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  • Mindshare elevates Prasanth Kumar, Amrita Randhawa to global roles

    Mindshare elevates Prasanth Kumar, Amrita Randhawa to global roles

    MUMBAI: Mindshare, the global media agency network, has announced two major leadership changes for its growth markets region.

    Prasanth Kumar has been promoted to the position of CEO for MENA and Africa in addition to his current role as the CEO for South Asia whereas Amrita Randhawa has been promoted to Asia Pacific CEO. Randhawa was previously the CEO for Mindshare Greater China. Both roles are effective immediately. They will continue to work with the executive chairperson and CEO for growth markets, comprising APAC, MENA, Africa & Russia/CIS Ashutosh Srivastava.

    Commenting on his appointment, Kumar says, “This recognition in the context of the strong talent profile we have built in the purple family means a lot to me as it reflects our commitment to focus, serve and collaborate with our clients fuelling their business growth. Marketing is morphing and so are we in terms of how we think, act and behave for our clients and their business outcomes. This expanded role gives me the opportunity to widen my perspectives and cross-pollinate our learning and initiatives for smarter, faster, better practices for our clients and our purple talent.”

    Kumar was previously the CEO for South Asia, where he oversaw rapid expansion in the market bringing the agency to a dominant position according to RECMA. During his time as the Mindshare India CEO he developed a record for not just the most number of new business wins by a single market, but also a tradition of external accolades, which included such highlights as a Glass Lion at Cannes and an average of over 250 external awards per year.

    Commenting on the appointment Randhawa mentions, “We often say Mindshare has an Asian heart with our first office being in Taiwan. Asia is the star of our network and I take this responsibility with an incredible sense of humility. Sitting at the crossroads of data, content, technology and analytics, this is the time for the media agency. Working with the incredible leadership team we have in each of the APAC clusters especially in Himanshu, Katie and PK, our focus will be to ensure that Mindshare is ahead of the pack and charts the path for what is possible for media agencies today and tomorrow. The media landscape is changing in every corner of Asia at an incredible speed and working with the amazing breadth of talent we have in this region to create our future is a phenomenal opportunity.”

    Randhawa will remain based in Shanghai, where she will continue to manage Mindshare China as its executive chairperson, in addition to her overall Asia Pacific duties. She has been with the agency for over 12 years working across the Delhi, Mumbai, Beijing, Shanghai and APAC regional office in Singapore. During her time in China, she oversaw the elevation of the agency to its current dominant position topping every league in the market including the RECMA qualitative and quantitative leagues, R3 AgencyScope and making the China office the global lead contributor to Mindshare’s new business wins. She has also since taking on the remit of Greater China last year and worked with the leadership in both Taiwan and Hong Kong to transform both markets. Randhawa’s leadership has been recognised at several forums including the inaugural Women Leading Change Awards, Campaign 40 under 40, Ad Age China’s Women to Watch and Campaign’s Greater China Agency Leader of the Year.

    In her new role, she will focus on the agency’s product, especially delivering the balance of brand and demand services for marketers and ensuring that Mindshare adapts and evolves in line with client’s needs first and not agency agendas.

     

  • Mindshare elevates Ruchi Mathur & Saket Sinha

    Mindshare elevates Ruchi Mathur & Saket Sinha

    MUMBAI: Mindshare, India’s largest media agency, part of GroupM, has announced further organisational restructuring, in order to strengthen its focus on clients within each cluster, drive new capabilities and services, and strengthen operations. 

    The move is intended to help Mindshare not only improve and expand its offerings but also grow its presence in the industry, through a precision-based approach towards customer satisfaction.

    Ruchi Mathur has been instrumental in the growth of Mindshare North and her perseverance has led to the delight of clients, acquisition of several hero projects, and accolades from the industry. She has held pivotal roles leading the entire Mindshare PepsiCo team and collaborating with the larger advertising ecosystem to deliver great innovation for their brands. 

    In her expanded remit as senior vice president of client leadership, Mindshare North and East, Mathur will take on the responsibility of leading an additional region, and will be leading Mindshare North and East. Under her guidance, Mindshare North and East is looking forward to boosting its operational efficiency and delivering greater outcome-based business results for existing and future clients. She will also work closely with promising startups in the region that are exploring newer models of consumer engagement, by bringing together technology, insights and platforms as they grow. Mathur will work with the president of client leadership India Amin Lakhani.

    Saket Sinha will work with Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar and lead m/Six India as senior vice president of client leadership, focusing exclusively on growing and leading the brand. Under Sinha’s leadership m/Six in the last one year has acquired key clients across a variety of consumer product categories. M/Six today has offices in three zones – west, south and north.

    Speaking on this development, Kumar says, “Ruchi and Saket are both dynamic leaders with strong networks in the market, as well as with consumers and clients. We are very excited with the opportunities across the landscape and we are sure that the army of leadership we have in the organisation will produce great results to our clients and therefore a successful journey for us.”

  • Mofam launches fund for in-film advertising

    Mofam launches fund for in-film advertising

    MUMBAI: In-film advertising is rapidly becoming a great place for brands to collaborate with movies. To optimise the equation of expense, integration and impact, Mofam, a financial services company has launched ‘Bfund’, a fund partner to consumer brands to convert their recurring expense for in-movie product placements into a returnable investment.

    Brands currently incur an expense per movie to tacitly make their brand visible. Bfund takes funds from brands only in the first year, and rotates it multiple times over a five-year tenure and returns the same with accumulated NAV at the end of the fund life.

    Started by marketing, media and procurement veteran Raja Peter and career investment management professional and ex-head of private equity at Essel Finance, Sumit Mody, Bfund is a scalable solution by Mofam that helps identify movie projects, brand slots within scripts and creative leverage in feature films across the industry.

    Peter says, “Marketers the world over look to maximise brand awareness at the lowest cost; Bfund is that vehicle for cinema in India. Bfund will work closely with brands to ensure a brand is ensconced within a choice of movies and genres. Our initiative will help deliver deeper brand integration across multiple movies at significantly lower CPM in this critical medium of popular culture.”

    To take this unique fund to the India advertising market, Bfund is collaborating with GroupM’s Mindshare, India’s largest media and marketing investment agency. Through this alliance, Mindshare clients will get a first-mover advantage in access to product placement in theatrical releases at a lower cost. 

    “Product placement in theatrical releases represents an increasingly valuable way for brands to reach targeted consumers,” adds WPP India and CEO GroupM South Asia country manager CVL Srinivas. “By creating a mechanism for marketers to collaborate with film producers at early development stages in filmmaking, innovative and impactful brand integrations can be conceived and developed.”

    Adding his thoughts on the alliance, Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar mentions, “Cinema is a uniquely immersive medium and represents an opportunity for a brand to get noticed with undivided attention. We are excited to deliver to our clients a real competitive advantage in this medium.”

    Bfund is targeting a fund size of Rs 120 crore for Bollywood movies and another Rs 80 crore for Tollywood movies. It expects to start deployment from both funds by next quarter and will primarily look at star-rated projects. Investment size can be up to Rs 20 crore per project.

  • MAM round up of the week

    MAM round up of the week

    MUMBAI: The world of media and advertising never seems to have a dull day with another action-packed week coming to an end. Amid the yo-yoing fortunes of the industry, the newsmakers held their sway. Indian Television Dot Com brings to you a round up of the most important news events over the past seven days: 

    Mindshare South Asia’s organisational restructuring

    Media agency, Mindshare, part of GroupM announced the organisation restructure this week by elevating Amin Lakhani as the new president of client leadership at Mindshare India. In his new role, he will manage core client capabilities across all offices in the country. 

    Additionally, Anita Kotwani has been promoted from her existing role to senior vice president of new business and Premjeet Sodhi will join Mindshare South Asia as senior vice president of Mindshare Fulcrum, South Asia and will lead Team Fulcrum across South Asia. Premjeet’s new role is effective March 2018.

    Madhusudan Gopalan takes over as P&G India MD and CEO

    P&G India elevated Madhusudan Gopalan who as the new managing director and CEO who will take over from 1 April 2018. Madhusudan is currently leading the P&G business in Indonesia and will take over from Al Rajwani, who is set to retire from the company after 37 years of service after the end of the financial year. Until his retirement, Al will help in on-boarding Madhusudan on the India business and enable a smooth transition.

    Gopalan has over 18 years of experience working for the company across business units and diverse geographies like India, US and ASEAN countries.

    Google Pay launches in US, UK

    Globally, in an attempt to become a hit in the vast payment space, Google launched its payment system, Google Pay in US and UK markets where users can pay for public transport in London, Portland and Kiev. 

    In India, Extending its Google Tez option, the Indian payment app will now enable bill payments for electricity, gas, water, DTH as well as postpaid mobile. You just have to link your biller accounts once and directly pay from your bank account. Tez supports Bharat BillPay and doesn’t add any transaction charges.The app is supported in English, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu languages. 

    The bill paying feature would include major utilities like Reliance Energy, BSES and Dish TV and would cover all states and major metros. The app supports all major and small scale banks in India for payment.

    GroupM, Ogilvy unveil Effectiveness Lab

    Wavemaker, GroupM’s media, content and technology agency partnered with creative powerhouse Ogilvy, to create a first of its kind Effectiveness Lab in India. This unique collaboration, between the two WPP agencies will develop data-validated points of view on creating effective communications across consumer interaction platforms.

    Branded content is the first space the Lab will explore, probing how consumers respond to different content strategies, creative approaches and formats. As marketers increase spends on the creation and deployment of content, it is crucial to bring intelligence to what drives effectiveness in the content space.

    ABBY Awards announces 2018’s jury chairs 

    The week also saw Advertising Club and AAAI’s ABBY Awards announcing the illustrious Jury Chairs for the Media, Broadcaster, Publisher, Branded Content & Entertainment, Specialist and Craft Categories. Chairing the jury for each of these categories are stalwarts and veterans who have played an instrumental role in leading the respective categories towards new echelons of growth. The Media category will be judged by Madison World chairman Sam Balsara, Branded Content and Entertainment category will be judged by BIG FM CEO Tarun Katial. 

    ABBYs 2018 will be a highlight at the leading advertising convention, Goafest, where once again the entire advertising and marketing fraternity is expected to come together in Goa, between 5th April, 2018 and 7th April 201 at The Grand Hyatt, Bambolim, North Goa.

  • Mindshare South Asia announces agency restructuring, key appointments

    Mindshare South Asia announces agency restructuring, key appointments

    MUMBAI: Media agency Mindshare has announced an organisation restructure that mirrors the agency’s ambition to become collaborative in client success and navigate its marketing agenda with intelligence and agility.

    After the tremendous success of team Fulcrum in delivering client delight and industry accolades, Amin Lakhani is elevated and has taken on a larger role as president of client leadership at Mindshare India. In his new role, Lakhani is responsible to further strengthen client relationships and drive client growth in a cross media market. He will manage core client capabilities across all offices in the country. During his 14 years at GroupM and Mindshare, Lakhani has grown from strength to strength and will continue to be a key growth contributor in the new role. 

    Anita Kotwani with her unique brand of leadership at Mindshare West has ensured remarkable growth of all business teams in the region. Her continued success and motivation are evident from the number of accolades and the stream of client appreciation her teams have acquired year after year. 

    Given Mindshare’s emphasis on growth through diversification, Kotwani has been promoted to senior vice president, responsible for new business development across the market. In addition to this, she will also drive Horizontality, and work closely with the larger marketing ecosystem. 

    As Lakhani transitions into his new role, Premjeet Sodhi will join Mindshare South Asia as senior vice president at Mindshare Fulcrum, South Asia, and will lead. In his current assignment, Sodhi is the COO at Initiative/ BPN, part of the IPG group, where he handles strategy and new business development for the company. He manages clients such as Amazon, Reckitt, Gionee, Kraft Heinz, Infoedge and Bajaj Auto. With a passion for brands, Sodhi has kept pace with the evolving media space and has contributed immensely in various leadership roles. His new role is effective March 2018. 

    Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar says, “As we enter 2018, we are accelerating transformation which is true to our DNA. We are clear on our strategic priorities, strengthening our connections with a growing universe of clients, consumers, brands and partners in the marketing ecosystem. To be able to do so, we now have the leadership and structure within our organisation to continue our path to greater success, and our renewed focus on creating a disruptive Mindshare with speed, provocation, teamwork.” 

  • Unibic awards media duties to Mindshare

    Unibic awards media duties to Mindshare

    MUMBAI: Unibic, a renowned name in the cookie industry has awarded its media duties to Mindshare, after a competitive multi-agency pitch. The mandate involves handling the media strategy, planning and implementation across all media in India. The account will be handled out of the Mindshare Bangalore office.

    Unibic is one of India’s largest ‘real’ cookie production company with a range of over 24 variants and an added sugar free segment. It has also just launched its healthy range of biscuits such as Gluten-free, Ragi and 40 per cent Oats. 

    On the new appointment, Unibic Foods managing director Nikhil Sen says, “We were looking for a seasoned and versatile partner who will work towards building our brand and taking it to the next level. Mindshare is a reputed agency and comes with high recommendations. We are confident that together we will be able to reach our desired goal.”

    Commenting on the new win, Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar adds, “We are delighted to work with premium cookie brand Unibic. We look forward to working with the team on their strategic marketing initiatives to deliver their business outcomes and strengthen the brand’s position in the cookie category.”

  • Mindshare appoints M K Machaiah as chief innovation officer

    Mindshare appoints M K Machaiah as chief innovation officer

    MUMBAI: India’s largest full service media agency, Mindshare, a part of GroupM has appointed MK Machaiah, known as Mac, as chief innovation officer for South Asia.

    In this role, Mac will lead the integrated approach to consumer engagement and strengthen brand propositions across all consumer touchpoints including traditional, social and experiential. He will be responsible for setting up an innovations lab through systemic integrations of content + social and activations and building sports practice. He will build future-ready capabilities and revenue models by assessing the scope of each practice, set the innovation vision & drive the team to work on client specific propositions. Mac has worked across global markets and has proven ability to bring together different cultural nuances which will be critical in the integration of these two diverse practices.

    After spending over a decade in different media agencies including a two-year stint with Mindshare India, Mac became an integral part of the India leadership team in 2012 as office head, South. He then progressed to chief executive officer, SSA to lead Mindshare Sub Saharan Africa region where he was entrusted with the responsibility to set up Mindshare and consolidate the Unilever business across the region and drive global best practices.

    Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar says, “Mac has been a part of the Mindshare family and comes with credible and rich experience in the industry. We have always taken not just the lead but also the leap in defining industry’s best practices and becoming the trusted marketing partners for our clients. To take this leap, we have appointed Mac who brings experience across industries and markets, which makes him the perfect fit to assist in the growth of the agency.”

    MK Machaiah chief innovation officer South Asia adds, “Mindshare is one of the largest media agencies and I am delighted to embark on a new journey with them. It’s an honour to be a part of an organisation with great stature in the industry. I am excited to be working with some of the top creative and strategic minds in the industry at Mindshare. I look forward to utilise my knowledge and experience to fortify our position in the market and assert the trust of our partners and consumers”

  • Talent retention is key, says Mindshare’s Prasanth Kumar

    Talent retention is key, says Mindshare’s Prasanth Kumar

    MUMBAI: Mindshare, a global media and marketing services company that is a part of GroupM, has completed 20 years this November globally and 15 years in India. The company was created by the merger of the media operations of JWT and Ogilvy & Mather, then the two big full-service advertising agencies within the WPP group.

    Mindshare has global billings in excess of $34.5 billion. The network consists of more than 7,000 employees, in 116 offices across 86 countries spread throughout North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Each office is dedicated to forging a competitive marketing advantage for businesses and their brands based on speed and teamwork. Mindshare is a part of GroupM, which oversees the media investment management sector for WPP, the world’s leading communications services group.

    Mindshare helps clients to make collaborative decisions across their paid, owned and earned marketing in real-time with various tools and services such as FAST, Content+, Mindscan, Kyve and Loop rooms offered by the network.

    While FAST is the programmatic and performance marketing engine leveraging audience insights, category dynamics and environmental triggers to deliver a customised solution in real-time, Content+ was launched to focus on producing insight-driven, purposeful content for a specific audience, at a specific time to meet a specific brand need. Kyve is a platform for brands and advertisers to track online video viewership. It also helps to use the data and intelligence gathered to scan, seed, and strategise end-to-end digital video and content strategies for brands. The tool also leverages its platform for precise brand targeting on online video, to eliminate audience spillage, and further measure the success of video campaigns. LOOP Room brings diverse talent together in one place to interpret data, gain insights and optimise campaigns in real time.

    Prasanth Kumar, also known as PK, took over as the CEO of Mindshare India and South Asia in February 2015. Prior to this he was the managing partner, Central Trading Group, South Asia, GroupM.

    Thanking his predecessors for making the organisation what it is today and laying a strong foundation, Kumar says, “We are glad to be celebrating 20 years and it is a big milestone for any agency. In the last 20 years, the Indian media industry has evolved along with our agency. It is a great achievement for any agency to be celebrating 20 years in this ever-evolving media world.”

    Kumar also added that talent retention is a big challenge in today’s time when the younger generation does not want to join the media world. To combat the issue, Mindshare organises workshops and seminars for its employees while also encouraging and appreciating their hard work.

    He also mentioned that the client agency relationship has changed dynamically over the last few years and it is a challenge to retain clients. An agency needs to be attentive and agile to cater to the client’s changing need and Mindshare has been successful in doing that over the last 20 years, resulting in clients being with Mindshare for the long term.

    Terms such as analytics, big data and AI (artificial intelligence) became more prominent this year but Kumar believes that the Indian media landscape is yet to adapt and understand these tools. He has a positive outlook for 2018 and believes it will be a good year for the industry as a whole after a year’s slowdown due to demonetisation and GST.

  • Aditya Birla Capital talks money in new campaign

    Aditya Birla Capital talks money in new campaign

    MUMBAI: Aditya Birla Capital Limited (ABCL) has launched its latest campaign #DearMoney across 51 TV channels, 14 radio stations, several OOH locations, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and several websites. With this launch, all ABCL businesses inclusive of Aditya Birla Finance Limited, Aditya Birla Sunlife Mutual Fund, Aditya Birla SunLife Insurance and Aditya Birla Health Insurance, have come together as one to serve the end-to-end financial needs of its retail and corporate customers through one brand.

    The campaign highlights the launch of a whole new category — money, and the launch of a whole new way in which financial brands enter and become a part of peoples’ lives through their life’s needs. Given that the complexities surrounding money are unique to every individual, most of us do not like to talk about it, not just with others, but often even with ourselves.

    The objective of the campaign is to provoke people to start a conversation about money and with money. In a unique one-on-one conversation across all channels and mediums, the campaign touches upon the issues the people of India have in relation to their finance and self-realise the need for money in various aspects of their life. It encourages people to actively thinking about it, so that they can take the first step towards financial planning.

    Aditya Birla Capital chief marketing officer Ajay Kakar says, “We are here to enable individuals to protect what they value; to invest so they can live a life they aspire to live; and to finance their dreams, needs and desires. We want to build this into a brand such that whenever a customer thinks of money, they think of us.”

    Directed by Ram Madhvani, the TVC has been created by Taproot Dentsu India with FoxyMoron media handling the digital campaign roll-out and MindShare India being responsible for digital and TV media planning. FITCH India was responsible for the creation of the new visual brand identity for Aditya Birla Capital.

    Taproot Dentsu India chairman and chief creative officer Agnello Dias says, “We needed an open letter from the people of India to a puzzle called money. We focused on taking this conversation out of homes and dining tables to start a collective exchange about all things money. Hopefully the film will encourage each of us to start having real-time conversations with our own #DearMoney in a light-hearted yet insightful way.”

    Mindshare South Asia chief digital officer Vinod Thadani says, “The roll-out across various mediums like mobile, digital, social and native, have been extremely innovative and at a scale aimed to reach out to as many people as we can. With every medium having its own unique conversation, the campaign has been one of the most engaging and interesting that we have worked on yet.”

  • Mindshare appoints Sudipto Roy as managing director, team Unilever for AAR

    Mindshare appoints Sudipto Roy as managing director, team Unilever for AAR

    MUMBAI: Mindshare has appointed Sudipto Roy as its new managing director, Team Unilever for AAR (APAC, Africa, Middle East,Turkey, and Russia). Roy’s mandate is to bring the collective power of WPP to Unilever and help create a horizontal offering for one of the agency’s most important global accounts.

    Roy first started at Mindshare heading strategy for the Mindshare Unilever team in Mumbai back in 2007. He relocated to Singapore in 2011 to lead the Unilever relationship out of the Singaporehub and went on to play a wider role as Chief Client Officer for Mindshare APAC in 2014. He later joined Tenth Avenue (WPP’s connected experiences company) as CEO of developing markets in2015.

    Roy will be based out of Singapore and will wear two hats in his new role. In his first role, he will assume leadership of the Mindshare central and market teams in AAR and ensure they remainahead of the curve on new products and services. His other role will see him proactively work with various WPP agencies to create compelling offerings across digital, data, research, consultingservices, content, shopper, and e-commerce.

    Sudipto Roy says, “I am very excited to be back with WPP at such an interesting point in the development of this industry. We are perfectly poised to build on the advances of the last few years and create the nextiteration of the marketing services model powered by data, technology, content & commerce. What we do now sets the tone for the next decade.”

    WPP global team Unilever head Peter Dart says, “Roy joins us at a time when we are beginning a significant business transformation task as we bring many of our units together to create a more impactful service for one of our largest global clients. His deep knowledge of our markets, our network, and of the Unilever marketing teams willserve as a great enabler to drive this change.”

    Mindshare South East Asia chief executive officer Himanshu Shekhar adds, “It is great to have Roy back into the extended Mindshare & WPP family. He is a unique talent whose product and business orientation helps us create impact at speed. We look forward to exciting innings from him.”

    Sudipto’s role is effective immediately.