

MUMBAI: Leo Burnett India has bagged the account of Sterlite Technologies, which is a provider of solutions for high speed data and power transmission networks. The agency won the account after a multi agency pitch.
This marks as a step to redefine the company’s brand purpose keeping in mind the changing market landscape and opportunities in its field of operation.
Sterlite Technologies CEO Dr Anand Agarwal said, “In line with our current organisational demerger, we wish to redefine our core purpose and communicate clearly what we do, and how we make a difference in the life of every one who is connected to us. It is with this belief we have appointed Leo Burnett, which has a rich history of defining the purpose for many great brands and helping them grow in complex business scenarios. They will help us re-define and disseminate our purpose amongst our employees and other stakeholders, thus laying a robust foundation for future growth.”
Sterlite Technologies recently completed the acquisition of Elitecore Technologies, a global telecom software product company in a bid to widen its telecom portfolio of offering to global customers.
Leo Burnett India CEO Saurabh Verma added, “We are witnessing a tremendous change on a global and socioeconomic landscape, thanks to the evolution of Internet and a greater degree of connectivity. The services provided by Sterlite are at the very core of this spurt, impacting positively at micro and macro levels. It is very exciting to partner a company that is playing a key role in the changing dynamics of technology in our lives. We will deploy our HumanKind tools to re-define Sterlite’s human purpose and help create a sustainable brand identity amongst the company’s stakeholders. We hope our rich experience in this field will eventually prove to be of great value to the organisation.”

MUMBAI: OgilvyOne Worldwide India has named Vipul Salvi as executive creative director with effect from 16 November, 2015.
Salvi said, “In the communications domain, customisation is the next big leap and digital media is the vehicle that will allow us to deliver tailor made campaigns for individuals, not just groups or categories of consumers. OgilvyOne is India’s No. 1 Digital Agency that has been consistently delivering award winning campaigns in this space, so to be apart of OgilvyOne’s future is very exciting.”
OgilvyOne Worldwide India president and country head Vikram Menon added, “We have very ambitious plans for OgilvyOne, and Vipul’s mix of skills across advertising, activation and digital, clubbed with his enthusiasm to try new things is just what we need to infuse a fresh lease of creative energy across our offices, and get them working closer together to deliver better programs for our clients Vipul joins OgilvyOne from Geometry Global, where he led the transition of Ogilvy Action to Geometry Global, and helped build a completely new and contemporary reputation for the division across its offerings of Shopper, Rural and Experiential Marketing.”
At Ogilvy, Salve’s most recognised work was ‘The Lifebuoy Roti Reminder’ program, which won a Silver Clio, a bronze Lion and several other regional and international awards. Outside of advertising, he devoted a couple of years of his life to art starting with his first showing as an artist in 2007, and was nominated the year after under ’50 best artists of modern India’ at a Delhi art show.

MUMBAI: Mindshare has bagged the media duties for Byju’s – The Learning App. The account will be handled out of the agency’s Mumbai office.
Founded by Byju Raveendran, Byju’s is an education technology company and a subsidiary brand of Think and Learn. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital and Manipal Group’s Dr. Ranjan Pai and T.V. Mohandas Pai.
Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar said, “We are extremely glad to associate with Byju’s Classes. With the growth seen in the digital industry, we are channelizing our services and talent towards frameworks and tools that include adaptive and real- time marketing, giving our clients the edge in an ever-evolving media market.”
Raveendran added, “Mindshare demonstrated their ability to transform consumer understanding in to a strategic vision for the brand and bringing it alive through their original thinking framework. This partnership with Mindshare will definitely be a positive one and we look forward to building Think and Learn as the largest online education institution.”

MUMBAI: Marketing solutions company Alchemist has launched a specialist agency called Clay to solely cater to brands in the booming real estate sector.
Clay will be helmed by Farhan Khan as business head and COO, who was previously with Xeco Marketing as COO.
Along with Khan, Clay has also roped in communication specialists and associate managing consultants Anushree Murkute and Amy Mathew with their respective teams. Both Murkute and Mathew come from an advertising background.
With offices in Mumbai and Gurgaon, Clay started out with five retainer and three project based clients. The retainer clients include Disha Direct and Nirvana Reality, Rajasthan based ARG Group, Delhi basd Novell and real estate technology start-up Realty Redefined.
The Clay division will report in to Alchemist CEO Anujita Jain. “Clay is providing genuine strategic advice and execution together, a never before complete solution from under one roof. It will be giving through the line services to the currently pressured Real Estate segment. These include brand and communication strategy, advertising, direct marketing, CRM, events and activations, lead generation and management, digital and social activation, velebrity endorsements and more.”
Alchemist director and magicbricks.com founding member Rajkumar Remalli added, “Clay is about creating brands in the real estate world, which was hitherto ruled just by project launches, successes and failures. No more will investments made in one product be non-cumulative to others by the same corporate brand.”
Clay also has its own creative, digital, CRM and events and activation support teams. The agency will draw on Alchemist’s strengths in outdoor advertising and celebrity management combined with new skills and ideas.
Khan said, “I have seen clients yearning for true strategic advice and the commitment of the same advisors to walk the talk and talk. Clay is meant to do exactly that. We have already done invaluable value addition and created IPs for our clients in this little time we have been operational. Establishment of World Broker’s Day is one such proud achievement.”
The company has also initiated the celebration of World Broker’s Day on 9 June every year. This is an insight driven strategy for the real estate brokers, for recognising their thankless services they provide to the customers. The campaign climaxed with a packed audience convention on WBD in Mumbai. Apart from benchmark ideas, Clay is navigating clients through the current challenges and pressures and has several projects line up like Wollywood, City of Music, ARG One, Maple Leaf, Reso’villa, R Square, Agent Search, etc.
Disha Direct MD Santosh Naik said, “In Alchemist and Clay we find partners who do what they say. They walk towards results and go beyond the brief. They provide business strategy and not just marketing. They execute for results, not applauses. I am glad we connected and are working together.”
Alchemist MD Manish Porwal added, “Brand Clay is the first of many specialized communication solutions that you will now hear from Alchemist. The next quarter for Alchemist is full of preparations for future that will change a bit of the communication landscape. We are excited and so are our clients.”

MUMBAI: Media and entertainment entrepreneurs in Asia can look forward to another potential investor in their initiatives, courtesy Emerald Media. Emerald is a new media investment vehicle which has been set up by global investment film KKR and the Chernin Group – promoted by former News Corp top boss Peter Chernin. KKR has committed up to $300 million to the Emerald Media platform from its KKR Asian Fund II and The Chernin Group will join as a minority co-investor.
KKR has also acquired a significant, minority stake in CA Media, the existing Asian media portfolio of The Chernin Group.
Industry veterans Rajesh Kamat and Paul Aiello, who have so far been managing CA Media, will jointly head Emerald Media and will be joined by an experienced team of operating executives. Emerald Media will have offices in Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Singapore. CA Media, which has assets in India (Endemol Shine India, Graphic India, Fluence, and Only Much Louder) and in Indonesia in its portfolio, will continue to be headed by Kamat and Aiello.
The duo together has more than 30 years of experience in the media and entertainment industries in Asia. They bring a unique blend of operational and investment acumen to their business approach. Mr. Aiello is the current Group CEO of CA Media, the former CEO of News Corp.’s Star TV Asia, and former Head of TMT investment banking at Morgan Stanley Asia. . Kamat is currently the Group COO of CA Media and was formerly COO of Viacom18 Group and CEO of Colors.
Emerald Media will focus primarily on providing growth capital ranging from US$15 million-US$75 million for both control and significant minority positions to media, entertainment, and digital media businesses in Asia.
Joseph Y. Bae, Member of KKR & Managing Partner of KKR Asia, said, “The growing middle class in the region is using its discretionary income on Internet connectivity, but the industry itself is fragmented. Investing behind proven leaders in industries with high growth potential and partnering with them to grow their business is a cornerstone of KKR’s Asia strategy. We look forward to working with experienced media leaders Rajesh and Paul in this dynamic sector.”
Sanjay Nayar, Member of KKR & CEO of KKR India, added, “The media, entertainment and digital media segment across Asia especially in India enjoys attractive macro fundamentals, mirroring the trajectory of the region’s consumer sector. This is a fragmented industry, and we are excited to work with industry veterans to identify the next generation of media and entertainment companies we can partner with and support.”
Peter Chernin, Chairman and CEO of The Chernin Group, noted: “This partnership provides TCG and its fellow investors in CA Media with a unique opportunity to continue to work with a best in class management team and leading global investors at KKR in Asia.”
“The media and entertainment sector is on the cusp of a strong growth phase—driven by media convergence, an attractive investment environment, and rising discretionary spends. With the building blocks for growth in place, there is a significant opportunity to create a diversified portfolio of assets in this space, building on our accomplishments and ongoing work with CA Media and The Chernin Group,” said Rajesh Kamat.
Paul Aiello further added, “With the Asia media industry experiencing rapid and transformational changes driven by digitization and growing internet and mobile penetration, Emerald Media will invest across mediums, demographics, and revenue models to continue driving such transformation.”

MUMBAI: Viacom and TiVo Research and Analytics have inked a new strategic alliance focused on advancing Viacom’s proprietary data and advertising solutions.
Viacom’s innovative data and ad products have led the industry in recent years with predictive tools such as Vantage and Echo Social Graph that hyper-target consumers. The first such alliance for TiVo with a media company, TiVo Research’s suite of single-source measurement tools will integrate with Viacom Vantage’s advanced predictive engine to augment its precision and consumer targeting capabilities.
The new collaboration also provides Viacom Velocity and Velocity Products Group — the company’s creative content/integrated media group and the newly formed group that brings multi-platform social partnerships, products, and services to clients — with more data that can help increase the impact of custom campaigns and further expands the unique analytics delivered to ad partners.
TiVo Research senior vice president and general manager Frank Foster said, “This integration will make Viacom the first network to offer advertisers true single-source solutions for audience targeting and measurement. The combination of Viacom’s advanced predictive engine and TiVo’s anonymized, granular set-top box data, matched directly to purchase and consumer engagement data in a privacy protected manner, allows advertisers to see much more than if their campaign was viewed. This partnership will not only enable advertisers to see how effectively a campaign reached the target audience, but it will shed light on whether the campaign enticed consumers to take action such as going to a store or buying a product.”
“Viacom Vantage is on a mission to transform TV advertising through advanced targeting and prediction. The integration of TiVo’s single-source database significantly enhances our data capabilities across our advanced advertising products, Vantage, Velocity and Echo, delivering truly unique value to our customers,” added Data Strategy senior vice president Bryson Gordon.
Advertisers have been calling for new approaches to measurement and targeting to address the many ways audiences consume content across devices and platforms both in and out of the home. To determine how media spend drives consumer behavior and product sales, TiVo Research has built the industry’s largest cross-media single-source panel, including second-by-second tune-in data anonymously matched to online exposure and purchase data for more than two million US homes. Viacom, which reaches a cumulative 3.4 billion television subscribers worldwide and 650 million social media followers, will unlock new capabilities for its marketing and advertising partners through an advanced application of its predictive engine to this sophisticated data set.

MUMBAI: Reliance Jio senior vice president – marketing Nikhil Rungta as joined real estate giant Housing.com as chief marketing officer.
Rungta replaces Pratik Seal, who resigned from his post in September this year.
Prior to Reliance Jio, Rungta served as the CMO for Google in India for four years. He also played key business leadership roles at start-ups like Yebhi and Yatra.com.
Housing.com chief business officer Jason Kothari said, “Nikhil is one of India’s leading marketers who has achieved remarkable success during his career. For the last two decades, he has worked in leadership roles across sales, marketing and e-commerce with both multinationals and start-ups. He has a deep understanding of the Indian consumer market and has used a mix of traditional marketing and digital media to grow world-class businesses and brands from the ground up. His rich experience will be a valuable addition to Housing.com’s growth plans and senior management team. We are very excited to have him on board with us.”
Appreciating Housing.com’s disruptive approach to the market, Rungta said, “Housing, like Apple, has a great mix of technology and design thinking, their UI and UX is world class. They are making the home buying decision much easier for customers. The company has all the ingredients to become the next unicorn from India, and I am really excited to be a part of this journey with Housing. I would like to quote Travis Kalanick – CEO of Uber – ‘There are certain things in life where you have to go for it – just for the sheer adventure of it, and also for the potential.”