Category: MAM

MUMBAI: Mudra West has won the creative duties for the Lonely Planet Magazine. The agency will help Worldwide Media Group to launch the monthly travel magazine in India.

This win comes close on the heels of Mudra West announcing its win of Filmfare less than a fortnight ago.
 
Mudra West EVP& head Arijit ray said, “Lonely Planet is an iconic and aspirational brand in the travel space. It is a privilege for us to have got the opportunity to launch the brand‘s magazine offering in the country. We look forward to working closely with the brand team to create a distinctive communication plan for Lonely Planet Magazine in India.”

Lonely Planet Magazine India brand publisher Debolin Sen said, “We liked the fact that Mudra demonstrated a very good understanding of the brand essence and their creative interpretation for the India launch campaign was equally engaging. We look forward to beginning our journey with Mudra West.”
 
After UK and Brazil, India is only the third country where Worldwide Media Group is launching Lonely Planet Magazine. The magazine will cover a mix of destinations, from both India and abroad, including practical and handy resources and a fresh take on all things travel. 
 
This is Mudra West‘s third win from the Worldwide Media Group stable. It already handles Femina and Filmfare.

MUMBAI: Karishma Initiative has won the media duties of Add Gel Pens.

The account size is pegged at Rs 150-180 million upwards. 81 YOE has been given the mandate of creative duties.

Prior to this, the media duties were handled by Prachar Communications. 
 
“We are happy to be associated with the brand Add Gel pens. We will partner with Add Gel Pens in their aggressive expansion plans and ensure efficiencies and effectiveness. It would be exciting to work on simple powerful ideas to engage the youth beyond mass media,” says Karishma Initiative‘s Himanka Das.
 
Add Pens head marketing Deepak Jain says,” In the coming year we have aggressive growth plans and we are happy to partner with Karishma Initiative and are looking forward to their expertise in constructing communication solutions to enable our marketing strategies.”

MUMBAI: Quasar Media has elevated Sandeep Singh as business head brand and media solutions for its operations in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

In his new role, Singh will be reporting to Quasar Media co-founder Manish Vij.
 
Under his new mandate, Singh will be responsible to grow the brand and media business inorganically in India and increase its market share.
 
Quasar Media‘s business director West Moneka Khurana, regional head North Piyush Rathi and regional head South Ajay Gupta will report to Singh.
 
Prior to this, he was Quasar business director and managing operations in Mumbai and Bangalore. Singh has been associated with Quasar Media for the last five years.

Prior to this, he was with Rediff.com media sales team.

MUMBAI: Sponsorship practitioners from all over Europe recorded a resounding vote of no confidence in London’s Olympic sponsorship programme and indeed Olympic sponsorship in general at ESA’s annual European flagship conference, Future Sponsorship, in London.

Over 200 figures from all areas of the sponsorship industry took part in a survey that asked the question – Are domestic Olympic packages (Locog) good value for money? 
 
A staggering 79 per cent said No. The Tier One Olympic Sponsorship Programme did not fare much better with 66 per cent of delegates believing that the IOC’s Top sponsorship programme did not represent good value for money.

Locog had some very ambitious targets for generating revenue from sponsors and certainly had some initial success in attracting sponsors for the London Games. However, as companies began to feel the full impact of the credit crunch, attracting sponsors for the Games in London in recent months has proved to be much harder. 
 
The over-riding message from several of the speakers including rights holders, sponsors, agencies, accountants and lawyers was the need in the current climate to deliver measurable returns on sponsorship investments.

Indeed one sponsor revealed that as little as 25 per cent of the measurable value of their sponsorship programmes now comes through what used to be considered sponsorship’s main asset – Media exposure and brand awareness.

As if to reinforce the results of the survey, there was a call for ‘sponsorship‘ to be reclassified and even renamed to more accurately reflect the marketing role which sponsorship is now so effectively delivering for thousands of companies and brands.
 
American sponsorship industry guru, Lesa Ukman issued a stark warning to the sponsorship industry across Europe when she revealed that in the US, any of the financial services companies that received financial help from the government were no longer allowed to undertake sponsorship programmes.

The European Sponsorship Association’s Chairman, Karen Earl was quick to pick up on Ukman’s comments, “What we heard about the American market and the new restrictions imposed on the financial institutions is extremely worrying and shows that there is still a massive lack of understanding of the potential of sponsorship as a marketing discipline.

” It is still seen by many as having philanthropic connotations and at a corporate level providing opportunities for excess and waste. The Sponsorship industry is now worth in excess of 8 billion Euros across Europe and for the leading companies and brands it is an absolutely vital component of their overall marketing plans”.
 

MUMBAI: Cequity, a data-led marketing services provider of the RK Swamy- Hansa Group, has appointed Anand Siva as business head for its newly set up unit of Customer Integrated Marketing (CIM).

Siva, who was with Saatchi & Saatchi as Mumbai VP and branch head, will focus on direct relationship and one-to-one multi-channel marketing.
 
Cequity said in a release that it is expanding its services across the country. So far Cequity has been offering data analytics, marketing analytics solutions and on-demand analytical marketing services for a host of clients in India and the US.

Cequity CEO Swaminathan said, “The CIM unit has been set-up based on the needs expressed by our clients. There was a rising necessity to combine data and integrated marketing to build direct relationships with both customers and prospects.”
 
Added Siva, “I have always been impressed by a business idea that had the marking to lead the way, change the trend. The recent recession has taught the business world important lessons in cost reduction, budget optimisation and advertising expenditure rationalisation. Cequity’s business model and the potential it had to chart a new path for businesses are what got me excited.”
Siva was with Saatchi & Saatchi for over two years, where he worked on brands like Ekp, Logan, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, Ariel, Reliance, Calcium Sandoz and Otirivin.
 
Prior to that, Siva spent 17 years at Akshara Advertising, where he was head of the Chennai and Bangalore operations, working on brands like Intel, Nortel, Tata Plantations, Fresh & Honest Cafe (now a part of Lavazza), Aircel and Indian Airlines.

Siva enabled delivery of specialised BTL services to brands like Intel, handling their B2B, channel and special vehicle projects.
 

MUMBAI: After winning the Visa account in November; OMD has now bagged the media duties of Danone.
 
According to a source close to the development, the account size is around Rs 120-150 million and will be handled out of OMD’s Delhi office.
 
OMD officials, however, refused to comment.
 
Danone, known for brands such as Volvic, Activia and Actimel, is entering the Indian market.

MUMBAI: Vyas Giannetti Creative (VGC), specializing in design and communications, has bagged the creative mandate of Borosil Glassworks wherein the agency will develop a new brand corporate identity and devise a strategic communication plan for the company. 
 
According to industry estimates, the size of the account is pegged to be in the region of Rs 100 million. 
 
Said VGC CEO and chief creative officer Preeti Vyas, “VGC is working to create strategic creative solutions for the brand communication across media using a specific set of design methodologies.”
 
VGC has launched a bouquet of specialist international design and communication verticals in association with global specialists in varied domains from Holland, the US and the UK.
 

MUMBAI: The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has floated a tender inviting bids from parties for Title Sponsorship and/or in stadia advertising for the tri nation ODI series between India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and also for the two match Test series between India and Sri Lanka in January 2010.

The BCB will announce the floor price on 5 December.
 
The ODI series will see seven matches being played. The event will air on Neo Cricket.

A party may bid for all the rights or bid for separate rights. There are two packages for the in-stadia advertising rights. 
 
One involves naming rights to the Bowling Ends, four mid wicket Pitch Mats and Boundary Rope. The other involves 24 perimeter/ground boards, Midwalls/ second tier branding and Floodlight Tower branding.

The BCB says that it has developed a detailed schedule for bid which includes a draft copy of the sponsorship rights agreement. This can be obtained by paying $500 for overseas organisations and BDT 35,000 for local oprganisations. This amount is non refundable. 
 
Bids have to be submitted on 7 December. The BCB has reserved the right to cancel or amend the entire bidding process at any stage and to reject any or all the bids without providing any reason.

MUMBAI: BEST (Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking) has awarded for three years the advertising rights to Bright Outdoor for its entire fleet of buses.
 
Bright Outdoor, which had been trying to bag the rights for the last nine years, will have to pay Rs 1.23 billion for the period 2010 to 2013. 
 
“We won the tender with a total bid amount of Rs 1.23 billion for three years. We will also get an extension of one year. We have the rights of 4605 single-decker buses and 125 double-decker buses,” says Bright Outdoor CMD Yogesh Lakhani.
 
Prior to this, Pioneer Publicity handled the ad rights for BEST’s buses for the last seven years.

Others who participated in the tender included Pioneer Publicity, Jagran Engage, Gold Mine Advertising, Sambhaav Media and Rajdeep Buildcon.

MUMBAI: 63336 (formerly known as AQA 63336), a UK-based text question and answer service, is set to launch a Christmas marketing campaign on 30 November with its first television advert as it seeks to acquire new customers and increase question volume.

The advert, “I am one of the 63336” has been developed and produced using an innovative creative process started in September 2009. Eschewing the traditional advertising pitch approach, 63336 ran a competition that saw 17 teams of creative directors presenting ideas based on the brief – to get customers to text questions to 63336. 
 
Said 63336 CEO Colly Myers, “Our challenge has always been how to effectively market a number, 63336, to an audience which compels them to text a question. For the last two years, we‘ve followed the traditional method of developing ideas by going through pitch processes, and putting on retainer a number of the most ‘creative‘ agencies in the UK. Not only has this been very expensive and time consuming, but we‘ve never achieved a satisfactory result.”
 
Rather than focusing on user generated content, the 63336 creative competition only focused on experienced UK creative talent. Similar to processes used by venture capital companies, the concept was to get as many teams as possible to submit ideas, from a very tight brief, from which a winning concept could be selected.

The competition was developed with Goodstuff communications, who are also responsible for managing the media buying. The Gallery Network was employed to run the competition, and then manage, develop, and produce the final television advert. The 63336 advert competition took three weeks, the eventual winners being ‘Tim & Michael‘ with their advert idea ‘I am one of the 63336‘.
 
“The Gallery Network were pivotal in the creation of our TV advert. They were able to bring teams of senior advertising executives to work on creative ideas for us, and once we‘d picked a winner, the Gallery managed the whole process of getting directors and producers to deliver a TV advert on a tight budget and timescale,” commented Colly Myers. “The team has created an exceptional advert and we‘re confident that this will attract large numbers of new customers.”