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Tag: General Motors

  • Ashim Gupta’s role at Salesforce’s expanded

    Ashim Gupta’s role at Salesforce’s expanded

    MUMBAI: Ashim Gupta, a seasoned communications strategist, has expanded his remit at Salesforce, now overseeing communications for South Asia and South East Asia, after a successful tenure as vice president communications-India. This promotion underscores Gupta’s proven track record in building brand narratives across diverse sectors.

    Gupta, who joined Salesforce in January 2024, has swiftly ascended the ranks, joining the India leadership team and now extending his influence across a wider region. His career spans over two decades, featuring prominent roles at Uber, Samsung Electronics, Volvo group trucks operations, General Motors, The Economic Times, Max India and Healthcare, Spark Minda, and Tetra Tech.

    His achievements are notable: at Volvo, he boosted the company’s media share of voice, secured multiple media awards, and pioneered social media strategies. At General Motors, he earned a President’s Award and led the company’s social media foray in India’s automotive sector. At The Economic Times, he led an award winning brand communication team. At Max India he created strong brand equity. At Spark Minda, he initiated internal communication audits and innovative publications.

    Gupta’s experience extends beyond corporate communications. He founded Good Living, a trade journal, and launched the Solitaire brand of interior exhibitions. His expertise in media relations, social media management, and strategic communications positions him to amplify Salesforce’s brand presence in the dynamic markets of South and South East Asia.

  • Apple’s Tim Cook’s handpicked CFO Kevan Parekh takes office

    Apple’s Tim Cook’s handpicked CFO Kevan Parekh takes office

    MUMBAI: Is 12 a lucky number?

    Some may question the logic, saying there’s no such thing as luck. 

    But a dozen years proved extremely good for Kevan Parekh, who was handpicked by Apple CEO Tim Cook to become the CFO of Apple during his twelfth year with the company. Just as the clock hit the 12 midnight mark in New York on 31 December and the ball was beginning to drop in Times Square, Kevan’s term as the CFO commenced.

    Kevan, an Indian origin executive, joined Apple in June 2013 and has played a key role in its financial and business planning, and product development planning since then. Prior to becoming CFO, he served as Apple’s vice president of financial planning and analysis. Before that, he served as Apple’s vice president of worldwide finance, supporting a number of different functions throughout his tenure, including engineering, iTunes, marketing, retail, and sales.

    His pay package is speculated to be  $1 million a year, plus participation in the company’s executive cash incentive plan for fiscal 2025.

    Kevan, succeeds Luca Maestri, who was appointed  CFO in 2014, and he will be reporting directly to Cook. As CFO, Kevan will be overseeing Apple’s accounting, business support, financial planning and analysis, treasury, investor relations, internal audit, and tax functions.

    Maestri on his part continues to be part of Apple overseeing its corporate services teams. His responsibilities will include managing information systems and technology, cybersecurity, and real estate and development.

    Before joining Apple, Kevan worked for eight years with General Motors in New York and then Europe. He returned to New York to join Thomson Reuters and stayed put as vice-president of finance (professional division) and then as corporate treasurer till 2013. 

    Kevan has a solid academic background and holds a bachelor science degree in electrical engineering, and an MBA from the University of Chicago which he  completed in 2000 with a major in finance and strategic management.  

  • Adobe unveils the future of customer experience management in the age of Gen AI

    Adobe unveils the future of customer experience management in the age of Gen AI

    Mumbai: On 27 March, at Adobe Summit – the world’s largest digital experience conference – Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) unveiled a suite of innovations for the enterprise that will empower brands to deliver one-to-one personalization at scale through generative AI and real-time insights. As the global leader in Digital Experience Platforms and a trusted partner, Adobe’s latest products expand the customer experience management (CXM) solutions that enterprises have relied on to bring data, content, and customer journeys together to delight customers and build loyalty over time. In the era of generative AI, Adobe is providing a roadmap to help brands activate AI to deliver customer value and capture the massive opportunity in driving personalisation at scale.

    Major innovations across Adobe Experience Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud will deliver business value from generative AI by driving insights based on unified customer data, scaling the production of personalised content and boosting customer engagement through journey orchestration. This includes an upcoming Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant that supercharges the productivity of experience practitioners, democratizing access to extended teams through a conversational interface and enabling them to unleash new ideas. Adobe GenStudio is a new generative AI-first offering that will allow marketing teams to quickly plan, create, manage, activate, and measure on-brand content. Adobe also unveiled Journey Optimizer capabilities to enable both B2C and B2B brands to enhance journey orchestration with timely, personalized experiences. A new capability in Adobe Firefly, Adobe’s family of creative generative AI models for safe commercial use, called Structure Reference brings users a new level of creative control.

    Adobe Experience Cloud is the industry’s leading platform for delivering, measuring and personalising customer experiences, now relied upon by 11,000 customers globally across industries, with support from 4,500 global ecosystem members and over 500 partner integrations in Adobe Experience Platform, which brings an organisation’s data and content together under a common language model.

    “World over, businesses are prioritizing their digital investments to improve marketing agility and customer engagement, while driving growth and profitability. Adobe products are playing an essential role in driving the digital economy, and today at SUMMIT, we’re excited to be joined by our customers and partners from India, as we showcase our next in line innovations that will pave the way for customer experiences of the future.” Adobe India VP & MD Prativa Mohapatra.

    “Generative AI enables a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and their customers, creating a transformative moment for business leaders to drive profitable growth while delivering new digital experiences,” said Adobe president, digital experience business Anil Chakravarthy. “The ability to personalize every interaction has become the key growth driver in Customer Experience Management for enterprises around the world, and Adobe is leading the way in making this a reality with powerful generative AI deeply integrated into existing workflows.”  

    “Creating richer and more relevant experiences within a connected customer journey is fundamental to success in today’s marketing climate and Adobe Experience Cloud has been our partner of choice in Customer Experience Management,” said General Motors chief marketing officer Norm de Greve. “Adobe’s enterprise applications allow our teams to deliver real-time, highly personalized touchpoints at scale for customers engaging with our brands.”

    In the era of generative AI, Adobe is the technology partner of choice for brands to unify customer data, scale content production, and enhance customer engagement through journey orchestration.  

    New Data Innovations

    Adobe’s latest product releases help brands with data management in the age of generative AI, creating a foundation to activate insights and deliver true personalization at scale. This is anchored in Adobe Experience Platform, which enables brands to activate customer data across various enterprise systems through an integrated set of applications.

    1   Adobe Experience Platform AI Assistant provides a simple conversational interface that can answer technical questions and will automate tasks, simulate outcomes and generate audiences and journeys within applications such as Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.

    2   Federated Audience Composition provides data management flexibility and efficiency by allowing teams to federate audiences and data directly from enterprise data warehouses and data platforms (Amazon Web Services Redshift, Azure Synapse, Databricks, Google BigQuery and Snowflake) to augment real-time and cross-channel use cases in Adobe Experience Platform. This enables teams to minimize data copy, govern the use of sensitive data and get the most out of their existing IT investments for powering customer experience workflows such as profile enrichment, audience segmentation and personalized communications.

    3   Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform (CDP) Collaboration is a new clean room application for brands and publishers to collaborate in a privacy-safe way to discover, reach and measure their high-value audiences in a world without third-party cookies. Real-Time CDP Collaboration is expanding and evolving the value of a CDP to include data collaboration as a critical and necessary component of customer data management in a cookieless world.

    New content innovations

    Adobe provides an integrated set of best-in-class products that enable brands to accelerate their content supply chain, the end-to-end business process that every company needs to deliver content required for marketing campaigns and personalised customer experiences. It is composed of five key building blocks: workflow and planning, creation and production, asset management, delivery and activation, and insights and reporting. With Adobe GenStudio, Adobe will be releasing a generative AI-first offering for marketers to quickly plan, create, manage, activate and measure on-brand content, with native integrations across Adobe Experience Cloud and Creative Cloud.

    1   Workflow and planning: Adobe Workfront Planning will provide every user a unified view into all activities across the marketing lifecycle, to ensure organizations plan strategically and accelerate delivery.

    2   Creation and production: Adobe Firefly Services and Custom Models unlock personalization at scale for enterprise content creation and production, eliminating manual tasks while ensuring generated outputs remain on-brand.

    3   Asset management: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Assets content hub allows teams to easily distribute brand-governed assets across their organization and external partners. Content hub forms a seamless connection point between GenStudio and AEM Assets, where any user can search for an asset and create personalized variations with Firefly in Adobe Express, the all-in-one content creation application.

    4   Delivery and activation: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Sites variant generation, powered by generative AI, enables brands to create personalized variations of marketing assets with copy that is audience-centric and on-brand. With Edge Delivery Services, brands can deliver the fastest possible page load times. Document-based authoring in AEM Sites also allows the broader team to author webpages in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

    5   Insights & reporting: Adobe Content Analytics will create an essential feedback loop for brands to understand which assets (including AI-generated assets) and campaigns are performing best, down to the attribute level. These insights help build a more complete view of the overall customer experience, building on top of Adobe Customer Journey Analytics which measures web, streaming, in-product and more.

    New Customer Journey Innovations

    For both B2C and B2B brands, the ability to enhance customer engagement through journey orchestration hinges on a unified and real-time view of the customer. This ensures that as brands interact with consumers on channels such as the web, social media and mobile, any real-time changes in user behavior or preferences are captured, triggering new experiences. Adobe is uniquely positioned to help teams harmonize both brand-initiated and customer-initiated moments, with new offerings to orchestrate personalized journeys that drive impact.  

    1   Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer unified experimentation uses enhanced statistical models to help marketers, product managers and developers leverage experimentation and decisioning capabilities within journeys, driving reuse of offers across communication channels or optimizing the ideal path a customer should take to maximize conversion.

    2   Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO) provides enhanced brand-initiated journey orchestration by helping brands connect their audience-centric campaigns with real-time customer signals, so that the right customers are engaged and mistimed marketing communications can be avoided.

    3   AJO B2B Edition is a new application built on Adobe Experience Platform, with a unique focus on account specific buying-group journey orchestration that will reimagine sales and marketing collaboration throughout the B2B revenue lifecycle.

    New firefly capabilities

    Today, Adobe is shipping a major update to the Adobe Firefly web application (web and mobile) that will bring users a new level of creative control. Structure Reference enables users to easily apply the structure of an existing image to newly generated images. Using an existing image as a structural reference template, users can now generate multiple image variations with the same layout, eliminating the trial and error process of having to write the perfect prompt to get an output that matches your imagination. By combining Structure Reference with Adobe’s Style Reference – an existing Firefly capability that takes a style reference image and applies it to your prompt – users can reference both the structure and style of an image to quickly bring ideas to life, delivering a new level of creative control and state-of-the-art visual quality.  

    Partner and customer momentum

    Adobe continues to expand its robust partner ecosystem and extend the value of Adobe Experience Cloud. Adobe announced today an expanded partnership with Microsoft to deliver generative AI capabilities for marketers that bring powerful Adobe Experience Cloud customer experience insights and Firefly generative AI directly into Microsoft applications to reinvent workflows and ignite productivity. An expanded partnership with OneTrust integrates consent management into AI-powered customer journeys. Adobe is also working with agency partners including Havas, IPG, Omnicom, Publicis and WPP, and system integrators including Accenture, Deloitte, EY and IBM to accelerate generative AI investments, processes and workflows across creative production and digital marketing.

    Adobe Summit 2024 is a hybrid event with both an in-person and online presentation powered by Adobe Experience Cloud. Luminary speakers and industry leaders presenting at Summit include General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Pfizer chief digital and technology officer Lidia Fonseca, Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian, TSB Bank CMO Emma Springham, MLB chief operations and strategy officer Chris Marinak, founder and CEO of Zaia Ventures Ukonwa Ojo, author and entrepreneur Nina Schick, and Shaquille O’Neal, host of Adobe Sneaks where Adobe unveils the latest research and development innovations.

  • McCann appoints Joe DiMeglio to handle General Motors account

    McCann appoints Joe DiMeglio to handle General Motors account

    MUMBAI: McCann Worldgroup has appointed Joe DiMeglio as EVP, worldwide account director for its global General Motors business including Chevrolet, Vauxhall, Opel and Holden.

     

    DiMeglio, joins from Organic, where he was EVP, chief client officer, and also has extensive automotive marketing experience from his previous positions at J. Walter Thompson Co. in Detroit.

     

    In taking on operational and management oversight of McCann Worldgroup’s global General Motors business, DiMeglio will leverage Worldgroup’s full worldwide and multidiscipline capabilities to deliver multiplatform strategic and creative solutions. This will encompass working collaboratively across all Worldgroup business units currently serving GM brands, including Commonwealth//McCann (Worldgroup’s globally dedicated Chevrolet agency), MRM//McCann, Weber Shandwick, Momentum and Craft.

     

    Commonwealth//McCann chairman and CEO Bill Kolb said, “We are pleased to welcome Joe. He has been associated with outstanding work. His deep understanding of the automotive category combined with his digital and multiplatform communications expertise will help strengthen our ability to grow and develop GM’s Chevrolet brand across the globe.”

     

    As EVP and chief client officer for Organic, DiMeglio led the client service discipline, overseeing the management of Organic’s clients. Previously, he was general manager of Organic’s Detroit office. During his decade-long tenure with Organic he managed the overall relationship and project execution for many of the agency’s largest clients, including Chrysler, Hilton, Toyota and Volkswagen.

     

    Prior to joining Organic, DiMeglio was SVP and group director at J. Walter Thompson, where he successfully managed cross-functional teams for the Ford Truck and SUV account.

  • Karthik Srinivasan joins Ogilvy as Social@Ogilvy national lead

    Karthik Srinivasan joins Ogilvy as Social@Ogilvy national lead

    MUMBAI: Ogilvy India today announced the appointment of Karthik Srinivasan as Social@Ogilvy national lead.

    Srinivasan, who was previously Flipkart AVP corporate communications, comes with over 14 years of experience, both as a client as well as an agency professional. He has led PR, digital and social media agency mandates for brands like Intel, Lenovo, ARM, Cisco, Cricinfo, General Motors, BlackBerry, LinkedIn and Infosys, among others. 

    Besides being a regular in major social media and digital events in the country, Srinivasan is also a prolific blogger, with two blogs – one on communications, branding and PR, and the other on music reviews.

    Ogilvy, as a brand, is all about bright, path-breaking ideas says Karthik Srinivasan

    Ogilvy India chief digital officer Kunal Jeswani said, “Social@Ogilvy is already India’s largest social media agency practice. Our ability to connect strong social skills with creative and content capabilities has driven dramatic growth for us over the past five years. The social landscape is constantly evolving and Karthik has the right skills to help us shape the future of Social@Ogilvy. His experience in handling large social media mandates will also help us offer truly seamless social solutions to our clients.”

    Social@Ogilvy is Ogilvy’s cross-discipline specialist social media offering which has highly skilled social media leaders collaborating with the agency’s digital, public relations and creative practices to create seamless and effective social media solutions for client businesses.

    Social@Ogilvy asia-pacific director added, “Karthik’s appointment further strengthens our market-leading position for social media in the asia-pacific region. The strength of our team is directly derived from our ability to attract leaders of Karthik’s calibre. His knowledge and experience will immediately bring great value to our clients in India and across the region.”

    Srinivasan, on his new role at Ogilvy commented, “Ogilvy, as a brand, is all about bright, path-breaking ideas. And social media, as a function, has moved its focus away from run-rate platform management to creative ideas that work at the intersection of multiple client functions – marketing, corporate reputation, customer relationship, supply chain and human resources, among others. With the kind and nature of clients Ogilvy has in India, I see tremendous potential in the use of social media to make a tangible difference to their businesses.”

  • MWG India forms Creative Central with Praduymna Chauhan as ECD

    MWG India forms Creative Central with Praduymna Chauhan as ECD

    MUMBAI: McCann Worldgroup India has formed a special unit – Creative Central – which will work towards creating insightful creative work for its clients.

    It will be spearheaded by Praduymna Chauhan as the ECD.

    Welcoming Praduymna on board, McCann Worldgroup India and south Asia, chairman, CEO and chief creative officer, Prasoon Joshi said, “With a sharp and insightful approach reinforced by a stellar body of work, Pradyumna is keen to create work that impacts popular culture. Based currently in Mumbai, he will work with our creative directors and teams across McCann India offices and functions on our key brands. In the near future we will find more people with a similar skill set and approach to strengthen McCann Creative Central.”

    Praduymna has worked on numerous popular creatives like MP Tourism Ajab Hai and Colours campaigns, Asian Paints, Star‘s Satyamev Jayate, Vodafone ICICI and Birla Sun Life‘s Jab Tak Balla Chalta Hai.

    Before joining MWG he was Group creative director at Ogilvy Mumbai. He has worked, apart from the above mentioned, also on Airtel, LG Electronics, General Motors, HPCL etc. His work has won him recognition at Adfest, Cannes, Spikes, New York Fest, Abbies, Effies and AMEs.

    The unit will work closely with the strategic planning function to constantly create insightful work and solutions for MWG clients. Creative Central will also constantly leverage the knowledge base generated at Truth Central (A McCann insight arm) and play a major role in converting the knowledge and insights across brands in India.

    Prasoon sees this as an important step towards increasi

  • Madison to handle CCD’s media account

    Mumbai: Café Coffee Day (CCD) has awarded its media mandate to Madison Media for its chain of coffee Cafés.

    The account size is estimated to be around Rs 400 million and will be handled by Madison Media Omega in Bangalore.

    Madison Media Group CEO Gautam Kiyawat said, “We are delighted to have India’s premier and leading café chain, Café Coffee Day, to our roster of clients and are confident of helping it grow and gain further market share in the country.”

    CCD president marketing K. Ramakrishnan said, “Café Coffee Day being a brand for the young and the young at heart, we needed a partner who would be passionate about the brand, to be able to understand the category in depth and the varying dynamics to enable us to move along at a fast pace. We are confident of Madison Media’s thought leadership and competence in executing the campaigns. We are delighted to have them on board”.

    Café Coffee Day as a brand has never advertised in mass media in the last 16 years of its existence. It has been built on different marketing initiatives, coffee category building activities, public relations and social media.

    The brand has just launched its first ever television commercial titled ‘Sit Down’ that has been created by Creativeland Asia.

    For the record, Madison Media Group handles media mandate for clients including Airtel, Godrej, Cadbury/Kraft, ITC, General Motors, Marico and McDonald’s.

  • India left out of GM’s global media realignment

    India left out of GM’s global media realignment

    MUMBAI: General Motors has left Madison untouched to handle its media account in India while deciding to have Aegis Group’s Carat Media as its global media partner following a full-agency review during the fourth quarter of 2011.

    “GM India‘s media buying contract continues to be with Madison at this point of time and the creative account is with McCann Erickson. GM‘s India operation is not impacted in any manner by Carat Media’s global contract. This is completely an independent one,” General Motors India vice president P Balendran told Indiantelevision.com.

    Madison had won GM’s media duties in 2010 for three years through to March 2013.

    Aegis Group chairman India and CEO South East Asia Ashish Bhasin told Indiantelevision.com that India and China were not part of the global pitch, but declined to disclose other details.

    The appointment of Aegis Media carries an anticipated annual media spend of $3 billion worldwide, General Motors said.

    The global realignment will cover all three Aegis’ reporting regions – EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific. It follows Aegis Media‘s appointment as GM‘s media agency across Europe on 1 January 2007. The contract includes duties in media planning and buying, search, social media and mobile communications and will be managed and co-ordinated through Carat‘s global US team.

    The market is speculating that a second phase of the realignment may take place in future which may include India as well.

    Though he refused to reveal GM’s media spends on advertising in India, Balendran said that the focus is on print and electronic (media) including online activities. “Since the non-metros and rural areas are showing good growth for the last couple of years, we focus on advertisements catering to the masses of these areas as well.”

    General Motors vice president and global chief marketing officer Joel Ewanick said, “We wanted a media agency partner with the sophistication to leverage global marketing opportunities. Carat has an innovative approach to drive significant marketing value and their service model has been tailored to align well with our global and regional brands. They are uniquely positioned to help us form strong media partnerships and drive significant global efficiencies.”

    Operating in 120 countries around the world, Aegis Group is a leading media and digital communications group and holding company for Carat, Vizeum, Isobar, Posterscope and iProspect.

  • Apple integrates the iPod in US automobiles

    Apple integrates the iPod in US automobiles

    MUMBAI: Apple has teamed up with Ford, General Motors and Mazda in the US to deliver seamless iPod integration across the majority of their brands and models.

    This makes it easy for iPod users to enjoy and control their iPod’s high-quality sound through their car’s stereo system. With the addition of these models, more than 70 per cent of 2007-model US automobiles will offer iPod integration.

    Apple VP worldwide iPod product marketing Greg Joswiak says, “We are delighted that Ford, General Motors and Mazda will support iPod connectivity in nearly all of their new models. Now more than 70 percent of 2007-model US automobiles will offer iPod integration, with General Motors alone making it available on all 56 of its models, representing millions of cars and trucks.”

    Ford and General Motors will feature iPod integration in the majority of their 2007 models in the US beginning later this year, while Mazda’s entire global 2007 lineup of cars and SUVs will offer iPod connectivity. iPod offerings for Ford, General Motors and Mazda provide drivers with outstanding sound quality while charging the iPod, while conveniently storing the iPod in the glove compartment. Seamless iPod integration also allows drivers to use their car’s multifunction controls to select their music using artist, album, playlist or shuffle songs, as well as to easily skip between tracks and playlists.

    Apple says that the iPod and iTunes are leading the digital music revolution, providing the best way to listen to music on the go, at home and in the car.