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Tag: Maruti Swift

  • Colors slots ‘Bigg Boss 9’ at 10.30 pm; brands iffy?

    Colors slots ‘Bigg Boss 9’ at 10.30 pm; brands iffy?

    MUMBAI: Promoting the ninth season of its reality show Bigg Boss as ‘double trouble,’ Colors has piqued interest by slotting it late in the 10.30 pm band as opposed to the earlier 9 pm time slot.

    However, the media planning and buying community as well as advertisers are somewhat skeptical about the new timing for the popular show fearing that viewership might go down in the 10.30 pm slot.

    According to information available with Indiantelevision.com, the reason behind putting the show in the 10.30 pm slot was that Colors’ prime time shows Chakravartin Ashoka Samrat (9 pm) and Swaragini (9.30 pm) are doing exceptionally well in their respective time slots. WhileSwaragini has continuously managed to maintain its position amongst the top five progarmmes in Hindi GECs, Chakravartin Ashoka Samrattoo makes appearance in the top five every now and then.

    “Changes in the time slot will definitely influence the viewership as well as the ad rates for the show. The ad rates this year are likely to go down as compared to last year’s rates. Brands are unhappy with the channel’s decisions as prime time gives more visibility to them,” said a senior media planner, on condition of anonymity.

    Another media planner added, “The late hour time slot will certainly pose question marks on brands’ willingness to come on board as well as the ad rates pricing. But on the other hand, Salman Khan’s brand value has also gone up substantially. So while the time shift of Bigg Bosswill impact viewership and subsequently the ad rates in the initial periods, I feel that the broadcaster will pick it up by putting captivating content. Overall Bigg Boss will retain its charm.”

    Colors has roped in SnapDeal as the title sponsor for the show, powered by Oppo Mobile India and driven by Maruti Swift.

    While the opening episode of Bigg Boss 9 on Sunday, 11 October will be aired at 9 pm, subsequent episodes of the season will be telecast from 10.30 – 11.30 pm.

    With Bigg Boss 9 being slotted at 10.30 pm, Colors will do away with the repeat telecast of Ishq Ka Rang Safed at 10:30 pm. On the other hand, Code Red in the 11 pm slot will also go off air, according to the sources. Whether the channel will reschedule the show is not known as of now.

    With the tagline of ‘Double Trouble,’ Bigg Boss 9 and the new time slot does give some wind to the speculation that some of the show’s content may be risqué and not suitable for family viewing as per the country’s television guidelines. While the contestants’ antics coupled with Khan’s inimitable hosting style has managed to pack a punch more often than not, this season of Bigg Boss seems to promise doubled the fun.

    That said, it will be interesting to see whether the change in time slot for Bigg Boss 9 will work for Colors or not and whether brands show the same enthusiasm for the show as for its previous seasons.

  • Romedy NOW presents a fun filled month

    Romedy NOW presents a fun filled month

    MUMBAI: Summer time’s in bloom and it brings with it three amazing summer surprises only on Romedy NOW, the exclusive destination for English General Entertainment. Let the heartthrob Hugh Grant steal your hearts all over again with a special property ‘Romedy Heartthrob’ powered by Maruti Swift, every Monday Night at 11pm throughout May. Watch the sweetest of his movies like Two Weeks Notice, Music and Lyrics, Did You Hear about the Morgans, and Nine Months.  

     

    What does it take for an immature, reckless and self-absorbed billionaire real estate tycoon to find true love? A hard working and devoted attorney who serves him a two weeks’ notice tired of his self-importance to make them both realize that they are more than boss and employee. Watch Hugh Grant as George Wade and Sandra Bullock as Lucy Kelson in the movie Two Weeks Notice.

     

    It’s time for child psychologist Samuel Faulkner to let go of his fears of fatherhood and take responsibility of his soon-to-be-born son in Nine Months after an unplanned pregnancy with the love of his life a ballet teacher Rebecca Taylor (Julian Moore) throws him in a tizzy to be made worse by the boisterous daughters of an imperious couple and confusing advice from his single artist friend.

     

    What’s romance without music? Indulge in music and love in Music and Lyrics, as Grant plays Alex a former pop sensation with a fading career in music. As he lacks inspiration to write a love song ‘Way back into love’ for a famed pop artist he seeks help from a creative writer Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore) who waters his plants and is overcoming a failed romance herself. The musical sojourn has more ‘aww’ moments than you can think about!

     

    Running away from a contract killer after they witness a murder brings city slickers Paul Michael Morgan and his soon to be ex-wife Meryl to a small town of Ray in a witness protection program in Did you Hear about the Morgans. They rediscover love in the face of peril of escaping the contract killer and adjusting to country life, horse riding and fighting off bears and bulls. Enjoy the love and laughter in this one.

     

    Too much love and laughter is never enough. It’s time to chill out with the most entertaining movies with a special property called ‘Hangout’ powered by Micro Max, Monday – Wednesday at 6pm all through May. Catch the foot-tapping penguin story in Happy Feet and the world of Emperor Penguins where a penguin cannot sing to find his partner but dance.

     

    Spanglish has an honest Mexican domestic help Flor (Tea Leone) trying to get her teenage daughter Cristina stick to her roots and values while working in the household of a celebrated chef John (Adam Sandler) and his insecure wife. As the imperfect marriage and world of John crumbles down he finds companionship in Flor.

     

    See humans get sued by a bee for eating all their honey in Bee Movie, two 11-year-olds falling in love in New York City in Little Manhattan, flooding an ant colony with his water gun has Lucas Nickle shrunk to insect size and work in the ruins in The Ant Bully. Watch more gems like Big, Chasing Liberty, Say Anything, Anastasia, and Aquamarine.

     

    The feast does not end here! May is also the time for ‘Off the Shelves’ every Thursday night at 9 with some brilliant movies. Learn about the perils of misreading signs and falling in love with people who don’t love you back in the interconnecting stories in He’s Just not That Into You. Drool away watching Bradley Cooper, Scarlet Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, and more such scorchers in this ensemble cast.

     

    The love story of a Parkinson’s patient and a medical rep working for Pfizer in Pittsburg in Love and Other Drugs. Love does not die as proved in PS I Love You where a young widow Holly Kennedy (Hilary Swank) is left 10 posthumous messages by her husband Gerry (Gerard Butler) to help her come to terms with the bereavement and move on. Not just these, enjoy movies like The Devil Wears Prada and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

  • Arvind Pal Singh joins ValueFirst Digital Media as head-creative and communication

    Arvind Pal Singh joins ValueFirst Digital Media as head-creative and communication

    MUMBAI: Arvind Pal Singh has been appointed ValueFirst Digital Media head- content, creative and communication.

    Prior to this, Singh(who is fondly known as Candy in the industry) has worked with Purple Focus for three years and in Capital Advertising for eleven years. He is also the founder of an advertisement agency called Magic Mushroom which he started before joining Purple Focus.

    In his 16 years of career Candy has been associated with brands like LG, Electrolux, Maruti Swift, Citifinancial, Nestle, Godfrey Phillips, Allan Soothers Bajaj RE, DLF, Nokia (BTL), Tata Indicom (BTL), Eicher motors and Reliance Big Magic.

    Singh said, “After spending almost two decades in the advertising space, I have realised that what comes between ideas and the consumers is the client who wants to play safe. For every idea that sees the light of the day, there are hundreds of rejected ideas behind it. The digital world on the other hand provides an opportunity to directly interact with the consumers. Engaging consumers online to form meaningful long term communities is one of the most interesting challenges for me here at ValueFirst.”

    ValueFirst Digital Media CEO Vishwadeep Bajaj added, “I am delighted to have Candy on board. I believe that he can leverage his industry experience and understanding of the consumer to attract, engage and retain consumers on ValueFirst digital properties.”

  • PAKA to present a Dilip Chhabria modified Maruti Swift to one lucky viewer

    PAKA to present a Dilip Chhabria modified Maruti Swift to one lucky viewer

    MUMBAI: Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006 (PAKA), has added another initiative to engage its young audience. One lucky kid who guesses the correct winners from Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006 and votes for them across the eight categories will get an exclusive custom designed Maruti Swift from automobile designer Dilip Chhabria.

    This year, Pogo Amazing Kids Awards, for the first time, includes an audience poll as well as jury decision to determine the winners. The contest will begin on 28 November, 2006. Kids can choose their winners by sending an SMS to ‘8558’ or MTNL users can call – 1250 111 158 and BSNL and Airtel landline users can call – 1250 158, states an official release.

    Turner International India Networks, India and South Asia vice president, advertising sales Monica Tata said, “We are extremely happy to have Dilip Chhabria as a part of Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006. Turner has always believed in taking our brands beyond the scope of television and this initiative will prove to be a milestone in our venture. This is one of the most prestigious awards to be given away by a kids’ television show. The idea is to make POGO Amazing Kids Awards 2006 rewarding for both participants and viewers.”

    Commenting on his involvement with kids and Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006, the promoter of Dilip Chhabria Design Pvt Ltd., Dilip Chhabria said, “I am glad to be associated with Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006. This will be the first time that I will be designing a car for a new audience and I believe that kids are the building blocks of the future. They play a very critical and influential role in today’s time. This is a unique and exciting opportunity for me.”

    Pogo Amazing Kids Awards 2006 is divided into two sections, Pogo Voice Awards and Pogo Kids Awards. The Pogo Kids Awards segment will recognise exceptional talent and brilliance and reward them for their extraordinary talents in multiple areas and the Pogo Voice Awards will yet again empower children from all over India to vote for their favourite celebrity icons amongst nominees in various award categories.

    Instituted by Pogo in December 2004, the Awards recognise child wonders and reward them for their outstanding achievements in eight categories – arts, sports, music, singing, dance, genius, leadership and entertainment.

  • Online players cash-in on Fifa World cup & score goals with web content: IAMAI

    Online players cash-in on Fifa World cup & score goals with web content: IAMAI

    BANGALORE: The Football world cup, which concluded last week, attracted sports lovers across the globe to the Internet. All major portals and mobile content providers in India had specially redesigned their content for the World Cup to feed the demand of football fans.

    Online add-ons such as mobile download of wallpapers of some of the popular football players and online and mobile games attracted the maximum number of fans to the internet, according to an official release from the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

    Says IAMAI president Dr Subho Ray, “The World Cup bonanza shows that the Internet has emerged not only as an alternative medium but as a parallel medium to a large section of the people in India. With the advent of broadband as well as mobile phones, it is possible to keep a track of the matches even on the go. Websites and mobile content companies are gradually realising the potential of both these mediums and hence are increasingly beefing up their content for such mega events and in the process successfully attracting more and more users and advertisers”.

    HT Media, for example, recorded a 5 per cent to 7 per cent increase in the online revenues, claims Hindustan Times GM Business Development Salil Kumar. Kumar also mentioned that the number of hits during the prime time period at 9 30 pm reached an average of 15,00,000, at post-midnight averaged 20,00,000 and evening 6 30 pm reached an average 5,00,000.

    According to Kumar, in terms of city-wise access to World Cup related activities, Delhi/Chandigarh topped with 40 per cent, followed by Mumbai 30 per cent, Pune 5 per cent, Ahmedabad 5 per cent, Bangalore 10 per cent, Hyderabad 5 per cent and others 5 per cent.

    States Sify Ltd VP Interactive Services Surya Mantha, “Thousands of clips of World Cup football related content were viewed on Sify’s broadband portal Sify Max in the first two weeks of the tournament”. He added that the most watched clip was related to the Brazil v/s France match on 2 July, which was viewed 25,000 times.

    Soccer fans around the world treat their favourite sport as a religion and hence increasingly want to know more and more about their favourite players. This has resulted in an offbeat category on websites, which provides other such information to the football fans. In the offbeat category, Mantha says, “A video featuring the wives/girlfriends of star football players was the most popular”.

    Online advertisers took full advantage of the World Cup fever. MSN India had advertisers such as Lenovo and LIC Housing, informs MSN India Sales and Marketing head R. Rajnish. He also mentioned that netizens mostly in the age group of 18-35 years visited their website for World Cup related activities, the release adds.

    “For Rediff.com”, says chief media revenue officer Arvindra Kanwal, “increased page views resulted in more ad inventory which in turn resulted in better revenue”. He adds, “Football as a platform brought a set of advertisers like Ranbaxy, Maruti Swift, Gillette, Microsoft, Apollo Tyres and others. Our response in page views and sponsor interest mirrored cricket and largely caught the interest of Sec A & B urban audiences in eight metros. Smaller towns were slow to respond”.

    Airtel on the other hand was one of the presenting sponsors of the Fifa World Cup on ESPN, which had the exclusive telecast rights. It provided soccer fans World Cup updates, sourced from ESPN Mobile. It also offered the official song of the FIFA World Cup as a Hello Tune & Ringtone for all Airtel customers.

    Says Bharti Airtel Ltd joint president (Mobility), “Football and World cup related content were among the most popular downloads on Airtel Live, the multi-access entertainment portal of Airtel. As per data available over the last 30 days, the official Fifa World Cup game is among the four most downloaded games. In this visually engaging game, gamers experienced the 12 official stadiums as they took one of their 32 national teams from qualification to glory. ‘Time of Our Lives’, ballad by Il Divo & Toni Braxton, which was the official Fifa World Cup song, has been among the top 10 downloaded songs in the non-film category on Airtel. Football related images were among the top five downloaded wallpapers.”

  • Online and mobile players go for the goal

    Online and mobile players go for the goal

    MUMBAI: With the biggest event in the global sporting calendar, the 2006 Fifa World Cup in Germany, just four days away, web sites and mobile phone platforms have beefed up their football content to attract viewers and advertisers.

    For websites, it is an opportunity to attract Indian sports buffs and for advertisers it will be a classic opportunity to get their message across. According to estimates by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, for larger portals, the incremental jump in advertising revenues will be anywhere between 8 – 15 per cent.

    Internet use in India has grown exponentially since 2002, when the last World Cup tournament was held. In 2002, the number of internet users were about eight million as compared to today’s 38.5 million. Consumption of sports infotainment online too has grown significantly in the last four years in India.

    Yahoo! India director sales Pearl Uppal is upbeat about the prospects for the event. “We see high potential in online advertising for the soccer World Cup. Yahoo! is hosting the official site of the 2006 Fifa World Cup. Further, we expect an estimated 32 million unique users to consume over four billion pages of the 2006 official Fifa World Cup site. We see high engagement of our users with Yahoo! India Sports.”

    As an official Fifa World Cup partner, Yahoo! is bringing unique World Cup experience both online and on mobile. This will provide advertisers with a proposition and consistent platform with which to tap into audiences’ passion for football and the Fifa World Cup. Yahoo! is offering opportunities to advertisers to immerse the brand within an engaged content experience and to run innovative promotions on their online and mobile platforms.

    Rediff.com India Ltd chief media revenue officer Aravindra Kanwal said, “Traffic will be strong and we should see a 50 – 100 per cent spike (visitors to the web site) for some matches.”

    Rediff.com, besides having match schedules online, also has trivia related to the World Cup, a countdown to the beginning of the activity, full coverage of past tournaments, international and national and also an online football store to enable users to purchase their favourite football memorabilia. There is a Fifa World Cup 2006 Gaming Zone, which allows a user to participate in a game to test their memory and concentration.

    “Web sites are pulling out the stops to attract viewers and advertisers. At Rediff.com, editorial teams are working on different formats and plan to offer advertisers opportunities to integrate mobile and internet mediums with print, TV and radio. HT plans to create more than 100 pages of micro-sites promoted across the site,” said HT Media Ltd head sales and alliances Salil Kumar.

    Sify.com head of consumer channels Ajay Nambiar said, “Corporates are showing a very high degree of interest in the World Cup focused websites, knowing full well that the World Cup has captured the imagination of the youth in particular. Maruti Swift is one of the sponsors on Sify. Several other corporates are talking to us and Sify’s special section will see multiple advertisers and sponsors targetting the football fan.”

    The Sify World Cup special on the web site features videos of venues, teams, players, past tournaments and preparations, apart from news reports and features, off-beat stories, contests, best of blogs, interactives, video-based quizzes, etc. During the cup, live tickers, news reports, features, image galleries, audio commentary and videos will capture the excitement of the Cup.

    The 2006 football World Cup in Germany also represents an opportunity to promote 3G. However, according to a study ‘World Cup 2006: Scoring with mobile content and services’ published by research company Visiongain, it will be established content, such as text-based services that will generate the most significant revenue.

    The study found that the one-month long tournament will generate $6.35 billion in revenue, with text-based services and downloads, such as ring tones and logos, being the most significant.

    Gaming will also contribute to profits earned by World Cup related content. The industry will also look to generate revenue through interactive video messaging, video clips and even blogging services. The key revenue generators will be tried and tested text services, ring tones and logos. The content of the World Cup lends itself well to highlights clips, which operators have been busy purchasing the rights for, as well as mobile gambling.

    Airtel in India, thanks to it being a member of the Bridge Mobile Alliance and Mobile ESPN partnership, has been providing its users with a dedicated news section on the World Cup 2006 from 23 May to 9 July 2006. For example, ESPN Here We Go will provide the latest match insights from ESPN Star Sports presenters and football pundits as they bring match previews, predictions, analysis, previous day highlights and team news from the World Cup.

    SportsCenter will enable fans to keep track of the latest sports in action, around-the-world coverage on top sports stories, with special reports on the World Cup match updates, summaries and results. Other sports content service offerings available for download include Java games, wallpapers of popular football players and player tunes to name a few.