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Kids’ candy segment: Communication sees a shift

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MUMBAI: The lure of candies and chocolates for kids has been a trait that confectionery makers never failed at. With the 1990s bringing jellies and fruit chews to Indian kids, technology has enabled for the acceptance of a wider range of sweetmeats today and would even coax their parents to spend a little more on premium items.

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Sugar candies today include hard candies, soft candies, caramels, marshmallows, taffy, and other candies whose principal ingredient is sugar. The penetration of confectionery items in India is just 60 per cent, versus the 90-93 per cent of biscuits. This leaves a huge opportunity to grow. Parle Products category head Krishnarao Buddha believes that the Indian confectionery segment hasn’t evolved much in comparison to other counterparts of the world.

Advertisers have also changed the messaging to suit the shorter attention span of the kids of today using animals, fantasy or cartoon characters. Dentsu India senior vice president and head of planning Vishal Nicholas affirms that advertising today has also gotten rid of the precocious, over smart kid as the protagonist and is getting more real.

Perfetti Van Melle India director of marketing Rohit Kapoor opines that today the messaging has become simpler, direct, routed in product truth yet maintaining the entertainment quotient. The brand is the third largest confectionery manufacturer in the world that has products like Alpenliebe, Big Babol, Centre Fresh, Fruittella, Mentos among others in its kitty.

While TV is still the lead medium from both a storytelling and reach perspective, digital becomes a strong medium for kids over eight years of age. Kids today not only play games on mobiles but are increasingly using computers for school projects and assignments, resulting in a rise of engagement with screens and technology. Some reports estimate time spent on digital mediums at almost 50 minutes a day.

Hence, creating campaigns specifically targeted at kids can be a challenge as they are impressionable minds and tend to get influenced by whatever they see, so advertising has to be fun but responsible.

Kids are undoubtedly more fun than adults and putting them in adult-like situations gives a comic relief to viewers while also bringing relativity. Remember the ever-loved Flipkart campaigns that portray kids acting as adults? Stressing that it’s an immense creative challenge, The Glitch creative director Prashant Kohli suggests that brands and agencies need to be conscious and conscientious of what they advertise to kids around the world and although it seems like an obvious fact, it can get tricky to observe objectively in an adult world. “Campaigns crafted for them, need to be designed like stories they’d like to pick up from, craft their own versions, and tell their friends as their new story,” he adds. 

For Parle Products, television is still the best medium to communicate with kids and get the message across followed by school, on-ground activations and advertising in kids movies. Perfetti Van Melle India vouches for television followed by digital platforms. “What we see clearly is that viewership in kids has become even more fragmented with a significant portion of kids viewership on GECs. OTT platforms, gaming on digital could get relevance in near future as these gain scale in the kids genre,” says Kapoor. 

Having a well-distributed network and making sure the product reached the right audience at the right time is the core of any business strategy. Since kids are very fickle about their choices and prefer buying attractive-looking products, it is a constant battle among marketers to make sure their products are always available on the shelf for children to see them. Parle Products has access to over 6.2 million outlets in India where the company’s biscuits are available in across 60 million outlets and confectionery in 0.65 million outlets. The company has a stronger indirect distribution than direct. 

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Kapoor informs that Perfetti Van Melle continues to work on making sure that the products are available to consumers across the spectrum of outlets and have a good mix of direct and indirect distribution. 

In 2017, Parle Products achieved a 15-18 per cent of growth and projects to cross 20 per cent growth in 2018-19 in the confectionery business. The company is the second largest confectionery and biscuits brand in India that produces Parle G, Poppins, Kismi, Melody, Mango Bite among others. On the other hand, Perfetti Van Melle India registered a net profit of Rs 40 crore during the financial year to March 2017 which was a rise of 24 per cent.

Brands still have a long way to go in rural penetration with premium products such as Kinder Joy, Choco pie, M&M and Ferrero Rocher being close to invisible in rural department stores. 

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MAM

Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement

Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted

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MUMBAI: Nielsen is taking a fresh stab at one of television’s oldest blind spots: how many people are actually watching the same screen. The audience-measurement giant on February 4 unveiled a co-viewing pilot that uses wearable devices to better capture shared viewing, starting with America’s biggest broadcast stage.

The trial begins with Super Bowl LX on NBC on February 8, 2026, before extending to other high-profile live sports and entertainment events in the first half of the year. The goal is simple but commercially potent: count viewers more accurately, especially during live spectacles that pull families and friends to one screen.

The new approach leans on Nielsen’s proprietary wearable meters, wrist-worn devices that resemble smartwatches. These passively capture audio signatures from TV content, logging exposure to shows, films and live events without requiring viewers to sign in or self-report. In theory, fewer clicks, fewer lapses, better data.

Karthik Rao, Nielsen’s ceo, cast the move as part of a broader measurement push. He said the company’s task is to keep pushing accuracy as clients invest heavily in live programming that draws mass audiences. The co-viewing pilot, he added, builds on upgrades such as Big Data + Panel measurement, out-of-home expansion, live-streaming metrics and wearable-based tracking.

Co-viewing is not new territory for Nielsen, which has long tried to estimate how many people sit before a single set. What is new is the heavier integration of wearables and passive detection to reduce reliance on active inputs from panel homes.

For now, the pilot comes with caveats. Co-viewing estimates from the trial will not be folded into Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel ratings, which remain the industry’s trading currency. Instead, pilot findings will be shared with clients a few weeks after final Big Data + Panel ratings are delivered. Clients may disclose those findings publicly.

More impact data will follow later this year. Full integration into Nielsen’s marketing-intelligence suite is slated as a longer-term play, with a target of bringing co-viewing into currency measurement for the 2026–2027 season. This is only phase one, with further co-viewing enhancements planned beyond 2026 and additional timelines to be announced.

The push fits a wider pattern. Nielsen has in recent years expanded big-data integration, adopted first-party data for live-streaming measurement and broadened out-of-home tracking. It also positions itself as the reference point for streaming metrics through products such as The Gauge and the Nielsen Streaming Top 10.

In a market where billions of ad dollars hinge on decimal points, counting who is in the room matters. If Nielsen can pin down shared viewing, the humble sofa could become prime measurement real estate. The race to count every eyeball just found a new wrist to watch.

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Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board

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Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.

Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.

“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.

The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.

Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.

The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.

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MAM

Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships

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SINGAPORE: Anuvrat Rao has taken charge as APAC  head of commerce and signals partnerships at Meta, steering monetisation deals across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp from Singapore. The former Google executive, known for launching Google Assistant, PWAs, AMP and Firebase across Asia-Pacific, steps into the role after a high-growth stint as chief business officer at Locofy.ai.

At Locofy.ai, Rao helped convert a three-year free beta into a paid engine, clocking 1,000 subscribers and 15 enterprise clients within ten days of launch in September 2024. The low-code startup, backed by Accel and top tech founders, is famed for turning designs into production-ready code using proprietary large design models.

Before that, Rao founded generative AI venture 1Bstories, which was acquired by creative AI platform Laetro in mid-2024, where he briefly served as managing director for APAC. Alongside operating roles, he has been an active investor and advisor since 2020, backing startups such as BotMD, Muxy, Creator plus, Intellect, Sealed and CricFlex through a creator-economy-led thesis.

Rao spent over eight years at Google, holding senior partnership roles across search, assistant, chrome, web and YouTube in APAC, and earlier cut his teeth in strategy consulting at OC&C in London and investment finance at W. P. Carey in Europe and the US.

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