality infrastructure, Hector Beverages also has 14 recipes, which previously never featured in the catalogue of traditional beverage brands. Drinks, which only grandmothers used to prepare in the Indian kitchen, were introduced in innovative packages for consumers. Be it Kokam, Aam Panna or recently launched chili guava the drinks successfully managed to take us down nostalgia lane.
Products are tested and gestated in the lab for up to three years before making it to shop shelves. “As we speak now we have more than 35 projects which we are working on. Khanji is a drink we started working on two years back and still we are not anywhere close to launching it. Recipe, research, raw material, commercialization, rollout is the broad structure that we follow,” the CEO educates.
Chilli Guava and the sweet concoction of jaggery Pannakam are the two drinks the beverage company has already launched this year and going forward the plan is to launch 10 more.
The $100 million company has secured triple digit growth last year and plans to match that number this year too. “We are poor at numbers,” says Kakkar with a wide smile “and hence will not put any number target, but as I mentioned the target is to keep the recipe alive,” he adds.
The recipes when clubbed with the TVCs Hector Beverages has been creating in association with Lowe Lintas, manage to take one to a paper boat ride down memory lane. The Malgudi Days tune paired with Gulzar’s poem and recitation are indeed an alluring hypnotic lead in to the mouth-watering fruit beverages in the TVCs. And behind all the marketing initiatives the man responsible is the company’s marketing head Parvesh Debuka.
He believes innocence is the key and that is all the brand wants to communicate. Recently the company reprinted The Jungle Book and offered it free to consumers purchasing six standi-pouches at a time. The bundle was released at a time when India was screening The Jungle Book in theatres.
“It is a co-incidence,” says Debuka, “We have been planning the reprint since a year now. That time we had no idea about when the movie will be in the theatres. This is a part of our plan to create a PaperBoat library and we reprinted Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome last year and next year too we will reprint one and give it for free to the consumers.”
The Indian ethnic drinks manufacturer targets anyone who consumes fruit beverages without any demographic segmentation. But its key target is the 20 to mid-30-yers and it’s communication is also addressed towards them.
“Digital is where we pay serious attention for its interactive nature but in terms of spend TV continues to be the focus and the return on TV is more,” says Kakkar. “This year value wise our marketing spend will go up as it will be certain per cent of the sales which has gone up significantly, but the percentile would be less than last year as last year our emphasis was on getting more awareness.”
Consumer insights play a vital role in orchestrating the road map when it comes to marketing as well as packaging, “We got feedback after we changed the cap of our packet. Someone wrote to us sharing his difficulty in opening the new package and then we immediately changed it to the butterfly one. We also use feedback to strengthen our recipes and hence they are always precious,” adds Debuka.
Paper Boat’s journey so far has shown others a new way to sail in to the beverage market and there are many now following them.
Hajmola launched Yoodley with similar packaging and identical flavours, “Competition only makes the ecosystem better, there is nothing for us to worry about. In fact I am happy that there are other players coming in, it will broaden the size of the market,” concludes Kakkar.
