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Tag: PR firm

  • Rohini Saldanha launches her PR firm – The PR Stop.

    Rohini Saldanha launches her PR firm – The PR Stop.

    Mumbai: VML’s former head of corporate communications, Rohini Saldanha has announced the launch of The PR Stop., a public relations firm that will provide comprehensive public relations and communications solutions to clients across various industries. Recognising the transformative power of strategic communication in shaping brand perception and driving organisational success, The PR Stop. is a one-stop brand communications company that will enable businesses to effectively reach their target audiences and drive growth while carving a niche for themselves in a dynamic business landscape.  

    With a strong track record of building individual and company brand identities, shaping brand narratives, and an extensive network of industry contacts, founder Rohini Saldanha brings a wealth of experience, expertise, and capabilities to her new venture. Having built her career as a turnaround specialist in the media and communications industry, Rohini has held leadership positions in public relations and marketing communications for over 18 years earning the trust of clients in diverse verticals such as corporate, lifestyle, consumer, media,

    and entertainment. Her belief in the importance of brands connecting with consumers authentically drives her to utilize PR as a powerful tool for competitive advantage,  emphasizing the need for evolving content strategies to stay relevant in changing consumer behaviours.

    On launching her own company, Rohini Saldanha said, “Simply put it was the right time. I have been toying with the idea of officially launching my own company for a while now. The final nudge came when an editor friend of mine reached out to me regarding a client I  represent and asked me to regularly update them with my client roster. That got me thinking that it was vital for me to promote my business as I was doing myself (and others) a disservice by lying low. I guess the initial hesitance came from a place of not wanting to put the cart before the horse. However, having had clients signed on as retainers with me since August  2023, I thought it was the opportune time to ‘pull out all the stops’ in making my company  official as my business is expanding.”  

    Rohini further added, “I was initially considering using my name as the company name but besides the fact that it looks pretentious, I wanted a brand name that was simple, easy to remember, and descriptive of my offerings as a business. My advice to most clients is that there should not be any conflict between you and the brand that you represent. You are the brand and over time you should become synonymous with it which is the ultimate litmus test.  That is my intention with The PR Stop., where the work I have undertaken and will undertake for my clients reflects my craft, capabilities, and passion for strategic communications. So,  whether you sign up with Rohini Saldanha or The PR Stop., it is essentially the same thing.”

    The PR Stop. offers a range of services, including content development, media relations, crisis management, brand positioning, and strategic counsel. The company’s current portfolio includes clients from various sectors including creative, branding, recruitment, and DE&I.

  • Dentsu, Facebook: the problem with digital advertising

    Dentsu, Facebook: the problem with digital advertising

    MUMBAI: The advertising industry just got a hit in an area where it hurts: right in the solar plexus. Last week, Japanese ad agency Dentsu which accounts for a lion’s share of advertising in Japan, admitted that it had overcharged (read: “fleeced”) digital clients to the tune of Yen 230 million between November 2012 and to date. Now, if that sounds like a lot of money it is only $2.3 million or about Rs 14-15 crore. The agency management discovered more than 633 suspicious transactions with 111 advertisers being impacted. Around 14 advertisers were charged but the ads were not placed on the internet at all.

    Dentsu has been expanding globally and it acquired the Aegis Network in 2012 at a cost of $5 billion and today around 50 per cent of its advertising comes from global operations. In India, it is led by Asish Bhasin with a clutch of agencies below its umbrella. Bhasin has been charting aggressive growth for the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) and has been shopping around for growth opportunities through acquisition. His latest buy was mega PR firm Perfect Relations.

    Coming back to the fudging of bills by Dentsu, its president and CEO Tadashi Ishii has clarified that it is restricted only to Japan. Said he in a press release issued earlier this week: “In relation to a part of our digital advertising services for advertisers (including performance-based digital advertising services) provided by our company and some of our group companies in Japan, it has been found that there were multiple incidents where services were provided inappropriately. Types of irregularities involving inappropriate operations which we have detected to date include discrepancies in advertising placement periods either made consciously or by human error, failure of placement, and false reporting regarding performance results or achievements. Additionally, it has been detected that there were incidents where our invoices did not reflect actual results, resulting in unjust overcharged billing.”

    He went on to add the agency was taking the matter very seriously and corrective measures are being taken to prevent a recurrence. “As an interim measure, in order to ensure that human errors or inappropriate operations in digital advertising will be prevented and detected, in early September we transferred operations to verify the specifics of advertising placements, publications and billing to a separate section which is independent from the section previously responsible for such operations, and we have endeavored to strengthen our business system for such verifying operations.”

    “Our company is determined to clarify the causes leading to the inapropriate operations and to establish further requisite measures for resolving the situations and fundamental preventive measures, and to implement such steps faithfully and steadily in order to restore confidence in our company. Following the taking of such steps, we plan to report the progress of our efforts to our clients and business partners including advertisers, related associations and organizations and all other stakeholders. At this stage, we are aiming at doing so by the end of this year.”

    He went to sincerely apologies to Dentsu clients and shareholders “from the bottom of our hearts for causing concern and trouble. At this moment, we do not believe that our business results would be materially affected. However, if we find any new matter which would materially affect our business results in the future, we will disclose such new matter promptly, as soon as it comes to our attention.”

    In April, Dentsu had consolidated its digital business under a new offshoot called Dentsu Digital Inc in a bid to increase its hold internet advertising, which was not its strong area in the land of the rising sun.

    Dentsu in India has been pushing aggressively in digital and around 30 per cent of its revenues come from online advertising. In the urge to grow could some wrong doing have happened in India too? These are questions Bhasin and DAN will have to address. Nonetheless sources say that the India office did meet some of its Japanese clients over the past two days to allay any concerns.

    Be that as it may, this is not the only instance where the advertising industry has got its face muddied in the past week. Facebook, the word’s largest social network, too issued an apology on Friday saying that it had overstated on its video viewership metrics, that it had been giving marketers an inflated number for the average time being spent viewing online clips.

    Facebook admitted that it had been boosting its average viewing time by only counting videos as viewed if it had been seen for more than three second. It had excluded from its calculations videos not viewed or those which had a view time of less than three seconds.

    The two instances above indicate the high-pressured advertising industry’s urge to surge and its excesses. No doubt, it will dent the ad industry’s image where it hurts the most: the area of trust. As it is, consumers are tending to have a sense of disbelief about the claims advertisers are making in advertising, online and in TVCs. There’s very limited monitoring of online advertising and the claims made online, compared to the volume of advertising that’s out there on the internet. And that is a cause for worry. With users shifting to consuming a lot more news, videos online and on mobile devices, the cases of inappropriate, false claims ads will only rise.

    It’s over to the ad industry to find some solutions.

  • Dentsu, Facebook: the problem with digital advertising

    Dentsu, Facebook: the problem with digital advertising

    MUMBAI: The advertising industry just got a hit in an area where it hurts: right in the solar plexus. Last week, Japanese ad agency Dentsu which accounts for a lion’s share of advertising in Japan, admitted that it had overcharged (read: “fleeced”) digital clients to the tune of Yen 230 million between November 2012 and to date. Now, if that sounds like a lot of money it is only $2.3 million or about Rs 14-15 crore. The agency management discovered more than 633 suspicious transactions with 111 advertisers being impacted. Around 14 advertisers were charged but the ads were not placed on the internet at all.

    Dentsu has been expanding globally and it acquired the Aegis Network in 2012 at a cost of $5 billion and today around 50 per cent of its advertising comes from global operations. In India, it is led by Asish Bhasin with a clutch of agencies below its umbrella. Bhasin has been charting aggressive growth for the Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN) and has been shopping around for growth opportunities through acquisition. His latest buy was mega PR firm Perfect Relations.

    Coming back to the fudging of bills by Dentsu, its president and CEO Tadashi Ishii has clarified that it is restricted only to Japan. Said he in a press release issued earlier this week: “In relation to a part of our digital advertising services for advertisers (including performance-based digital advertising services) provided by our company and some of our group companies in Japan, it has been found that there were multiple incidents where services were provided inappropriately. Types of irregularities involving inappropriate operations which we have detected to date include discrepancies in advertising placement periods either made consciously or by human error, failure of placement, and false reporting regarding performance results or achievements. Additionally, it has been detected that there were incidents where our invoices did not reflect actual results, resulting in unjust overcharged billing.”

    He went on to add the agency was taking the matter very seriously and corrective measures are being taken to prevent a recurrence. “As an interim measure, in order to ensure that human errors or inappropriate operations in digital advertising will be prevented and detected, in early September we transferred operations to verify the specifics of advertising placements, publications and billing to a separate section which is independent from the section previously responsible for such operations, and we have endeavored to strengthen our business system for such verifying operations.”

    “Our company is determined to clarify the causes leading to the inapropriate operations and to establish further requisite measures for resolving the situations and fundamental preventive measures, and to implement such steps faithfully and steadily in order to restore confidence in our company. Following the taking of such steps, we plan to report the progress of our efforts to our clients and business partners including advertisers, related associations and organizations and all other stakeholders. At this stage, we are aiming at doing so by the end of this year.”

    He went to sincerely apologies to Dentsu clients and shareholders “from the bottom of our hearts for causing concern and trouble. At this moment, we do not believe that our business results would be materially affected. However, if we find any new matter which would materially affect our business results in the future, we will disclose such new matter promptly, as soon as it comes to our attention.”

    In April, Dentsu had consolidated its digital business under a new offshoot called Dentsu Digital Inc in a bid to increase its hold internet advertising, which was not its strong area in the land of the rising sun.

    Dentsu in India has been pushing aggressively in digital and around 30 per cent of its revenues come from online advertising. In the urge to grow could some wrong doing have happened in India too? These are questions Bhasin and DAN will have to address. Nonetheless sources say that the India office did meet some of its Japanese clients over the past two days to allay any concerns.

    Be that as it may, this is not the only instance where the advertising industry has got its face muddied in the past week. Facebook, the word’s largest social network, too issued an apology on Friday saying that it had overstated on its video viewership metrics, that it had been giving marketers an inflated number for the average time being spent viewing online clips.

    Facebook admitted that it had been boosting its average viewing time by only counting videos as viewed if it had been seen for more than three second. It had excluded from its calculations videos not viewed or those which had a view time of less than three seconds.

    The two instances above indicate the high-pressured advertising industry’s urge to surge and its excesses. No doubt, it will dent the ad industry’s image where it hurts the most: the area of trust. As it is, consumers are tending to have a sense of disbelief about the claims advertisers are making in advertising, online and in TVCs. There’s very limited monitoring of online advertising and the claims made online, compared to the volume of advertising that’s out there on the internet. And that is a cause for worry. With users shifting to consuming a lot more news, videos online and on mobile devices, the cases of inappropriate, false claims ads will only rise.

    It’s over to the ad industry to find some solutions.

  • LinOpinion enters into JV with leading international PR firm, GolinHarris

    LinOpinion enters into JV with leading international PR firm, GolinHarris

    MUMBAI: LinOpinion – the PR division of Lowe Lintas & Partners India and GolinHarris have jointly announced their coming together under a joint venture (JV) agreement, intended to bring clients into India’s new integrated communications services with a focus on providing the deepest insights, the boldest ideas and the broadest engagement across both traditional and digital channels. Under the agreement each partner has an equal stake and the entity will now be known as LinOpinion-GolinHarris.

    Lowe Lintas & Partners CEO Joseph George said “LinOpinion, with its large portfolio of blue-chip clients, is one of the fastest growing business units within Lowe Lintas & Partners India.  And GolinHarris, a company that has revolutionised the way PR agencies work world over. While I am very excited with our mutual obsession with building brands, I am also convinced that their inputs, influence and involvement will not just help us scale up our operations in India, but also transform our PR offering to be more differentiated and better placed to respond to the ever evolving media environment and engagement dynamics.”

    “We have enormous respect and admiration for LinOpinion and the Lowe Lintas & Partners Group. Their current client portfolio and professional staff are best-in-class.  This partnership will formalise our long association with them and will take things to the next level,” said GolinHarris CEO Fred Cook.

    “The timing could not be better as PR is evolving and so is the communications market in India.  I believe there is great potential hereand I look forward to helping expand the range of services we will offer our clients in India through our award-winning technology, training and talent.”  added GolinHarris president Jonathan Hughes.

    “LinOpinion has had an excellent run so far. But the market is evolving and clients are ready for something new. We have restructured our service model and have made significant investments to strengthen the team with vertical heads. We are very excited to partner with GolinHarris. The LinOpinion-Golin Harris JV will offer our existing clients and new prospects a differentiated service, with a greater focus on quality and measurable results. We intend to scale this business significantly in the next few years.” said Lowe Lintas & Partners executive director Ameer Ismail.

  • PR firm The Communique to shut shop; promoter Kalra to join Rajshri Media

    PR firm The Communique to shut shop; promoter Kalra to join Rajshri Media

    MUMBAI: Public Relations firm The Communique will close operations on 31 March. This is in the wake of the company’s proprietor, media person Nitin Kalra’s decision to join Rajshri Media (P) Limited as VP-content sales and marketing from the next financial year.

    Kalra will join Rajshri Media on 1 April. Rajshri Media is the digital company of Rajshri Productions (P) Limited. Kalra has been involved with the company as a consultant – content development since February 2005 and drives the mobile business of the company at present, the release adds.

    The Communique was started in January 2003 as a PR company. During its tenure, the company catered to over 85 clients including Rajshri Productions, Nimbus Communications, CRU India, FreeSpirit Entertainment, T-Series and singer Anu Malik.

    The company’s existing clients, besides others, include Sony Entertainment Television, Universal Music and Pankaj Udhas, states an official release.