MAM
Marketing lessons a la AAP
MUMBAI: The recent-concluded Delhi elections, took everyone by surprise when Aam Admi Party won 28 seats. We take a look at what one can learn from the new entrant.
When it was formed less than a year ago on 26 November, 2012, little did the Aam Aadmi Party imagine it would make such a big splash at the polls.
Winning 28 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly elections on 8 December, the AAP came a close second to the BJP which won 31 seats, pushing the ruling Congress to an irrelevant third position. What’s more, three-time Congress CM Sheila Dixit suffered defeat at the hands of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. Before the elections, the now ex-CM of the national capital, didn’t think before making statements like, “Arvind isn’t even on our radar.” Dixit probably forgot the legend of David Vs Goliath.
For a fledgling party which emerged as an offshoot of the larger ‘India against Corruption’ movement launched by activist Anna Hazare -where people took to the streets to protest the many ills plaguing the current administration – this is no mean feat.
And neither is the fact that AAP – registered as a political party with the Election Commission (EC) only in March this year – has successfully met the EC’s criteria to become a state party.
So what did the AAP do right to banish all the scepticism its broom-wielding members met with from seasoned politicians who dismissed the party, at least initially, as ‘chillar’ or worse, a group that made a lot of noise but had no real impact.
Looking at the AAP’s historic win from a marketing perspective, we at indiantelevision.com believe brands may do well to take a few lessons from the party’s promotional strategy:
* Strong USP
Each brand need to have a very strong USP which helps position it in the minds of the target audience. AAP’s USP is that it gives the common man a belief, a hope, that there is going to be a better tomorrow, and that it has been created by the common man who is fed up of the politics of politics, and will hence deliver on its promise.
*Be consistent
At the heart of the AAP’s party manifesto is its stand against corruption – which cuts through classes. And it has not deviated from that. It has refused to ally with either the Congress (I) or the BJP, despite there being a possibility of it occupying the seats of power in Delhi.
Brands need to stick to their core premise and promise and not try to ride fads.
* Marry your brand USP with the brand mnemonics
The AAP has always had one agenda – the aam aadmi, and it has stayed true to it ever since inception. Party members are common people who have volunteered and are unpaid. They come across as common people; they dress up like common people; they move around like common people. Even though many of them are well educated.
And during this election campaign there was none of the largesse distribution or ostentation that the general political parties generally resort.
The choice of name and the symbol in the case of the AAP was also crucial. The name says it all -Aam Aadmi Party. Then the symbol was the killer: what is the one thing that is still common across all homes in India, even in middle-class and upper class homes and hutments – it is the broom. Using the broom as the mnemonic meant many things: it will be used to sweep clean all the dirt in the political system, while it helped identify the common man with a tool that is used in his/her home every day.
* Know your customer; make him your network and your ambassador
The AAP needed to connect with its customer: the electorate of New Delhi. Almost 130,000 volunteers all over the world, some of whom descended on Delhi before the election campaign became both the best focus group and research agency anyone could ask for.
Some executives even took leave from their high paying jobs in India and overseas, housewives found time from their day to day chores, young college students, technicians, labourers, cable TV operators – everyone pitched to connect with the consumer and pass on what troubled the common Delhi-ite – crucial information to the central headquarters of the AAP. And they then propagated that further themselves to the electorate.
With millions of products overflowing on shop shelves and online, brands need to know what their customers really want, when they want it and how they want it, and in the process make them your ambassadors and messengers.
* Choose the correct medium at the correct time
AAP had little financial resources at its disposal; some say less than Rs 20 crore. That’s probably what’s spent by politicians on a couple of constituencies. Once again volunteers stepped in to build the buzz.
Twitter, facebook, online, print, and television. AAP went the whole hog on all the mediums. But not to splurge; just to have its message heard. The media were relatively complying: did not the common man also work in media? It hooked the middle class and the upper middle class through social media.
And what about the man on the street? Well it used direct selling: volunteers went door to door to the electorate in Delhi, connected with the common man. In trains, in buses, on auto rickshaws, in jhuggis, in bastis – there was the huge poster campaign, and it was the educated folks who went where they normally would not.
Brands have to be careful about the medium they choose and utilise it to maximise impact. Brands too have to keep themselves in people’s mind through various activations/campaigns especially in today’s market where the sharks are ready to rip apart any competition.
MAM
Nielsen launches co-viewing pilot to sharpen TV measurement
Super Bowl pilot to refine how shared TV audiences are counted
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.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
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.
MAM
Meta appoints Anuvrat Rao as APAC head of commerce partnerships
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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