ITV

Tag: Blue Star

  • Blue Star hires ex-Unilever exec Mohit Sud to head unitary cooling division

    Blue Star hires ex-Unilever exec Mohit Sud to head unitary cooling division

    MUMBAI; Blue Star Limited has tapped Mohit Sud, a seasoned Hindustan Unilever executive, to lead its burgeoning air-conditioning empire as group president of unitary cooling products. 

    Sud, armed with a mechanical engineering degree and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur, brings over two decades of soap-selling savvy to the cooling game. After cutting his teeth across India flogging everything from detergents to beauty potions, the former vice president will now build Blue Star’s market position.

    Sud will shoulder end-to-end responsibility for the company’s portfolio of room air conditioners, deep freezers, water coolers, visi coolers and modular cold rooms—essentially anything that keeps things nippy. His remit covers the full gamut: sales, marketing, service, R&D, manufacturing and supply chain.

    “The market for room air conditioners and commercial refrigeration products is poised for exponential growth in the coming years, and we aim to further buildon our leadership position and grow our market share,”   declared  Blue Star managing director B Thiagarajan. “Mohit’s rich experience in sales, distribution and marketing will be extremely valuable.’’

    “The Company has been on a growth path, and I am very optimistic about our prospects. To be future-ready, we have been making significant investments in R&D, manufacturing, digitalisation, sales and marketing. Simultaneously, we are strengthening our leadership team with external and internal talent. Mohit is an important addition to our team as wescale our consumer-facing businesses,” added chairman & managing director Vir S Advani.

  • Publicis and Havas in adland tug-of-war for Madison?

    Publicis and Havas in adland tug-of-war for Madison?

    MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe and Havas Network are in separate talks to snap up a majority stake in Madison World, India’s last large independent advertising group, if media reports are to be believed. 

    Founder Sam Balsara, who set up the agency in 1988, is looking for a deal that strengthens Madison’s future and aligns it with a global network.

    “Madison has always been open to a tie-up, but the terms must be right,” said chairman & managing director Balsara. He declined to reveal the valuation the agency is seeking. Publicis and Havas, meanwhile, stay tight-lipped.

    With an estimated Rs 5,000 crore in gross billings in fiscal 2024, Madison makes its money charging 15–20 per cent in fees. Its roster boasts over 500 clients across media, digital and outdoor, including Asian Paints, Saffola and Blue Star. But not all news is good—Madison recently lost the Godrej Consumer Products account.

    This isn’t the agency’s first dance with global suitors. A decade ago, talks with WPP and Dentsu over a 75 per cent stake sale fizzled out over valuation gaps. Now, with Omnicom snapping up Interpublic Group (IPG) to create an ad behemoth, other networks are scrambling to shore up their portfolios.

    Publicis, which leapfrogged WPP last year to become the world’s largest ad group, counts PepsiCo, Diageo and Skoda among its big clients in India. Havas, with brands such as Reckitt, Tata Motors and Swiggy, runs 25 agencies in India across creative, media and health.

    Madison isn’t new to parting ways with its ventures. In October 2022, the Balsara family fully exited MediaCom, a joint venture with WPP, selling its remaining 26 per cent stake.

    Now, the question is: will Madison go global, or will it like in the past stay fiercely independent and just let suitors court it?

  • Blue Star Launches Water Purifiers with Immuno Boost Technology

    Blue Star Launches Water Purifiers with Immuno Boost Technology

    MUMBAI:  Blue Star has launched a stylish water purifier with 35 models across various price points that have RO, UV, RO+UV and RO+UV+UF technologies. The models brings up an unique lmmuno Boost technology which alkaline antioxidant water that strengthens the defence mechanism of the human body and helps the body to stay healthy and function perfectly.

    Ogilvy India (West) chief creative officers Harshad Rajadhyaksha and Kainaz Karmakar said, “The idea of the campaign came straight from the product. The new range of Blue Star water purifiers come with a technology that improves your immunity. Babies dressed as cute warriors, armed with sippers, deliver this message in a simple and sharp manner.”

    “The challenge was not so much in writing the script but in executing it endearingly. Cajoling the kids to act and handle the sippers was fun and exhausting, in equal measure.The director, Raylin Valles, worked hard to charm the kids and get them to act,” he added.

    Blue Star chief marketing officer and head-corporate communications Girish Hingorani says, “Immuno Boost Technology enhances the pH level of water, giving alkaline water. The body tries to naturally maintain the acid-alkaline balance of the blood. But when the body is overly acidic, the system has to work even harder to maintain that balance and can lead to interference with the activity of all the cells in the body.”

    “Alkaline water helps by neutralising the acid levels of the body, boosting metabolism, hydration and immunity. Further, this technology also helps fighting with toxic free radicals by providing enough antioxidants which results in better immunity and lower damage of cells. We have been using babies in all our communication, as we believe that water given to babies is the gold standard of purity. Our brief to Ogilvy was to highlight this unique feature along with babies,” he added.

    Blue Star and Ogilvy took an innovative approach to convey this, through its campaign titled ‘Strong Babies’ using cute babies as a continuation from their previous campaign.

    Conceptualised by Ogilvy ‘Strong Babies’ an epic warrior-style TVC that showcased babies as playful little warriors, ready to take on anything that came their way. Nobody could stop them from living ‘the baby life’ to the fullest. A feet-stomping, battle theme ran over situations tied in water sippers seamlessly. It ended with a call to ‘get armed with immunity’ and telling viewers to bring home Blue Star’s new range of water purifiers with Immuno Boost Technology.

  • FCB creates Blue Star ‘cooling’ campaign

    MUMBAI: Blue Star, known for its unmatched innovation, has yet again taken the ‘Precision cooling’ of their inverter AC to a whole new level where it allows setting the temperature in decimals. The new commercial, conceptualized by FCB Interface ratifies Blue Star’s USP in the latest brand campaign.

    The campaign has been released on the digital platform and will soon be on air across leading channels supported by print, digital and OOH presence.

    The film shows an inconsequential fight between a couple over disagreement of room temperature. Both are stuck on a temperature which each feels comfortable with. This recoils a quirky, dramatic hand-shadow fight between the two of them. This is where the Blue Star AC with precision cooling comes into the picture and the couple shadow fighting ferociously like animals end up as love birds and the fight ends in truce.

    Blue Star Joint MD B Thiagarajan says, “Blue Star has set a new benchmark in the air conditioner industry with the launch of India’s first Precision Inverter Split AC that allows temperature setting in decimals to provide the user with precise cooling as desired for ultimate comfort. This reiterates Blue Star’s expertise in cooling and supports our value proposition of ‘Nobody Cools Better’. The TVC communicates the need for cooling in decimals and we are sure most of the viewers will relate to this insight”.

    FCB Interface Chief Creative Officer Robby Mathew says, “Blue Star films have always been quirky and this one’s no different. To bring alive the insight of how couples disagree on the right temperature in the room, we used a hand-shadow fight between animals. Vicious wolves transform into dinosaurs and then sharp-toothed monsters. Peace returns to the household only when they discover the new Blue Star Inverter Split, which allows them to make temperature adjustments in decimal points. There is absolutely no use of computer graphics in the film. The shadows were created live, on set, by the finest exponents of hand shadowgraphy in the country – the Calcutta-based father-son team of Amar and Arko Sen.”

  • Blue Star earmarks Rs 35 crore for summer ad campaign

    Blue Star earmarks Rs 35 crore for summer ad campaign

    KOLKATA: Air conditioning and commercial refrigeration company, Blue Star, aims to spend Rs 35 crore during this summer on advertising and brand communication. The company has earmarked an investment of around Rs 41 crore as marketing spend for the entire next fiscal (2015-16).

    The company also intends to continue investing in its digital marketing efforts in social media as well as the internet, considering that most Blue Star buyers belong to the highest socio-economic category (SEC A), who are active on the internet.

    “Blue Star achieves around 40 per cent of its sale during summer season, so for our summer campaign, we aim to spend around Rs 35 crore,” said Blue Star executive director and president – AC&R Products Business B Thiagarajan.

    The company unveiled a new range of contemporary, stylish and energy-efficient room air conditioners on Wednesday in Kolkata.

    “Our company has identified a new value proposition of ‘Nobody Cools Better’ and soon this will be used widely with a set of TV commercials supported by advertisements in mainline dailies, cinema and hoardings. Since we are now well entrenched in the residential segment, we plan to aggressively promote this new proposition in TV, print ad hoarding,” informed Thiagarajan.

    It should be noted that last year for the summer campaign, the company had earmarked Rs 25 crore in marketing spends. This summer, the company is looking at vibrant TVCs like its previous campaign ‘Daddy Cool.’ The company’s ad agency Interface has already been roped in to assist Blue Star for the TVC.

    The company also plans to enhance investments on new product development and research and design initiatives in order to develop modern and sophisticated products.

    Talking about the business and growth, Thiagarajan said that Blue Star is eyeing to triple the share of inverter ACs in its room air conditioner sales by 2015 as the company is underpinning its hopes on increasing preference for energy efficiency products among the buyers and falling prices of inverter ACs.

    Thiagarajan also said that the room AC business was a strong focus area for the company and it would be the primary growth driver of its revenues in the coming years. “We have been encouraged by the growth in market share in this business despite the strong presence of global brands. So we have decided to invest in R&D, manufacturing and marketing to boost room AC business,” he added.

    Thiagarajan further said that countries like Japan and China are moving towards inverter ACs to help save power consumption. The company plans to sell 3.4 lakh units of ACs by 2015-16 of which seven per cent would be inverter.

    Last year the room air-conditioners industry grew by 10 per cent in volume terms and in value terms it was 19 per cent.

    Thiagarajan also said that the company is likely to finalize a manufacturing location by July or September next fiscal as it is looking to expand its manufacturing base. “We have a capacity to manufacture four lakh AC units at present,” he concluded.