Mumbai: Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI) has announced a major leadership change within its kids and animation division. Leena Lele Dutta, who mothered and nurtured the portfolio, including the Sony Yay! channel since its launch in 2017, will step down as business head by the end of this fiscal year. Under her leadership, Sony Yay! became a top destination for children’s entertainment, known for its animated series, original content, and ventures into animation production and ancillary businesses.
Ambesh Tiwari, the newly appointed business operations head, will take over her role. He brings significant experience from roles at Star India, Zee Entertainment, and Life Ok, where he was instrumental in launching channels like Zee Keralam and Zee Punjabi. His academic background includes an MBA from the University of Oxford, Young India Fellowship from Ashoka University, and a diploma in media law and public policy from Nalsar University.
Leena will collaborate with Ambesh in the coming months to ensure a smooth transition.
SPNI acknowledged her significant contributions in a press release issued earlier today and wished her well for the future while expressing confidence in Ambesh’s ability to lead Sony Yay! to continued growth and success in delivering quality children’s content,
Mumbai: Skillmatics is an award-winning, global brand that develops innovative games and toys that enable children to learn through play. Their products are developed and designed by learning experts and game designers across the globe. With a mission to create playful learning experiences.
Skillmatics has launched its latest innovation: Jump & Learn flashcards! This dynamic set is designed to captivate active toddlers and transform learning into an exciting adventure. With 50 multi-sensory cards, children explore letters, numbers, shapes, and colours through fun physical activities like hopping, skipping, and jumping. Perfect for playtime, homeschooling, or preschool, these cards make education an engaging experience.
Mumbai: Smartphone maker realme India has joined hands with SOS Children’s Villages India for its 2021 Christmas campaign called #HopeForGood. The consumer technology brand along with the independent non-governmental social development organisation spread a little Yuletide cheer among the kids adopted by the latter, bringing hundred young minds the ‘gift of education’ for a year to help secure their future.
A little #HopeForGood can go a long way. This Christmas, you can help us in supporting the education of a hundred kids for a whole year. Share your message for these kids and be their Santa
A team from realme India visited the kids earlier at an SOS Children’s Village. In the released video, the team showcased the dreams and aspirations of these kids and made an appeal to twitteratis to come forward and leave messages that show support for these kids. realme India also appealed to netizens to help them contribute towards fulfilling the aspirations of the children by sponsoring their education.
Realme India released another video on Thursday, delivering on the promise they made earlier. The latest video compiles the success story of how Twitter and the realme community came through with their support to help sponsor the education of the young minds for all of 2022.
Your contribution went a long way in building the future of the kids and helping them grow.
We’re thankful & grateful for everyone who helped us reach our goal!
realme India digital director Bhawana Sharma expressed gratitude at the support the initiative received and said, “It is heart-warming to see how many people came through to support the children. This is the first step marking the beginning of our Hope for Good initiative and we hope to take many such steps in the future to drive more positive change. We are ready to start the new year with more hope and compassion.”
MUMBAI: This Raksha Bandhan, Cadbury Celebrations-the much-loved chocolate brand has decided to celebrate the festival by making a meaningful difference to a child’s life through its special campaign – #MyFirstRakhi.
Many children with physical disability in the country miss celebrating this festival, among other crucial life experiences. To truly bring a meaningful difference to the lives of these children and help them celebrate this moment of joy in the most fulfilling way possible, Cadbury Celebrations has partnered with Social Hardware- an organisation working towards providing assistive devices and rehabilitation services to underserved communities- to develop a unique sensor-based prosthetic arm that will let these children feel the sense of touch, an integral part of growing up.
Building on the same sentiment is the campaign film that beautifully captures the story of a sister and her physically disabled older brother, Shubham who yearns to experience the feeling of a Rakhi tied around his wrist. The feeling is brought to life as the brother’s wish is fulfilled with a low-cost sensor enabled prosthetic hand advised by his doctor. The story sees a sweet ending as the older brother enthusiastically prepares to experience his first Rakhi, tied onto his wrist by his equally excited little sister. The brother, for the very first time in his life, is able to actually feel the sensation of the thread symbolising the bond they share, through his sensor-enabled prosthetic arm.
While these children often opt for prosthetic hands to help them build their lives, the journey for them is a long one, where as the child grows up, the prosthetic arms recommended change, based on various factors. They typically start with basic prosthetic arms which lack the sense of touch, a very important sensation in their formative years. The chocolate brand has pledged to provide these low-cost sensor-based hands to many children across the country by continuing to partner with Social Hardware in the coming year.
Mondelez India senior director – marketing, Anil Viswanathan said, “For years now Mondelez India has been an innate part of festivals and occasions like Raksha Bandhan, and has redefined the joy of gifting and shared moments with Cadbury Celebrations. Through #MyFirstRakhi, we wanted to make a meaningful difference to the lives of these kids who don’t get to experience festivals like we do. To celebrate Rakhi you need to feel the touch of its threads and hence we provided a solution to give them a sense of touch. With the focus on spreading happiness and banking on the proposition of ‘Kuch Achha Ho Jaaye, Kuch Meetha Ho Jaaye’, the campaign promises a new start for children who have missed experiencing the joy of celebrating this festival in its truest sense.”
Commenting on the campaign, Ogilvy India chief creative officer Sukesh Nayak, said, “Raksha Bandhan is a very special festival celebrated across the country. With #MyFirstRakhi we are helping ensure that every brother who has so far missed experiencing the joy of celebrating this festival, can now feel the bonds of this beautiful relationship on his hand.”
The campaign will be led with a digital film and further amplified through social activations along with innovative OOH advertising.
Mumbai: Children have become an important consideration for marketers when they plan promotions for products/services meant for family consumption. Marketers are weighing in on buying decisions on products and services beyond those meant for children.
At the session, ‘Decoding the digital native kid: How kids influence the decision-making process’ held on the first day of the KAM Summit 2021, Kantar senior executive director Puneet Avasthi decoded what today’s children are all about and how do the little ones connect with the world around them in the current times. He dived deep into what kind of idioms and personality type do they actually aspire for and how technology impacts their decision-making.
Decoding the digital native kid, Avasthi went on to explain how the Indian kid has evolved. He mentioned that the children are probably more tech-savvy than most of the other members of the house, hence a larger influence. “Kids are the key pillars of growth for a variety of digital sectors, including entertainment, edutech, gaming and influence that extends well beyond.”
He further added, “Kids highly influence food (buying as well as what they eat) followed by household items and kids’ products. Parents allow the kids to dictate their media consumption. More than a third of TV viewing kids buy the product seen in the ad, if they like the ad.”
At least 75 per cent of the time, the child’s sanction and permission is non-negotiable when shopping for them. Parents today dare not pick anything for their children without the approval of their kid. In circumstances where something was picked up without the child’s approval, they did not use the product at all in most cases. The emotional state of the kids is linked to their performance. Doing well in studies/sports makes them happy, confident, and proud; while doing bad in studies makes them sad.
Instead of the child seeking approval, parents are seeking approval when it comes to buying anything for the house, like furniture. So, the shopping decisions of the kids these days go beyond food, clothes, and stuff meant for them. Parents rely a lot on children and the choices of the young ones go beyond simply picking products based on their favourite colour or cartoon. They decide what they like on the basis of their exposure to technology and the advertisements they watch. Avasthi went on to say that if at all there is a negotiation, “the child is the winner clearly.”
At 33 per cent of the purchase decisions concerning buying cellphones are taken by kids, as Avasthi’s survey pointed out. Similarly, in 33 per cent of the cases, the little munchkins end up influencing their family’s decision to buy TV sets as well.
“Indian kids like affectionate and intelligent characters like Doraemon and Chota Bheem. So, if you want to aim at mass appeal for their age-group, do more sober, simple, and intelligent characters. Communicate with the kids. They are the buzz creators with lots of positivity and influence,” pointed out Avasthi.
Kids prefer ads that are reality-based. Although kids like ads with their favourite celebrities, they may not always like the product. But, an interesting ad generates word of mouth. Although fitting in with a group of friends is important for more than half the kids, the majority of them don’t want to copy or blindly follow their friends. They are individualistic.
“Kids are very impressionable. One in three kids end up buying what they see in advertisements online or on television. Children have a strong influence on purchase of high value items for the household, besides merchandise they need,” Avasthi concluded.
To bridge the gap between urban lifestyle and the natural world, Sony BBC Earth has taken its brand proposition of ‘Feel Alive’ on-ground by introducing an annual property called feel-alive hours. This differentiated experiential marketing activity is the result of a recent BBC Research that proves being connected to nature makes one happy. Taking this philosophy forward, the ‘feel-alive hours’ will cover various on-ground touchpoints like schools, colleges, offices, malls etc. across multiple cities.
Interestingly, the channel is starting with schools so that students can feel alive and refreshed ahead of their annual exams in March. The activity will cover 300 schools, 2 lakh students across 4 cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata.
The research, which was also included the Indian market, confirmed that even short engagement with positive, insightful content on science, nature, wildlife and adventure leads to positive emotions and helps one re-connect with nature. This School Contact Program is introducing young minds to the wonders of our universe where children participate in fun science experiments, play quiz, watch mind blowing, never seen before content and get lots of goodies.
Additionally, Sony BBC Earth is setting up a unique ‘Feel Alive Zone’ in each school they visit. The zone is flooded with images and facts from some of the landmark shows as a reminder for children to co-exist with nature.
Sony BBC Earth urges everyone to be a part of the ‘Feel Alive’ initiative and nominate schools by giving a missed call on 1800-315-7849.
MUMBAI: Zee Cinema has recently bagged four awards at the Branding, Advertising, and Marketing (BAM) awards ceremony held by the Indian Brand Convention 2015 in New Delhi, for its constant innovative branding and communication efforts. The Convention was a learning, networking conference and an awards ceremony for branding, marketing, design, communications, advertising, sales and creative professionals in India.
Amongst many other brands that participated, Zee Cinema was a front runner at the convention and the awards won by the channel include best corporate social responsibility campaign for November 2014 Children’s’ day Masti Ki Paathshala’ activity. It also bagged the best integrated marketing campaign for October 2014 campaign for promoting world TV premiere of entertainment, the best mobile innovation for May 2015 for the mobile activity done on world TV premiere of Lingaa. The channel has also roped in the best digital marketing campaign for May 2015 for the digital & social media promotion for world TV premiere of Lingaa.
Masti ki Paathshala, was an initiative that the channel organized for the children of selected orphanages across Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad to mark the celebrations of Children’s Day 2014. Over 300 children were engaged with fun activities like movie screening, antakshari and fun games with a view to give them a memorable special day and let them know that they are valued and loved.
The promotion campaign for the world television premiere of the film, Entertainment provided its viewers an exclusive opportunity to interact with Johnny Lever for the first time on Zee Cinema’s twitter handle. One of the comic actors from the film Krishna Abhishek was also made available for the media market visit in Lucknow which also ensured the visibility of the brand in the prime market. The channel also used a unique platform of airline branding (special branding inside the aircraft in Air-India) for marketing the movie innovatively. The film was extensively promoted via engaging and interactive activities conducted across social media platforms with the movie’s merchandise were given to winners.
The promotion campaign for Lingaa included an extensive digital campaign and also an exclusive mobile campaign Rajnikanth phone call ad wherein participants received a pre-recorded call from Rajnikanth urging them to watch Lingaa on Zee Cinema. The mobile campaign had a reach of a gigantic 8.2 million.
MUMBAI: French philosopher Gaston Bachelard had rightly said, “Like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.” We often find ourselves looking out for little instances that take us back to our childhood. Understanding this sentiment, HDFC Home Loans has hooked in their online patrons with a digital Children’s Day campaign that calls on everyone to go #backtobachpan.
Through an online contest carried out on their Twitter page, the brand gave opportunity to everyone to relive their childhood by posting pictures, instances and messages that give a glimpse of what childhood means to them. No sooner did the post go live, then people poured in with tweets with #backtobachpan.
From pictures of their younger self doing goofy things, rubber eraser names old black and whites, twitterati were seen enthusiastically sharing their #backtobachpan moments, making the hashtag trend throughout the day in India.
Some of the responses are both funny as well as moving.
“Take me #BackToBachpan where i used to write my name on bench to mark it as my bench,” tweets batman_baklol, while Kanchan Negi (coool_kashish) recalls how her childhood was checkered by memories of visit to her grandmother’s place during vacations.
Not only were the replies engaging, the brand went a step ahead in engaging with those who posted for the contest by creating animated caricature pictures of the twitteratti, taking cue from their posts.
This isn’t the first time a brand has played on our heart strings with an innovative campaign on Children’s Day. In fact, Shopperstop ran a similar contest titled #BringBackTheKid last year, while Paper Boat’s inspiring TVC ‘When I grow up..”by EmotionalFulls, still remains fresh in our memory.
On that note, here’s hoping that we keep our inner child alive. Happy Children’s Day!
Mumbai: & Tv brings good news for all the parents who are having hard time keeping their kids from playing outside under the scorching summer sun. What can be a better incentive to stay at home than getting to meet their toon idols?
Understanding this, &pictures has crafted its programming keeping in mind their young viewers. Starting this Monday 18 May to 29 May, the channel brings Toon-O-Mania – a Hollywood animated movie festival which will air from Monday to Friday at 12 Noon.
Animated movies can help develop children’s interest in learning different cultures, languages; enhance their social and physical skills. Moreover, an added advantage of family time spent together while watching a film gives a rise to family bonding as well. Understanding this, Toon-O-Mania offers, ten of the best animated flicks, beginning with Madagascar on 18 May. The film narrates an adventure of four animals from New York Central Zoo that wind up in the wilds.
Next in the line on 19 May is the second movie in the series Madagascar 3:Europe’s Most Wanted. The Desperado stars Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek come together, this time to entertain the kids in Puss in The Boots slated to air on 20 May. The viewers are in for a joyride with The Adventures of Tintin on 21 May and the battle of loveable the ‘Dragon Warrior’ Po and Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2 on 22 May.
The following week’s lineup `starting from 25th May includes, Shrek, Shrek Forever After, How to train your dragon, MONSTERS V/S ALIENS and Megamind.
NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley said today that filmmakers and creative people should use modern tools like cinema to spread knowledge and learning.
Referring to the Bal Swaccha Abhiyaan launched today on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, he said ‘Swachhta’ should be instilled as one of the core moral values in childhood so that children practice the habit of cleanliness as part of their childhood and personality.
Inaugurating the first Rashtriya Bal Film Mela which coincided with Children’s Day, he stressed that celluloid media had become a powerful source of knowledge in the Information age and cinema had been emerged as a powerful tool for education in addition to its manifest function of entertainment.
The Rashtriya Bal Film Mela would help in instilling values of cleanliness practiced and propagated by Mahatma Gandhi, the Minister added.
Jaitley called upon the young children to watch the films made by veteran film director Shyam Benegal, who was present, including ‘The Making of Mahatma’ and ‘The Discovery of India’.
I&B secretary Bimal Julka said around three million watch films made by the Children’s Film Society, India, which has organised this three-day Festival.
He pointed out that this will be held every second year, alternating with the International Children’s Film Festival (Golden Elephant) held in Hyderabad every alternate year by the CFSI which was set up at the initiative of Nehru as a soft power to unite children.
He said the Ministry was carrying forward the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi regarding Swachh Bharat through this festival on the theme of ‘Swachhta.’
Eminent sportsperson Sania Mirza, who recalled that she had always looked forward to the Gold Elephant as a child in Hyderabad, asked the children present to take a pledge with her to keep the country clean.
Actresses Dia Mirza and Sakshi Tanwar also demonstrated how it was easy to keep the environment clean by regularly cleaning their own neighbourhoods. Kunal Roy Kapur and Divya Dutta have anchored the show.
The three day festival would provide an opportunity for children to appreciate high-quality film content, experience value-based entertainment, and to trigger their imagination about environment conservation and cleanliness.
The festival would showcase a bunch of internationally acclaimed children’s films on the theme of cleanliness. CFSI’s latest production, Pappu Ki Pugdandi was the inaugural film in the festival.
Other films that would be screened in the festival include Kaphal which won the National Award for Best Children’s Film, Shortcut Safari which will be premiered for the first time, The Goal, Ek Ajooba (CFSI productions), Karamati Coat, Summer with the Ghost, Sunshine Berry & Disco Worms, Yeh Hai Chakkad Bakkad Bumbe Bo, The Boot Cake, Hawa Hawaii, Krish Trish Baltiboy- 3, and Goopi Gawaiiya Bhaga Bajaiiya.
The festival would feature interactive workshops on film making with experts from the Film and Television Institute of India and the Satyajit Ray FTI in Kolkata, film appreciation, animation, Charlie Chaplin’s Mimes, and storytelling. Live dance performances, magic act, sand act, and puppetry along with various competitions such as painting on the theme, ‘Swachhta’, and digital collage on the theme ‘Clean India’ and the craft of making utility items from waste materials, were being organised on the sidelines of the festival.
The inauguration was followed by a cultural programme with school children, the Prince Dance Troupe, Shiamak Davar’s Junior Group which included some disabled children, and the renowned artist Vilas Nayak giving performances.
