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Tag: FMCG

  • HUL swims against ad slowdown slide, ups ad spends in Q1 by 30%

    MUMBAI: Swimming against the slowdown tide in the economy, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) giant Hindustan Unilever has upped its ad spends by 29.5 per cent for the fiscal-first quarter to Rs 8.20 billion, from Rs 6.33 billion a year ago.

    The ad spend to revenue ratio has seen growth to 12.43 per cent in the first quarter compared to 11.21 per cent in the earlier year.

    HUL’s net sales from operations increased by 13.72 per cent to Rs 62.50 billion in the three-month period ended 30 June 2012, from Rs 54.96 billion a year ago. HUL’s net profit jumped to Rs 13.31 billion for the quarter as compared to Rs 6.27 billion in the earlier year, marking a 112.28 per cent increase.

    Soaps and detergents grew 24 per cent as laundry sustained its robust growth trajectory with all brands growing in double digits across formats. Continued focus on driving upgradation saw the premium segment perform well with both Surf and Rin delivering double digit volume growth, the company said.

    All the segments and key brands in the Skin Cleansing category grew in double digits as Dove and Pears continued to drive category premiumisation and Lux accelerated its growth momentum. The Axe brand was extended with the launch of the New Axe Bar Soap.

    In case of personal products the category grew at 17 per cent and was led by double digit volume growth with the three main brands in skin care – Fair & Lovely (FAL), Ponds and Lakme growing in double digits. This category saw quite a few innovations with the relaunch of FAL during the quarter, the introduction of Vaseline Heel Cream and relaunch of the Lakme Perfect Radiance range with revolutionary technology in skin lightening.

    Hair care products and brands also delivered double digit growth across formats as Dove shampoo doubled its volumes this the quarter.

    The Oral Care category also increased growth to reach double digits and saw the launch of the Pepsodent Expert Protection range with advanced care benefits around whitening and sensitivity towards the end of the quarter.

    Beverages grew seven per cent brought about by a strong growth in the coffee segment while modern trade accelerated tea growth. Packaged food grew at 17 per cent. Kissan led by volumes as its ketchup brand recorded double digit growth for the 11th year in a row.

  • Dabur ups Q1 ad spends by 51% to Rs 2.3 bn

    MUMBAI: Indian FMCG major Dabur India has upped its ad spends in the first quarter of the fiscal by a whopping 51.31 per cent over the corresponding quarter last year.

    The company spent Rs 2.29 billion in the quarter ended 30 June, as against Rs 1.51 billion in the year ago period.

    The company’s revenue for the quarter also grew by a healthy 21.37 per cent to Rs 14.61 billion in Q1 FY’13 (from Rs 12.04 billion). Net profit also increased by 16.96 per cent from Rs 1.28 billion in Q1 FY’12 to to Rs 1.49 billion.

    The company’s ad spends to revenue ratio increased to Rs 15.68 per cent from 12.57 per cent in the year-ago period.

    Dabur launched two new products in the first quarter of the financial year – Dabur Ayurveda Sunscreen and a new beauty pack in the Gulabari range.

  • Nimbuzz moves HQ from Netherlands to India

    MUMBAI: Mobile application provider Nimbuzz has shifted its headquarters from the Netherlands to India and is now strategising to introduce innovations in the segment to create more business values and a new paradigm of mobile advertising.

    Nimbuzz said the internet boom in the mobility space is expected to happen in India in the next five years, which was the main reason to shift its global operations to India.

    The other reason to shift base is the Smartphones and Tablets adaption rate and the burgeoning growth in the telecom subscriber base in India (currently at 926.53 million). This opens up new, personalised advertising opportunities for brands to reach a vast segment of the diverse consumer base.

    The company is operating on the notion that “SMS-based advertising is not even close to what the industry is expecting from mobile advertising.”

    Nimbuzz is now focussing on driving its revenue through location-based mobile advertising, Nimbuzz Bots (popular as Nimbuzz Chatbuddies) and analytics.

    Brands across sectors like FMCG, retail, healthcare and technology are increasingly using the mobile medium to advertise and interact with their customers. In order to provide these advertisers with an effective approach to invest their marketing spends in a cost effective and more impactful manner, Nimbuzz has introduced personalised advertising.

    The company is the pioneer in offering hyper-local targeted ads (HLTA) on the mobile platform across the globe. This tool allows the advertiser to advertise according to the location of the mobile phone user. For example, when the Nimbuzz user is in one of the malls, he sees a location based ad which prompts him to visit a pub within the mall for happy hour discounts.

    Nimbuzz has also introduced the Chat Buddy Developer Program (CBDP) recently which is expected to help brands, publishers, and independent developers get access to the 85 million Nimbuzz users across more than 200 countries.

    Nimbuzz has also collaborated with the many established brands and publishers like IBNLive for news update, Cricbuzz for live cricket update, Twitter for tweeting from within Nimbuzz, VantageTrade for stock updates, Wikipedia for ready-information, Youtube for searching and viewing videos and IMDB for movies reviews.

  • Shivanand Shenoy joins MRSS India

    MUMBAI: MRSS India, the Indian arm of market research agency Majestic MRSS, has brought on board Shivanand Shenoy as a senior director for client servicing.

    Shenoy will be supervising the IT, online and FMCG verticals for MRSS. He will also be heading the new vertical of ‘Digital Research’.

    The verticals that Shenoy will look into will mainly revolve around social networking sites and mobile penetration.

    Shenoy said, “Market Research is no more only about questionnaires and telephonic surveys. When the largest section of consumers are into social networking and mobile phones, so in order to make them understand we need to speak in their own language. Thus we need to use modern ways to gather more information and reach the target audience. MRSS India is pioneer is getting many technologies to India. This not only helps to reach the target audience in easy and most convenient way but also helps in filtering and sorting the information gathered.”

    MRSS India chief mentor and principal adviser Sarang Panchal added, “We believe that embracing digital is the new marketing imperative. It is a game changer, and how companies will win, moving forward.”

    Shenoy is a senior marketing professional with over 15 years of experiencing in analyzing the markets and the overall scenario for various industries. He specialises in providing market/consumer insights to companies in services, IT – hardware and FMCG industries.

    In the past he has been associated with companies like A.C. Nielsen, Intel Corp, DHL Express and Reliance Industries.

  • Starcom MediaVest Group launches Web+TV Optimiser in India

    MUMBAI: Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) has rolled out a fused TV + Web Optimiser across its entire organisation in India. It will allow the media planners at SMG to evaluate plans fluidly between TV and digital.

    This optimiser will sit within the planning tool Target Audience Reach Delivery Inventory Investment System (TARDIIS) suite. SMG India has been using the TARDIIS TV optimiser since 2006.

    This new optimiser runs on the local Television Audience Measurement (TAM) and Web Audience Measurement (WAM) datasets.

    SMG India CEO Malli CR said, “One senses that the growth of spends on digital should be faster than otherwise. There are several vehicles in digital whose reach is substantial and yet inertia and a lack of currency prevent investments. With this Optimiser, a planner can seamlessly build plan options between TV and digital. Does taking 10 per cent of the budget from TV and putting on to digital build better incremental reach? A planner would be able to do this on an on-going basis and raise the quality of the conversation between planners and brand managers.

    Every client‘s biggest complaint is about how plans for different target audiences look the same. This product is one of several things that will help change that. We have been testing the product internally since March and are seeing paradigm changing results. For a female, 25-44 SEC A plan, the percentage of investment on digital can quadruple. A lot of decision making in media happens through heuristics (thumb rules), and one needs new currencies to break out of the inertia of old thumb rules.”

    Malli feels that one of the biggest challenges in digital is increasing the share of spends of FMCG. “Our experience on TARDIIS Web + TV from other markets on FMCG clients has shown that it can lead to a totally different worldview on digital and increase spends substantially. TARDIIS Web + TV is one of the first tools with scale in this market that can accelerate digital spends and investments,” he added.

  • ‘We have been growing at 9-10 per cent every year’ : Viacom18 EVP and GM Sonic and Nickelodeon India Nina Elavia Jaipuria

    ‘We have been growing at 9-10 per cent every year’ : Viacom18 EVP and GM Sonic and Nickelodeon India Nina Elavia Jaipuria

    Nina Jaipuria, the EVP and GM for Sonic and Nickelodeon India, is bullish about the kids genre despite the challenges that exist. Jaipuria, who has been at the helm of Nick for more than five years, is hopeful that the channel will bounce back to its 2009 position when it topped the genre.

     

    In an interview with Indiantelevision.com‘s Javed Farooqui, Jaipuria says that Sonic, the action and adventure channel that launched in December last year, will also witness growth. She sees the viewership of kids channels going up in the Southern market, where the local GECs still hold a stranglehold on family viewing.

     

    Excerpts:

    You have been at a GEC (Sony) and since last six years, you are handling kids channel. Which genre do you find more challenging?
    Both the genres are equally challenging. But to my mind, capturing the kids is more challenging as they get bored faster. Kids have shorter attention span. Saas-bahu serials can run for 10 years and you don’t get bored but try doing that with children. It’s impossible… which really means that you have to innovate that much more quickly and stay ahead of the curve.

     

    Unlike GEC where you need non-fiction to get the eyeballs and then the fiction takes care of your bread and butter, I think there is no such concept in kids genre. I think it’s a tougher category also because we have huge pipeline issues and the timelines. A GEC channel can produce a show in two months but for us it will take two years because it is animation. So the pipeline is so much tougher and therefore we have to plan that much in advance. Having said that, the GEC category is also difficult because we are talking about a scale that is very large and thanks to competition, the risk there only gets higher.

     

    However, if you build kids loyalty, then it is about how you keep them going. Your challenge is how you can bring them to the channel day after day.

    Despite being third in the pecking order, why does the kids genre not command the kind of ad revenues it should?
    It is hugely under-indexed and that has been going on for a long time. We were given for free and there is a CPRP benchmark that no advertiser is willing to pay that much.

     

    However, advertisers have started believing that kids have a lot of peer pressure, purchasing power and influence on family purchases. And, therefore, you see advertisers coming to the kids category. But it is growing slowly and steadily. Five years back, the market was Rs 1.4 billion and today it has grown to Rs 2.5 billion.

    Will slowdown have an impact on ad spends?
    In 2009, when there was a slowdown, we did not really witness it as much because a large portion of advertisers who advertise on kids channels are FMCGs, food & beverages and toys, which did not cut back that much compared to radio or print because they have more local advertisers and more of retail and finance.

    Coming to Nick, position wise the channel has slipped to No. 2 or 3. How do you plan to get back on top?
    We are the number two or number three player in the category. Summer has been good and thanks to all the new content that has gone on the channel, we will continue to retain our number there position.

     

    We retained the top position for two years and I think that is a long enough time. We hope to come back (to the top position). Everything that goes up has to come down, these are all cyclical vagaries of the business.
    ‘Sonic and Nick are two different brands. While Nick is humour and little of action, Sonic is a hardcore action and adventure brand‘

    Oggy and the Cockroaches was one of your tentpole properties. This has now shifted to Cartoon network. What do you think about your other properties?
    My tentpole property is Ninja Hattori and I would have also said Oggy and the Cockroaches but it has now moved to Turner (Cartoon Network). But Oggy gave us a good result for the three years that it was with us. So with all due respect, these are vagaries of the business and we are planning to build our own properties. We have Keymon Ache, of which we have already done 26 episodes and have greenlighted the second season of the show.

     

    We launched Power Rangers and now we have new Power Rangers coming back. Then after Samurai, we have Super Samurai. We have the third one as well in 2013. Thus, we will have a lot of Power Rangers as a property to build. Then there is Kung Fu Panda that we will build. So we will have a lot of solid shows post the Oggy also.

    What are the genres you are looking to build content for Nick?
    When we started, it was a mix of humour, comedy and various strands of it – slapstick comedy, silent comedy, family comedy shows and Keymon kind of shows.

     

    Kung Fu is a mix of comedy and action which according to me is the only show of its kind which had comedy and action put together. But slowly we realised that our kids are moving towards action even from a category point of view. Look at what’s happening with video games. So we believe that there is a little bit of action required on Nickelodeon. The only action show we are showing on Nick is Power Rangers Samurai so that those kids who want action don’t go anywhere.

    What about Sonic?
    Sonic and Nick are two different brands. While Nick is humour and little of action, Sonic is a hardcore action and adventure brand. So we have shows like Ultraman, Jackie Chan, Super Strikers, and Ghost at Schools.

     

    Sonic has done very well to get 8 per cent share in a difficult category as children are slow to changing habits. I think there was a gap in the market as no channel was offering 24X7 action and adventure as a proposition. So kids had to go to MTV Roadies, Fear Factor or once on a while they would go to play video games or watch movies like Dabangg. This gap we fixed with Sonic.

     

    When kids are growing up, they are shying away from watching kids’ channels. But they were not big enough to go to MTV or Vh1. So we found out a nice gap as well as target audience. In fact, Sonic is doing very well in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. We have got an eight per cent market share within six months and 22 per cent reach in 85 minutes of time spent, as of last week.

    What are your revenue expectations from the two channels?
    We have been growing at 9-10 per cent every year and I hope that we continue to grow at that range. From revenue perspective, ad sales is the big brother. Subscription is not significant at this stage but should grow post digitisation. After that comes licensing and merchandising, but they are taking only baby steps.

    How are you growing the L&M biz?
    We are increasing our character base and with that we are increasing our product range. We have 55 licensees on board this year across categories. We can grow this with depth and width. What I mean by width is that we increase characters. Every single character grows into every single product category. When I talk about depth, we look at every single category in the life of a kid.

     

    We have launched footwear with Metro shoes, we also have toys of popular characters like Dora, Ninja and Spongebob. TI Cycles is going to offer co-branded Dora The Explorer and Ninja bicycles. We also have DVDs and VCDs coming for Keymon and Dora.

    Talking about content, still most of the content on your channel remains animation. Why is it so?
    Except Power Rangers and Ultraman, almost all of our content is animation. The reason we do so much animation is because kids come to the category for two reasons: one is to get rid of boredom and second is get rid of all pressures. And animation is the only alternate universe, which allows them to enter the fictionary and imaginary world which allows them to get rid of boredom. Try to do that with live action and you can never achieve it as it is as real as it can be. Because we are a tailor-made category for children, animation will always be the fulcrum.

    But kids’ channels are experimenting with Hindi movies also.
    Even I don’t understand that. I put movies on Sonic because I think adventure as a genre is served with movies. But we put on kids’ movies like Jurassic Park that are catering to that genre.

    But is it to prevent them from shifting to other genres?
    I think they are passive viewers. They are captive audiences to what they watch and, therefore despite fragmentation, the category continues to grow. The fact is that kids continue to come back to the category because the content is tailor-made for them. The only reason why the viewership hasn’t grown to the extent it should have is because India is largely a single television household.

    To what extent did the IPL impact the genre?
    Fortunately for us, we don’t have a fixed prime time slot. And it never had much of an impact because for us we have viewership throughout the day and IPL matches were at 4 pm and 8 pm. It’s not like a GEC where 8 pm is prime time.

     

    We do have 12-3 pm and 6-8 pm as primetime slots. And the best thing about the country is that in some cities, kids go to school in the morning and in some cities in the afternoon. So somebody is watching us at all hours of the day.

    While the kids genre is seeing growth in the HSM, the same cannot be said about the South market. Why?
    That is because all of us are late entrants to the South market. We launched our Tamil and Telugu feed for Nick one year back. Also, kids in those markets have been watching the local content for very long in their own language. But it’s picking up.

    How much do you focus on digital medium for connecting with your target audience?
    To me, digital is important because our TG is more digital savvy than you and me put together. Interactivity has become a large part in the kids’ space today because they have access to mobile and internet. They communicate with us on nickindia.com or sonicgang.com. We also have Power Rangers games on both these websites, besides downloads and wallpapers. There is a lot of interactivity that is happening there. Then we have contests happening on Facebook. The Keymon game on Nokia has got two million downloads. We have over 200,000 fans for Nick on Facebook and over 100,000 fans for Sonic.

    What are your plans for the year?
    We have two big shows coming up on Nick – Cedric and Tony and Alberto. Cedric is about a boy who is mischievous and wants his grandfather to help but normally they are more in trouble than out of it. Tony and Alberto is about the story of a boy and a dog. Both are very mischievous and funny shows talking about the 9-10-year-old boys. The shows will be coming on air in July. We have two new shows coming on Sonic as well – Ghost at Schools and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

  • Signals are for a mild ad slowdown: Mindshare’s Lala

    MUMBAI: The ad slowdown is not a serious worry at this stage but is beginning to bite mildly, a senior executive at Mindshare said.

    Slashing the early forecast, Mindshare principal partner Jai Lala pegged the growth figure at 8-10 per cent this year on the back of a weak GDP growth and a dip in sports advertising revenues.

    “If in the recent years we were growing at 18-20 per cent, we will now grow at 8-10 per cent. It‘s not degrowth but slower growth. A good quarter will, however, bring the buoyancy back,” said Lala.

    The Mindshare executive believes that the upper limit is the most likely speed the ad industry will grow in India this year but does not rule out certain slowing influences that could dampen the mood.

    “We should be growing at 10 per cent unless we are pulled down by bearish influences,” he said.

    Mindshare had at the beginning of the year predicted that the ad industry would grow at 12 per cent, expecting it to touch Rs 373.97 billion.

    Lala feels that the dip in financial advertising would be more or less made up by the FMCG companies as they come out with new launches and increase spends due to intense competition in the sector.

    The retail sector is also witnessing a slowdown. “Print would be more affected since both financial services and retail are heavy ad spenders in that medium. Finance is co-related to the Sensex and we could see a bounce back if the markets start doing well,” explained Lala.

    Another drag down has been the Indian Premier League (IPL) which fetched lower revenues than last year. “We were anyway expecting the sports genre to be hit as we had the cricket World Cup last year. The reduction in ad spends on the IPL may be attributed largely to the fact that consumer durables and automobile categories did not spend as robustly on the property as last year,” averred Lala.

    Though it is still early to ring the alarm bells, expect a mild ad slowdown this year if the economy doesn‘t slump further.

    Also Read:

    Ad Slowdown Looms

  • NAMS identifies 55 potentially misleading TV and Print ads

    Mumbai: NAMS, the National Advertising Monitoring Service, has tracked down 55 print and TV ads as potentially making misleading/false/unsubstantiated claims. Hence, they were violating chapter 1 of ASCI ad code.

    NAMS was set up by ASCI in partnership with TAM on 1 May with a mission of reducing misleading advertisements. It aims at improving the self-regulatory mechanism by speeding up the processes and compliance of its codes for advertising content.

    NAMS monitored 40 print and 15 TV commercials in the first month of its launch. According to the advertising regulatory body, this is a huge jump in the first month of proactive monitoring as before NAMS there were only 177 ad complaints in the fiscal year 2011-12. This is as much as 31 per cent of ads to be processed in just one month of what was done in 12 months.

    ASCI chairman I Venkat said, “We are enthused with the results shown by NAMS in the first month of the proactively monitoring of ads. Going by the initial results I am confident that NAMS will enhance the ad self regulation redressal process manifold. We now expect to see significant reduction in ads making misleading, false or unsubstantiated claims in the future with start of NAMS and consumers in India will benefit immensely.”

    As per ASCI‘s agreement with TAM Media Research, AdEx India identifies ads which are in potential violation of Chapter 1 of ASCI code.

    AdEx India monitors newly released ads in the auto, banking, financial services and insurance, FMCG (incl. F&B), consumer durables, educational institutions, health care products and services, telecom and real estate sectors. The scope of work covers the tracking of more than 30 Newspapers (all editions) which contribute to over 80 per cent of national newspaper readership and all TV Channels across the country in all Indian languages.

    Ads seen as those potentially violating Chapter 1 of ASCI Code are forwarded to ASCI on a weekly basis, post which ASCI process them as per its normal complaint procedure involving its Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) for adjudication.

  • Colgate Palmolive ups annual ad spend by 16.14% amid slowdown

    MUMBAI: Dental and healthcare company Colgate Palmolive has increased its annual ad spend by 16.14 per cent for the fiscal ended 31 March 2012.

    The company spent Rs 2.63 billion on advertising and promotions, compared to Rs 2.26 billion it spent in the previous fiscal.

    The increase in advertising expenditure helped Colgate record volume growth of 12 per cent, mainly led by toothpaste category (14 per cent volume growth). The toothpaste category commanded 54 per cent of the market share by volume, while its mouthwash category occupied 26.2 per cent.

    The annual ad spend accounted for 9.37 per cent of the total income during the fiscal.

    Colgate‘s annual income of Colgate increased by 17.8 per cent as the company earned Rs 26.93 billion in the fiscal compared to Rs 22.86 billion a year ago. Net profit also surged 10.65 per cent to Rs 4.45 billion.

    Among the other major FMCG companies, Dabur had spent Rs 6.6 billion on ads and promotion while HUL spent Rs 26.96 billion during the fiscal. Marico, on the other hand, invested Rs 1.19 billion on advertising and promotions.

    For the quarter ended 31 March, Colgate’s ad spend amounted to Rs 583.2 million. This was 14.31 per cent higher than spends in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal (Rs 510.2 million).

    In the first, second and third quarters of the fiscal, Colgate had spent Rs 937.9 million, Rs 1.14 billion and Rs 1.07 billion respectively on advertising and promotions.

    Total revenue for the fourth quarter was at Rs 7.03 billion, 17.5 per cent up from Rs 5.98 billion. Profit rose 14.65 per cent to Rs Rs 1.31 billion.

  • Cogmat wins Live In’s social media biz

    Cogmat wins Live In’s social media biz

    MUMBAI: Live In, the denim brand from Federal Brands, has appointed Cogmat to handle its social media duties.

    The Mumbai-based digital media agency‘s role will be to engage consumers in conversations about the brand. The duties include making the Facebook and Twitter pages more active and interactive.

    There was no formal pitch for the account.

    Cogmat had recently won the digital account for Mumbai-based high street fashion brand Benzer.

    Cogmat is based in Mumbai and Hong Kong. Its clients are spread across sectors like education, luxury hospitality, financial services, FMCG and retail and include the likes of Oxemberg, Eurokids, Welingkar Group of Institutes and Mufti.