Executive Dossier

“Content is a key pillar to provide breakthrough solutions for clients”: Kartik Sharma

Published

11 years ago

September 22, 2014

He took charge in January this year and since then there has been no looking back.

The humble and calm, Kartik Sharma, the managing director south Asia of Maxus, has had a great year, so far. Maxus India began 2014 on a high note with several breakthrough campaigns like “Power of 49” for Tata Tea, winning business worth Rs 300 crore, new senior management appointments. The ‘agency of the year’ title at Emvies 2014 was the cherry on the cake.

Sharma has been with the company for seven years and has contributed to shaping the Maxus brand, creating client delight and helping Maxus dominate industry awards along with Ajit Varghese who has been appointed CEO Asia Pacific.

The agency was named as the fastest growing media agency by RECMA and retained the title of the most “dominant” agency profile for the fourth year in a row in 2013.

Indiantelevison.com’s Meghna Sharma spoke to the man, who specialises in communication planning, behavioural economics, media research, analytics and technology, to know what Sharma attributes these achievements to; his blueprint for the agency in the coming months, and industry’s forecast.

Excerpts…

How does it feel to be the ‘Media Agency of the Year’? What made you differ from the competition?

It’s a fantastic feeling to be ‘The’ media agency of the year, something which we have been dreaming for over seven years. Emvies being the most coveted and respected forums in India, winning here gives us tremendous satisfaction as the award is a reflection of effective work done for clients. The difference over competition is our focus across all clients (we won a metal for 10 clients) and across various categories suggest Maxus’s focus across various disciplines which we have been building over the years. Some of our competitors have won only on a few clients.

Your client Tata Beverages won the ‘Client of the Year’ for ‘Power of 49’ campaign. Were you expecting it? According to you, what made the campaign a success?

We were expecting good wins for the ‘Power of 49’ campaign. The client of the year was a bonus. The reason for the success of the campaign was that it was based on some fantastic insights and impeccable execution. Also, the entire timing of the campaign enhanced the effectiveness of the campaign.

It’s not even been a year since you took charge as MD, how has the journey been so far?

The journey so far has been fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for more. Apart from winning the Emvies ‘agency of the year,’ Maxus has been winning consistently over the last few months. Consistent wins across award forum which includes Asian Marketing effectiveness awards for data analytics innovation, win at the WPP Atticus on analytics, recent wins at the MMA, Smarties (1 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze), again Agency of the year at the Big Bang held by Ad club Bangalore, highest award at the WPPED cream awards clearly indicates the focus that Maxus has on doing effective work across clients.

Apart from the wins, we have added several senior leaders to Maxus who have rich experience in building brands. This helps us do cutting edge work for our clients. Overall, it has been an extremely satisfying journey so far, with many more exciting projects for the rest of the year.

The year 2014 has started on a good note for Maxus with over Rs 300 crore businesses. What would you attribute it to?

Our record at pitches is at the back of integrated thinking that we bring to the table backed by great insight. Every pitch we work very hard irrespective of the size of the business. We spend a lot of time understanding the brand challenge which helps us craft integrated communication solutions and not media plans.

Apart from this, a lot of emphasis is also on delivering ROI and measurement.

You also bought in new people to strengthen the team. What will they be looking and what more can we expect from Maxus in the coming months?

All our senior leadership’s single line mandate is to provide client delight. Till now they have done a fantastic job and even in the future the mandate won’t change. Our goal is always to be the trusted partner for all our clients.

The agency recently launched Resolve. What was the idea behind launching it and what has been the response from the clients on it?

In today’s complex and dynamic media environment the shift from media plan to communication plan was imminent. We saw this coming and started work nearly three years ago where Maxus India worked with the global leadership team to develop a proprietary framework called “Relationship Media” (RM). The heart of RM is the ever evolving and non-linear purchase pathway & media has a critical role to play in this pathway. Also the pathway changes dramatically by the category type. All the standard industry tools cover very limited touch points and also do not factor the brand/category challenge. For example whether you are selling a financial product or auto, which are typically targeted towards say men, the standard industry tools will throw similar media choices. This is because they don’t address consumer pathways. They just look at plain demographics. Resolve was our answer to address this challenge where more than 60 touch points are captured, the pathway for each category is mapped and a multi touchpoint optimisation now made possible at the hands of our planners. It’s a revolutionary tool which uses primary research done by Point logic for 25 categories with a sample size of more than 2000 individuals.

The beauty of the tool is that it recommends the media task for the brand (beyond just building salience) and shows the most influential touch points (beyond just reach) to achieve a particular task. We have received extremely positive feedback across clients as such a tool doesn’t exist and is able to add terrific value to their communication plans.

Digital, data and technology were identified as the key growth drivers for Maxus. What are the key areas for you?

I mentioned earlier in the year that Maxus will focus on digital, data and technology and there is no change in that. Additionally, I would say content is a key pillar, which can provide breakthrough solutions for clients. The ‘Power of 49’ campaign is a good example of the same. Over the next few months you will hear many more case studies from Maxus.

Today digital is no longer just another medium but has become an integral part of a marketer’s plan. What digital strategies do clients expect from Maxus?

The digital landscape is an ever evolving area and most of our clients expect integrated full service solutions from us. In fact we currently do many things beyond digital planning & buying. We work in other areas such as owned media management, social, creative development, website development and even CRM.

Name some of your best digital campaigns.

The list is pretty large. In no particular order a few examples are our search work for Fiat which was appreciated and won many awards. Our campaigns for Tata Sky where we demonstrated the product features across various websites using the remote and not the status bar, Vodafone Selfie is a great example of meshing digital with activation and many many more.

GroupM revised annual advertising expenditure (AdEx) estimates for 2014 to 12.5 per cent from 11.6 per cent. What are the reasons for it? Which sectors are spending and how is the year looking?

The sentiment post elections have been positive with a new and stable government. One of the key sectors adding to growth is retail and more specifically e-commerce brands. They are aggressively investing in building brands in both traditional and digital media. Other industries like auto, telecom, financial services & FMCG are expected to increase spends.

What are the challenges ahead for you and Maxus?

Currently, one of the key ingredients of our past few years’ success has been the culture and that’s critical for us to maintain at all times. The key challenge is to maintain the culture of Maxus at all times. At the end of the day ours is a people business and if we can keep the culture intact which we define as PACE (Passion, Agile, Collaborative & Entrepreneurial) then we will be in a good place.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

1 week ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

2 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.