Category: MAM

MUMBAI: Saturday‘s US-Ghana match on broadcaster ABC, which resulted in a 2-1 US loss in extra time and eliminated the Americans from the tournament, is the most-watched Fifa World Cup game among households and viewers in the US.

The 2.5 hour match window averaged an 8.2 rating, 9.4 million households, and 14.9 million viewers, based on fast nationals.
 
The US-Ghana game ranks as the most-watched Men‘s World Cup game ever, with only the 1999 Women‘s Final (US-China) averaging more households and viewers for a soccer game (11.3 million households and 17.9 million viewers).

Additionally, the match ranks as the third highest-rated Men‘s World Cup game on record, behind two matches in 1994 – 9.3 rating (US-Brazil, Quarterfinal, 7/4/94) and 9.5 rating (Italy-Brazil, Final, 7/17/94). The 1999 Women‘s World Cup Final (US-China) also delivered an 11.4 rating.

The US-Ghana match represents increases of 11 per cent in ratings (vs. 7.4) and 13 per cent in viewership (versus 13.1 million) from the US-England World Cup game on 12 June which ended in a 1-1 draw.
 
The entire three-hour telecast – including 30 minutes of pre-match coverage – delivered a 7.5 household rating, 8.6 million households, and 13.5 million viewers.

San Diego was the top market for the match delivering a 15.4 rating. San Diego was also the top market for all three previous US matches – vs. England (11.5, ABC), vs. Slovenia (8.5, ESPN) and vs. Algeria (8.9, ESPN). Rounding out the top 10 for Saturday‘s match were Washington, D.C. (13.8), San Francisco (13.3), Cincinnati (12.9), Las Vegas (11.7), Austin (11.4), Columbus, Ohio (10.6), Norfolk, Va. (10.6), Seattle-Tacoma (10.6) and West Palm Beach (10.5). 
 
Also, ESPN‘s Uruguay-South Korea Round of 16 match on Saturday morning delivered a 2.5 coverage rating (2.2 US rating), 2.5 million households, and 3.2 million viewers.

Through 50 games of the 2010 Fifa World Cup, the ESPN networks (ESPN/ESPN2/ABC) are averaging a 1.8 US rating, 2 million households, and 2 million viewers. The rating is up 48 per cent from 2006 (1.2), while household impressions are up 54 per cent (from 1.3 milion) and viewers are up 60 per cent (from 1.7 million).

Now that America is out it remains to be sen what kind of viewership the rest of the tournament gets.

MUMBAI: India ended its winning run at Cannes with a tally of 17 metals, the last one coming from Ogilvy in the form of a silver Lion in the Film category.

The end show paled in comparison with last year’s kitty of 25 metals and 23 metals in 2008, prompting criticism that agencies in India need to improve their creative craft.
 
The solitary silver out of the five shortlisted entries was produced by Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai for its Bell Bajao campaigns – Software Engineer and Bus Driver against domestic violence for Breakthrough Trust. The campaigns were based on true stories of people who joined the movement against domestic violence.
 
Fevicol Moustache (Moochhwali campaign) for Pidilite Industries (Ogilvy Mumbai) and LMN campaigns titled Tummy and Water Hose (Creativeland Asia) were the other final shortlists from India. 
 
The Grand Prix winner in Film turned out to be a classic television commercial that broke the barriers between mediums. The ‘man your man could smell like’ campaign for Old Spice was “a game changer for the brand.”
 

MUMBAI: As players continue to set their goals in South Africa, India is keeping its soccer interests alive. The championship has seen a surge in reach over the previous 2006 edition but the ratings have dipped..

The Fifa World Cup 2010 is 26-match old and has already reached out to 42.1 million viewers in the country, taking an absolute 50 per cent jump in the eyeballs it had snatched during its 2006 version.

The average TVR for the championship till now (11 June – 19 June), however, has been almost 30 per cent down over the previous season length, indicating an obvious dip in the interest levels as scorelines remained unflattering with most teams choosing the defensive strategy instead of the attacking one. The average TVR for the matches this year is 0.75 while that of the first 26 games of the 2006 tourney was 1.75 TVR.
 
It was the fight between Argentina and Nigeria that fetched the maximum average TVR with 1.64 ratings, but nevertheless failed to score higher than the 2006 Germany vs Costa Rica match that had averaged 2.29 TVR. (TAM C&S 4+, All India).

As reported earlier, the opening game between South Africa and Mexico got a cumulative reach of 10.8 million this time. In 2006, the inaugural match between Germany and Costa Rica had fetched a cumulative reach of 9 million.
 
 
Meanwhile, come what may, devotion for the game remains undeterred in the soccer-loving states of Assam, West Bengal and Kerala. While the average TVR for the game is the highest in Assam with 3.9 TVR, Bengal and Kerala have averaged 3.4 TVR and 3.3 TVR respectively.

The top advertising categories for the soccer cup championship this season are cellular phones, cellular phone service, two wheelers, DTH service providers, non aerated soft drinks, aerated soft drinks, automobiles, lubricants, spices and televisions.
 
Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel, Nokia Corporation, Hero Honda Motors, Samsung India Electronics, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Spice Mobiles, Micromax Informatics, Parle Agro and Coca-Cola are the top 10 advertisers.

The 10 brands advertising during the tourney are Vodafone Cellular Phone Service, Nokia E72, Hero Honda Karizma ZMR, Airtel Cellular Phone Service, Airtel Digital TV, Spice Video Phones, Coca Cola, Micromax Bling Q55, Samsung Corby Colours and Samsung Corby TV.

BANGALORE: Libra Interactive Learning (Libra) has planned an aggressive media campaign across newsprint, television, radio, internet, events and infrastructure up-gradation at various contact points to promote the English learning programme, SpeakToday.
 
The company plans to spend over Rs 150 million in the next 2-3 years to create brand awareness about the interactive learning solution.

Said Libra’s Head of Finance and Accounts Henry Amalraj, “By next week, we should have some print ads out, and once our interactive learning solutions for Hindi and Tamil are launched, we will also have a number of TVC spots on news channels like NDTV, Zee News, India Today. This will happen over the next six weeks.”
 
SpeakToday is a software product that can train people to improve oral English communications as well as help refine the English accent.

Libra MD Sunjay Aryan said, “2010 is expected to create 2 million jobs in the organized retail sector and around 2.3 million people could be needed by the BPO sector. Both these sectors require proficiency in English, an ability that is often absent amongst many high school and undergraduate youth.”
 
At present SpeakToday is being hawked through the franchisee route and through ‘30 Smart Centers’ in India. Libra plans to up this number to 3,000 by the end of this fiscal.
 

MUMBAI: LIC Nomura Mutual Fund has appointed RK Swamy BBDO as its new creative partner following a multi-agency pitch.

The other agencies that contended for this account include JWT, Mudra, Draftfcb Ulka, Dentsu and McCann.
 
Said RK Swamy BBDO President (West) & executive creative director Sangeetha N, “The campaigns will role out two months from now. Initially, we will focus on the launch of the entity and then move forward gradually.”
 
Meanwhile, it is Media Direction that has bagged media duties for the account. 
 
Japan-based Nomura had bought a 35 per cent stake in LIC Mutual Fund in 2009 and made its foray into the Indian market.

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.”