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Tag: GroupM India

  • GroupM India assigns new roles to Vinit Karnik and Karthik Nagarajan

    GroupM India assigns new roles to Vinit Karnik and Karthik Nagarajan

    MUMBAI: In a bid to bolster its core leadership, GroupM India has elevated and assigned new responsibilities to GroupM business head – entertainment & sports practice (ESP) Vinit Karnik and Wavemaker India chief content officer Karthik Nagarajan.

    Karnik will take over the new role of head – sports, esports and entertainment at the agency’s south Asia unit; Nagarajan will take on the additional charge of head of branded content at GroupM India.

    In their new roles, Karnik and Nagarajan will report to GroupM south Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar.

    “Disruption and evolution go hand in hand and it also brought in opportunities in the content, sports and entertainment space and it is consistently redefining the market place,” said CEO Prasanth Kumar. “While we will continue to build on advertising technologies that will add speed and scale, we are equally committed to enhance our creative process and enable larger solutions in the content space. These leadership appointments signify our commitment to the journey and I am confident in both Vinit and Karthik’s abilities and together we look forward to creating great solutions and opportunities for our clients as well as our partners.”

    Karnik joined GroupM 14 years ago and has been at the forefront of some of the high profile, high-value sponsorship and consulting deals in the business of sports and entertainment. Under him, the agency witnessed the launch of thought leadership for Indian sports and entertainment reports titled ‘Sporting Nation in the Making’ and ‘Showbiz’ respectively. Before joining GroupM in 2006, he was a part of the film fraternity in Mumbai, heading the film production and distribution business of Padmalaya Telefilms and Prasad Film Labs post production studio.

    “Today a brand has various means to reach out to its audience be it via sports, social media, esports, influencers etc,” said Karnik. “Hence by strengthening our offerings and by bringing together creative optimisation and data, we want to ensure that the brands get to reach their consumers with content, which is highly personalised, effective and relevant for them.”

    Nagarajan spent a significant part of his early career in consulting, as a practice head for Frost & Sullivan in the US. Before joining GroupM in 2011, he set up Nielsen’s online division and was also the India country head for NM Incite, the joint venture between Nielsen and McKinsey for social media consulting in India. He set up the social media practice for GroupM India, which also included its foray into advocacy. Nagarajan also evangelised the data agenda for GroupM by building its social analytics practice, products like Radar and the command centre offering. In 2015, he conceived and launched Brew, which became the premier content up-front event for not just GroupM but the industry as well.

  • GroupM India rejigs top management

    GroupM India rejigs top management

    MUMBAI: GroupM India, the media investment group of WPP, has appointed Sidharth Parashar as President – Investments and Pricing, GroupM India and Ashwin Padmanabhan as President – Partnerships and Trading, GroupM India. As part of this elevation, both Sidharth and Ashwin will join the GroupM Executive Committee.

    GroupM South Asia  CEO Prasanth Kumar said, “The elevation of both Sidharth and Ashwin is a testament of GroupM’s continued investment in its talent which has helped build a strong leadership pipeline, creating leaders to take our business into the future. In this ever-evolving integrated media ecosystem, we understand the importance of having leaders across key client focus areas like media investments and trading. Both Sidharth and Ashwin are astute leaders and I am confident that they will continue to drive client delight and expand GroupM’s reach across platforms.”

    Sidharth and Ashwin have been leading GroupM’s pricing-investment and partnerships-trading practices over the years and they will take over their respective new roles effective November 2019.

    Sidharth has been with GroupM for over 15 years. He commenced his journey as the Agency Buying Head for Maxus and has played a key role in evangelising the buying function in the organisation. In his new role, Sidharth will be responsible for leading GroupM India’s investment mandates across all media. He will further build on GroupM’s buying function and provide unique solutions to his clients. All the GroupM Agency Trading Heads and Cluster Heads will continue to report to Sidharth.

    GroupM India President – Investments and Pricing Sidharth Parashar said, “It has been an amazing 15 years working at GroupM and I am delighted to join the executive leadership team. I am excited about the opportunity to lead the Group’s investments across platforms. GroupM has always raised the bar on innovation and providing exceptional value to our esteemed clients. I look forward to continuing delivering these company values each day.”

    Ashwin joined GroupM from Reliance Broadcast Network where, as the COO he led the network’s Radio and Television business. At GroupM,  Ashwin has been driving Trading and Partnerships. Along with his trading roles, Ashwin also leads Motion Content Group. Under his leadership, Motion’s unique value proposition of content Production, Financing and Monetization across platforms has become a big differentiator to the entire content ecosystem.

    GroupM India  President – Partnerships and Trading Ashwin Padmanabhan said, “I am delighted with this recognition and I would like to thank Prasanth Kumar and the GroupM leadership team for reposing faith and for considering me for this position. GroupM gives a unique opportunity to create, innovate and build in an entrepreneurial environment and I look forward to continue enhancing the GroupM value proposition for our clients, media and technology partners. ”

    Both Sidharth and Ashwin will continue to be based out of the GroupM’s Gurgaon office and will report to Prasanth Kumar

  • GroupM and Lifesight launch India’s first online to offline attribution playbook

    GroupM and Lifesight launch India’s first online to offline attribution playbook

    MUMBAI: GroupM India and Lifesight, a location intelligence platform and data company, have co-created a playbook answering key questions advertising clients have on online to offline attribution and outlining ways in which marketers can use intelligence on consumers’ online behaviors to impact offline sales. This is the first-of-its-kind attribution study in India examining the conversion of online ads into offline sales.

    Given that large populations of consumers and businesses are still operating out of physical stores and the fact that India has also witnessed e-commerce brands moving into offline spaces, it is critical to have data to help marketers connect the dots and uncover insights on how the offline consumer behavior is impacted by online advertising.

    GroupM understands that new age consumers' buying journeys are blended and multi-channel. Customers switch quickly and continuously between online and offline realms. Hence, considering behaviors, patterns and journeys are crucial, not just in contextual and personalised advertising but also marketing measurements.

    GroupM South Asia president – growth and transformation Tushar Vyas said, “The importance of omnichannel strategies has grown exponentially, and the lines between online and offline have begun to blur. Given that the consumer journey between online and offline is becoming seamless, it is critical to have the right technology to manage location data and location-based attribution models to provide better insights to clients.”

    Marketing attribution is the science of crediting marketing touchpoints with consumers for actions they take after exposure and consequently allocating advertising budgets according to performance. GroupM and Lifesight have identified six different attribution models for accurate footfall attribution: first touch, last touch, position-based, linear-based, time decay and data-driven.

    Vyas added, “For a marketer to understand what’s working in their campaigns, it is important to attribute the right conversion to its apt source. At GroupM, we understand the constant need to create, invent and reinvent the right measurement frameworks to help our clients address their business problems.” 

    In 300+ campaigns run through Lifesight, with over 200 brands, there were remarkable insights discovered: 

    1) The average costs to drive in consumer footfall is the most for consumer durables and the Auto sector and the least for Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) and Fashion.

    2) Offline attribution works best for auto and QSR since most people would visit a physical store

    3) The retail sector takes the least time (2-3 days) to drive a walk-in from exposure. On average, it takes approximately 6-9 days across verticals to drive store walk-ins

    4) 70 per cent of the initial walk-ins to physical stores happens within the first 8 exposures. Retail takes the least number of exposures while fashion requires the most.

    Lifesight co-founder and CEO Tobin Thomas said, "Marketers today have unlimited options for building, targeting, and delivering a campaign. But even with all these options, one question remains- is my advertising working? With a large number of channels to choose from, it’s imperative to understand how each campaign component performed comparatively. As a result, location attribution has emerged as a powerful solution to stitch together channel, audience, and platform signals to understand reactions to online advertising in the real world.” 

    Thomas added, "Lifesight is leading efforts to take campaign success metrics beyond the click. We are excited that leading a marketing powerhouse like GroupM has joined us at the forefront of online-to-offline attribution.”

  • GroupM india’s 2019 ad forecast: strong 14% growth, over Rs 10,000 crore in new investment

    GroupM india’s 2019 ad forecast: strong 14% growth, over Rs 10,000 crore in new investment

    MUMBAI: GroupM, the media investment group of WPP, today announced their advertising expenditure (adex) forecasts for 2019.  As per the GroupM futures report ‘This Year, Next Year’ (TYNY) 2019, India tops the list as the fastest growing major ad market in the world. TYNY forecasts India’s advertising investment to reach an estimated Rs. 80,678 crores this year. This represents strong estimated growth of 14%, for the calendar year 2019 (approx. 2x of the GDP growth).

    India will be the third highest contributor to the incremental ad spends, only behind China and USA and the tenth fastest growing country with respect to ad spends across the globe. 

    The Cricket World Cup and Elections in 2019 are expected to boost ad spends. FMCG, Auto, Retail, e-commerce, Tech/Telecom are expected to contribute to 2/3rd of adex.

    Speaking on the TYNY 2019 report, Sam Singh, CEO – GroupM South Asia said, “While we are estimating the global advertising expenditure to grow at 3.6%, India would be witnessing the fastest growth at 14% and reach an estimated Rs.80,578 crores. This would be approximately 2x of the estimated GDP growth in India. This also makes India the 3rd largest adex growth to the worldwide ad spends. We expect sustained and stable media investment growth across categories in India”

    This year 37% of incremental ad spends will go towards digital advertising including mobile. The scale at which we are witnessing this digital transformation, GroupM estimates the Digital Adex to continue to grow by 30% in 2019 to Rs. 16,038 crores. 

    Prasanth Kumar, Chief Operating Officer – GroupM South Asia said, “Indian ad spends CAGR between 2014-2018 is at 13% and 2019 expected to witness a higher growth. India is unique among key markets and will witness growth in all media segments and not just digital. Offline media is poised to continue to grow and will contribute to being around 80% of ad spends in 2019.”

    Television will continue to grow at a steady pace. This year, the growth rate for TV is estimated to be 15%.

    Print is estimated to grow by 2.2% and the share of print to all media is expected to be at 23%. While it is expected for both English and regional languages to grow, regional will see slightly higher growth. Vernacular will continue to thrive on both TV and print.

    This year Radio is expected to grow at 15% which is higher than the last couple of years. Cinema will grow at 25% in 2019, as 2018 saw more titles winning audience at the box office. In 2019 GroupM expects cinema to shift from title-based advertising to continued advertising through the year. Lower tax on cinema tickets is expected to drive more footfalls to theatres.

    GroupM also presented some of the biggest trends that will shape the media Industry in India in 2019. The trends presented were around emerging technology, data, content creation and distribution put the consumer at the center and underline the theme of digital driving the change across all formats of media. The trends touched upon the TRAI tariff order implementation as well its potential impact of increasing original programming and investments on content across broadcaster networks.

    Tushar Vyas, President Growth and Transformation – GroupM South Asia said, “With the surge of technology, better insights and relevant engagement across different platforms, we are expecting marketers to build superior consumer connections for brands. 2019 will witness a faster growth in digital and we are expecting digital to be at 20% media mix. As we are witnessing one in every three Indians digitally connected, we can expect the convergence of data, digital and content to deliver seamless and powerful solutions to brands as well as constantly adding inventive practices into the market.”

    This Year, Next Year, is part of GroupM's media and marketing forecasting series drawn from data supplied by holding company WPP's worldwide resources in advertising, public relations, market research, and specialist communications. The TYNY report is the most comprehensive understanding of the estimated media spends by advertisers in the current year. It also highlights some of the industry sectors that will have a major effect on advertising spends across media.

  • GroupM India wins ‘Country of the Year’ at eMMies

    GroupM India wins ‘Country of the Year’ at eMMies

    MUMBAI: For the second time now, GroupM India has won the ‘Country of the Year’ award at the eMMies 2015, the regional awards for GroupM Asia Pacific. However this time round, India will be sharing the title with GroupM Philippines.

     

    The ‘Country of the Year’ is the grandest award at the eMMies and is given to the country that delivers the best business performance.

     

    Commenting on GroupM India’s showing, GroupM Asia pacific CEO Mark Patterson said, “India continues to set a gold standard in the region through continuous refreshment, reinvigoration, expansion of services and unique influence in the market whilst maintaining a close, collaborative and entrepreneurial spirit throughout GroupM. India does this year on year which make their performance all the more special and worthy of recognition. If there was a country of the decade award it would be India’s.”

     

    GroupM South Asia CEO CVL Srinivas added, “India is extremely proud to receive the ‘Country of the Year’ award at the eMMies this year. 2014 has been one of our best years. We are especially proud of our talent who have embraced challenges in a very dynamic market and delivered true value to our clients. However what is most heartening is that we live up to the highest standards of quality among our peers in the larger GroupM family.”

     

  • MindShare promotes Amin Lakhani to head Fulcrum

    MindShare promotes Amin Lakhani to head Fulcrum

    MUMBAI: Here is another media professional who is getting more regional responsibility. And that gent is Amin Lakhani whom Mindshare has elevated to Leader – Team Unilever south Asia.

    In his new role Amin Lakhani will be heading Fulcrum, a unit of Mindshare that manages the media planning & buying for the Unilever business in South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He will be replacing Anupriya Acharya who is moving on from the organisation.

    Amin has around 15 years experience which includes a stint as a product manager with an Indian pharmaceutical company and in media agencies. During his time with GroupM India, Amin has handled various roles starting with Maxus as the training head for west region, moving on to GroupM as west trading head and then on to Mindshare where he played the architect of The Exchange function in 2008, finally leading up and becoming the trading lead for Unilever business.

    Announcing the appointment, Mindshare leader south Asia Ravi Rao said, “Amin was our unanimous choice and we know he will turn a new chapter in Mindshare Fulcrum by raising media excellence in strategic planning and world class execution backed up with award winning innovations for Unilever. We wish Anupriya all the best and thank her for a short but great stint at Mindshare Fulcrum.”

    Commenting on his new role Lakhani said, “It is an exciting opportunity especially in challenging times. Mindshare Fulcrum has been a centre of excellence. I am looking forward to building on our strong base and continuing to provide delight to India‘s most esteemed client, Unilever.

    Speaking to indiantelevision.com Anupriya Acharya said, “I leave as new challenges beckon me! But I have thoroughly enjoyed leading Team Unilever south Asia for Mindshare, especially through the challenging review year of 2012. The significant progress made in strategic initiatives, content, experiential, awards won and many other best practices has been truly rewarding for me both personally and professionally. Both the client and my larger organisation have been very supportive. I leave with rich experience and happy memories of steering this massive ship and will miss my rock-star team! I wish all of them all the very best.”