Brands
“Where Advertising Can’t, Content Can”
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Marketers for brands, consumer products, retail chains, media and entertainment are struggling to redefine and reinvent “advertising” for a new generation of empowered consumers. Media proliferation and fragmentation is making it harder to reach consumers with traditional formats of “interruption” advertising. New technologies, media platforms and consumer behaviors are affecting every aspect of traditional marketing and thereby dramatically impacting marketing effectiveness.
There is a strong need to create “engagement” advertising models with digital at the core which will facilitate more sophisticated, powerful and profitable connections between brands, content creators and their target audiences. Internationally, the content-commerce partnership evolution is gathering momentum. Brand entertainment partnerships are changing the rules of developing creative campaigns, marketing and advertising planning and production. In response to these challenges, GroupM India launched GroupM ESP to help brands harness the power of content based solutions by activating the power of movies, music, sports, live, celebrities and characters. GroupM ESP specialises in evaluating, negotiating, developing, activating and measuring strategic content platforms and partnerships around movies, music, sports, celebrities and characters. Uniquely positioned at the intersection of the media and the sports and entertainment industries, the ESP teams focus on developing innovative content strategies and solutions with a digital core that embed advertiser‘s brands in consumer passion points using multimedia leverage and multifaceted partnerships. GroupM ESP also works closely as a high end consultant with clients and rights owners to help create and own multi-media content assets of long term value and their exploitation through media distribution, marketing, licensing and retailing to build deeper and more valuable connections with consumers. The Indian entertainment and sports market, the largest in the world by size, offers advertisers and their brands, unique and multiple passion points to reach and engage target audiences with profitable and proven content solutions, embracing all the learnings from traditional media and advertising. New technologies and new channels incorporating licensing need to be harnessed creatively using insights with marketing ROI rigorously quantified.
The GroupM ESP content team comprises more than 50+ specialists (the largest for any advertising or media agency in India) has been providing end-to-end solutions for over a decade now. Known for its transparent dealings, easy and preferred access to content and talent (International, National and Regional), GroupM ESP is also able to seamlessly deliver the benefits of parent GroupM media volumes, relationships and specialist units backed by robust systems and processes. All this has been recognised through more than 50 awards at various industry and company platforms. Through its high profile alliances and partnerships with content creators, rights owners and talent across every domain and geography, the GroupM ESP team is able to offer expanded capacity and capability to handle complex projects smoothly. As we move from a decade of “Airing” to “Sharing”, digital needs to be at the core of any marketing program and the GroupM ESP team is adequately equipped to impart a strong digital dimension in all its projects. An in-house ESP digital team backed by the parent GroupM resources ensures that solutions are digitally centered and executed. More than 100 advertisers in India have benefited from their association with GroupM ESP. |
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Brands
Ahmad Muneeb elevated to VP – HR centre of excellence at Zepto
MUMBAI: Zepto has elevated Ahmad Muneeb to vice president – HR centre of excellence, placing him at the helm of the company’s total rewards, executive compensation and organisational effectiveness as the quick-commerce firm powers through a high-growth phase.
The move follows his stint as senior director of the HR COE, where he played a central role in preparing the company for IPO readiness while scaling its people analytics capabilities. During this period, Muneeb helped align complex performance management structures with more streamlined and scalable employee experience frameworks.
In his new role, he will steer the design of total rewards strategies, executive compensation planning and organisational design, while also overseeing performance management, employee experience initiatives and people analytics programmes.
Before joining Zepto, Muneeb spent nearly three years at Meesho, where he held multiple rewards and HR business partner roles. Earlier in his career, he worked as a senior rewards consultant at Mercer, advising high-tech clients on compensation benchmarking, pay structures and talent-focused reward frameworks.
He began his hr journey at Cognizant, where he supported compensation programmes for nearly two lakh employees across India and worked on m&a compensation alignment and skill-based pay initiatives. Prior to moving into HR, Muneeb started his career as a software engineer at Netcracker, bringing a technical grounding to his people strategy work.
With a mix of consulting rigour, start-up agility and enterprise-scale experience, Muneeb’s elevation signals Zepto’s continued focus on building robust people systems as it races towards its next phase of growth.
Brands
Dell names Aishwarya Sudhakar director of marketing intelligence
INDIA: Dell Technologies is doubling down on artificial intelligence in marketing. The company has elevated Aishwarya Sudhakar to director of marketing measures and intelligence engineering, tasking her with building an enterprise-wide framework for AI-led measurement and customer intelligence.
In the role, Sudhakar will oversee unified data strategy, advanced modelling and context engineering: areas increasingly central to how large technology firms link marketing performance to business outcomes. Her remit includes shaping scalable systems that support Dell’s next phase of AI deployment across marketing functions.
Sudhakar steps into the position after holding a series of senior roles at Dell, including AI lead for marketing orchestration, senior manager, and senior data scientist in customer insights. Across these roles, she led global teams working on large-scale machine learning models, data pipelines and customer analytics.
Before joining Dell, she began her career at Tata Consultancy Services as a systems engineer and later founded Oclor, a shopping discovery start-up, where she built end-to-end technology platforms. The combination of enterprise-scale data work and entrepreneurial experience has shaped her focus on product-led, engineering-first innovation.
As technology companies seek sharper attribution and intelligence in an AI-saturated market, Dell’s move underscores the growing importance of marketing measurement as an engineering discipline rather than a reporting function.
Brands
Gaurav Pathak returns to Adidas in key accounts leadership role
GURUGRAM: Adidas has appointed Gaurav Pathak as director of key and field accounts, bringing back an executive who began his leadership career at the company.
In the role, Pathak will be responsible for deepening strategic partnerships and expanding key, field and export accounts, with a mandate to accelerate growth across the Indian market. The appointment marks a return to Adidas after nearly a decade across premium retail and footwear brands.
Pathak most recently served as head of retail and business development at Ecco, where he focused on partner-led growth, market risk mitigation and operational scale. Before that, he spent eight years at House of Anita Dongre Limited, rising to general manager and leading regional operations across western and southern India.
His earlier career includes a stint as regional sales manager for Karnataka at United Colors of Benetton India and a six-year run at Adidas, where he held sales leadership roles.
With competition intensifying in India’s lifestyle and footwear market, Pathak’s brief will centre on strengthening field execution while aligning large accounts with Adidas’s broader commercial priorities.
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