NEW DELHI: Starting with the metros with the aim of attracting the affluent, Heineken with its campaign ‘There’s more behind the star’ is now planning to move to smaller cities in India. It is inviting consumers to discover the authentic product stories, the foundation of the global brand.
The brand campaign in India comprised localized outdoor communication which combined Heineken’s credentials and a city’s cultural nuances in a witty manner.
Aimed at addressing Heineken’s iconic heritage and at the same time telling compelling stories relevant and topical, the campaign spanned Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata.
The global campaign consisted of a series of TV commercials featuring Hollywood star Benicio Del Toro, supporting digital activation and point of sale activities.
The humorous video ‘See Del Toro’ comparing what is behind its own ‘star’ status, to specific stories behind the legendary Heineken star. The content was created by Publicis Worldwide and filmed in various locations in Barcelona.
The campaign focuses on the beer itself, the brand’s rich heritage and its unparalleled international footprint.
In 142 years, Heineken has grown from a small Amsterdam-based company into the world’s most international premium lager. The aim is to show the quality and taste has never wavered.
United Breweries senior vice president marketing Samar Singh Sheikhawat said; “Consumers increasingly want to know what’s happening behind the scenes. Heineken has a wealth of authentic backstories.”
MUMBAI: Publicis Worldwide has bagged the creative mandate for DTDC Express. The agency will be handling an integrated mandate covering creative, digital, media and PR.
DTDC is a renowned brand in the courier and logistics sector in India and abroad. The company is headquartered in Bangalore and boasts of an unparalleled network covering 11,000+ pin codes across India and 522 operating locations in India, servicing over 220 international locations worldwide and handles more than 12 million shipments every month.
DTDC Express executive director Abhishek Chakraborty says, “The strategy and creativity shown by Publicis was in sync with our brand philosophy. I believe we have chosen the right partner to help us strengthen our brand equity.”
Commenting on the win, Publicis Ambience COO Paritosh Srivastava said “We are delighted to partner with DTDC. It is a massive player in its category and as the brand is poised to reinvent itself, we are sure that we will have a lot of opportunity to do great work together.”
Publicis Ambience ECD Jigar Fernandes, adds “It’s really a coming together of two entities who are really passionate about their work. The common goal is now to help take the brand to the place its legacy demands. It’s going to be fun.”
MUMBAI: Publicis Worldwide has bagged the creative mandate for DTDC Express. The agency will be handling an integrated mandate covering creative, digital, media and PR.
DTDC is a renowned brand in the courier and logistics sector in India and abroad. The company is headquartered in Bangalore and boasts of an unparalleled network covering 11,000+ pin codes across India and 522 operating locations in India, servicing over 220 international locations worldwide and handles more than 12 million shipments every month.
DTDC Express executive director Abhishek Chakraborty says, “The strategy and creativity shown by Publicis was in sync with our brand philosophy. I believe we have chosen the right partner to help us strengthen our brand equity.”
Commenting on the win, Publicis Ambience COO Paritosh Srivastava said “We are delighted to partner with DTDC. It is a massive player in its category and as the brand is poised to reinvent itself, we are sure that we will have a lot of opportunity to do great work together.”
Publicis Ambience ECD Jigar Fernandes, adds “It’s really a coming together of two entities who are really passionate about their work. The common goal is now to help take the brand to the place its legacy demands. It’s going to be fun.”
MUMBAI: If you are a loyal Maggi patron who has been pining for the product’s return to the market, it’s time for a fist pump. ‘The two minute noodles’ have been declared safe for consumption by the testing labs, announced Nestle India on Wednesday. The newly manufactured stocks have cleared all the three lab tests authorised by the Bombay High Court, and Maggi is expected to hit the shelves by this November.
This isn’t good news for just Maggi lovers, but for the company’s investors as well. Since the news was out, Nestle’s share prices saw a surge. As compared to its previous day’s close of Rs 6234.35, the company’s stock was up 12.80 per cent at end of day’s trade on 4 November to close at Rs 6247.15. The stock opened at Rs 6256.85 and touched an intra-day high of Rs 6479 and a low of Rs 6220.80.
The popular FMCG product came under scrutiny after more than permissible amount of lead was found in it, which eventually led to the product being taken off the shelf.
To read more on Maggi’s ban from the market, click here.
But Maggi’s fight to win back its lost reputation, and make up for its absence from the brand space doesn’t stop at government clearance.
The industry’s eyes are trained to see what the brand pulls off on its marketing and advertising front, given that Maggi’s return could be the biggest brand come back of the year.
A precursor to which we saw in a slew of short videos that Nestle recently launched on its official YouTube channel. These managed to evoke nostalgia for the brand, even when the product was off the shelf.
Responding to the many love letters from loyal fans on social media, Maggi released six videos each ending with a ‘Miss You’ message. Conceptualised by McCann Worldwide, which handles Nestle’s corporate campaigns, the campaign instantly grabbed eyeballs with #WeMissYouToo spreading across social media.
In a later interview to a leading business daily, McCann Worldwide India CEO Prasoon Joshi had said that the campaign was an instinctual response to what was being said on Twitter and Facebook.
While Publicis Worldwide remain the creative agency for Maggi, Joshi is heralding the re-launch campaign for the brand.
The campaign may have tugged at the heartstrings of a few, but according RK Swamy Hansa Group chairman and International Advertising Association (IAA) India chapter president Srinivasan Swamy the campaign hit the market “a little late in the day.” Swamy also feels that the campaign was mostly targeted towards opinion makers, and not at the core consumer base of the product, which is a larger number than Twitter and Facebook’s audience.
“I feel that for a FMCG product, social campaign through Facebook may not be adequate. They must employ mass media to engage with their consumers. The audience that they can reach through Twitter and Facebook, is small compared to its huge consumer base,” he says.
Digitally Maggi may have made an effort to remain alive in our memories, but the volume the product lost from the shelves is not going to be regained by a campaign. It is going to be a long drawn out process, where the brand will have to make use of the mass media more aggressively, keeping digital as one of the peripherals, feels Swamy.
And that is precisely what the brand has done with their recent full page ad in a national daily. Meanwhile, the company has been playing up Maggi’s safety.
“Your Maggi is safe, has always been.” – is what the ad reads before it goes on to explain that 3,500 tests conducted in India and abroad by food standards authorities in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have pronounced the noodles as “safe for consumption.”
During the ban, Nestle India lost advertising inventory of about Rs 10 crore due to Maggi recall although they aired commercials of Nescafe or KitKat in all advertisement slots booked for the instant noodles brand. Nestle notified broadcasters and other media houses in India to stop publishing Maggi ads till the next directive is issued.
Nestle India is known for their conservative spends on marketing and advertising. Between 2010 and 2014, Nestlé India’s spending on advertising and sales promotions was between 4.2 per cent and 4.8 per cent of total income. With a powerful and impactful campaign in the queue, market analysts predicts a sea change in their spending in the sector, which may even go up to seven per cent.
While not revealing any figures, Nestlé India’s new managing director Suresh Narayanan, had earlier stated that the company would “spend more on advertising, marketing and promotions across categories to counter impact on sales caused by the Maggi ban.”
“They have to spend more on marketing and advertising if they even attempt to relaunch the product,” says BBH India CEO Subhash Kamath. “The brand has been off air for a while now. They need to come back with a bang and to be more credible and visible to their consumers,” he adds, saying that the company should spend a portion of their marketing spends in the initial phase of the re-launch campaign.
This isn’t the first time that a popular household product needed a comeback campaign after they went off shelf for a period of time. Remember Cadbury Dairy Milk’s come back campaign with Amitabh Bachchan, conceptualised by the maverick ad man Piyush Pandey?
Kamath recollects how Cadbury had re-packaged the product with an extra layer and brought it back to the market to convince its consumers, and how a similar approach may work for Maggi as well. “Credibility is something the brands need to earn, and campaigns can just assist it. Cadbury did a very good job at that time. Maggi will probably have to do the same thing.”
Having said that, going the celebrity way to earn this credibility may not work for Maggi.
“Bachchan Ji had a certain credibility in the eyes of the people at that time. It was possible for him to convince the consumers of the products lost credibility. Consumers today are more skeptical. They wouldn’t buy any product just because their favourite star is selling it. Chances are, Maggi wouldn’t go the celebrity way. They may prefer the testimonials of consumers and facts for their campaign,” opines Kamath.
Incidentally, Bachchan was also one of the endorses of Maggi some years back.
Going ‘bold and confident’ is the only way Maggi can pull this off, opines Grey South and southeast Asia chief strategy officer Dheeraj Sinha, who has also penned the book India Reloaded. “The biggest thing that the consumers will be looking out for in Maggi’s first relaunch campaign is the air of confidence. Their message to the consumers should be emphatic about the fact that they are back. And that should be sufficient,” he says, adding that evoking any more nostalgia and emotions may undo the campaign.
Commenting on the pressure on the products marketing team, Swamy adds, “It is an interesting challenge for the brand marketers and their creative agencies. They must obviously take multiple approaches to strategise this relaunch. I don’t believe that the marketers are sweating under the pressure. I believe they will be closely monitoring the first communique that the brand will put out in the public, and evaluate the same. This is an important re-launch for them and they have to get it right. Irrespective of what the campaigns may say, consumers take a while to respond to these changes.”
It is interesting to note that as per a survey conducted by Airloyal’s GeInsights, 73 per cent of the respondents said that can’t wait to get their hands on a packet of Maggi, while 27 per cent are still a little unsure of its safety.”
However, sample base for the responders form a small section of the product’s total consumer base, therefore whether this survey reflects the true guideline for the campaign is still something to wait and watch for.
MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe and Adobe have announced a strategic partnership to deliver the Publicis Groupe Always-On Platform, the first end-to-end marketing management platform from Publicis Groupe that automates and connects all components of a client’s marketing efforts.
The platform will standardise on Adobe Marketing Cloud, and all agencies across Publicis Groupe will be able to create engaging content, access marketing intelligence, identify and build audience segments, deliver campaigns, and track and measure marketing performance through a unified technology and data structure.
It will be anchored in VivaKi as an open framework so that every agency can deploy and brand it uniquely for use. Agencies currently slated to access the system include BBH, DigitasLBi, Leo Burnett, MSLGROUP, Publicis Worldwide, Razorfish, Rosetta, Saatchi & Saatchi, Starcom MediaVest Group, VivaKi and ZenithOptimedia.
The collaboration is expected to drive growth across the two companies, and accelerate Publicis Groupe’s goal to make combined digital and emerging market revenue 75 per cent of its multi-billion dollar business by 2018.
“Adobe and Publicis Groupe are a powerful combination and we have been delivering marketing innovation together for more than two decades,” said Adobe president and CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The massive scale of agency services across the Publicis networks, coupled with Adobe’s unique leadership in digital marketing solutions, will enable Publicis clients to develop best-in-class digital marketing capabilities that drive growth.”
“By embarking on this journey with Adobe, a powerhouse in creative and marketing solutions, Publicis Groupe will be the first agency holding company to offer clients an integrated set of digital marketing solutions across all key marketing and creative agencies” said Publicis Groupe chairman and CEO Maurice Levy. “We are solving a core marketing dilemma for our Clients by enabling them to more personally interact with their customers and tell relevant, powerful stories at scale, while successfully navigating the complex digital landscape.”
“We are essentially creating a new operating model stitching together multi-agency services, technologies and workflows to the benefit of our clients,” said VivaKi’s chief growth officer Stephan Beringer. “By converging the forces of marketing technology, data, creativity and strategy, we eliminate silos, optimize delivery and maximize the investments made in ad budgets, talent and consumer engagement.”
The platform is scheduled to provide Publicis Groupe agencies and their clients with four solutions to solve current marketing challenges:
1. Multi-touch Attribution. The Always-On platform will move the market beyond “last click” attribution by providing options for a multi-touch model that identifies and assigns true value to specific marketing components – online and off line – that help spur customer action. Publicis Groupe agencies will be able to enhance their attribution and planning solutions with Adobe’s Master Marketing Profile and Media Mix Modeling, as well as Adobe Analytics, to measure the most effective touch-points across channels and model investments.
2. Unparalleled Audience Understanding. Always-On encompasses a data management platform (DMP) which will produce a robust set of customer profiles, segmentations and vertical insights. VivaKi will also develop a data co-op where clients, and ultimately publishers, can opt in and contribute data in exchange for even richer customer profiles, vertical insights and customer intelligence. Adobe Audience Manager and Adobe Media Optimizer will drive optimal targeting and cross-channel campaign performance.
3. Campaign/Marketing Automation. As screens and devices proliferate, Always-On is expected to automate marketing effort across multiple channels. With the goal of integrating Adobe Campaign with analytics and segmentation tools, the platform will empower Publicis Groupe agencies to drive campaign efficiency and engagement across the full customer journey to reach audiences that matter at the highest moments of receptivity. The automated integration will allow all marketing functions to coordinate efforts by acting on the same data. This includes an agreement across the agencies for cross channel campaign management for search and social buy side optimization through Adobe Media Optimizer.
4. Content and Experience Management. The digital asset management capability within Adobe Experience Manager is expected to enable teams, wherever they sit inside the network, to easily and effectively create, manage, and control valuable digital assets. From the moment an asset is created to the point of delivery, the platform will enable workgroups to create and manage assets through the entire lifecycle of global branding and multichannel distribution with a single, easily accessible digital repository.
Both Adobe and Publicis Groupe will invest in joint sales and marketing, including retaining a dedicated team of strategists and business development specialists to innovate and bring the platform to market.
MUMBAI: Publicis WW has acquired a minority stake in Asia’s fastest growing digital network, Arcade.
Publicis Worldwide CEO Arthur Sadoun said, “Asia is a strategic priority for us. The Arcade team’s core values of creative excellence, entrepreneurship and digital innovation are a perfect match for Publicis Worldwide, as we strive to be the preferred partner of our clients in their digital transformation.”
Arcade CEO and founding partner Nick Marrett said, “The worlds of marketing, entertainment and information are colliding. Arcade’s entrepreneurial approach to creativity helps brands find new ways to thrive in this new and challenging environment. We are thrilled to be joining forces with Publicis as we accelerate our development across the region into key markets like China, Africa and India for the benefit of our clients, and strengthen our Asian credentials. The chemistry and alignment with Publicis was incredibly strong right from the outset.”
Headquartered in Singapore with offices in Shanghai, Tokyo and Jakarta, Arcade currently employs more than 100 professionals across the region. Some of its key clients include Clear, Close Up, Pond’s, Rexona, IKEA, Coca-Cola, Bango, WeChat and Google.
Publicis WW CEO APAC Loris Nold added, “Arcade has built a unique model that allows them to create global and incredibly innovative work out of Asia. Our key clients have made Asia a global hub for some of their brands and we are increasingly working with Asian brands that have global ambitions. To partner Arcade’s founders, Nick, Gary, Mark and Matt, across the region is fantastic news for us.”
