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Tag: VivaKi

  • Costa Coffee promotes Ekta Upadhyay

    Costa Coffee promotes Ekta Upadhyay

    MUMBAI: Ekta Upadhyay has been promoted to assistant general manager and head of marketing at Devyani International, where she will oversee Costa Coffee, the company’s airports business, and New York Fries operations. The appointment marks an expansion of her remit beyond the 300-plus Costa Coffee stores she previously managed.

    Upadhyay, who has spent over 14 years in brand marketing across sectors including fast-moving consumer goods, automobiles and e-commerce, will now focus on scaling the airports vertical and growing the New York Fries quick-service restaurant brand. Her promotion comes as Devyani International, one of India’s largest restaurant operators, seeks to diversify its portfolio beyond its core pizza and coffee offerings.

    Before joining Costa Coffee in 2023,  Upadhyay held senior marketing positions at Apollo Tyres, where she managed communications across the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions, and at fashion e-tailer Koovs.com, where she led brand strategy for the London Stock Exchange-listed company.

    Her career began at media agencies VivaKi and Mindshare, where she handled major accounts including PepsiCo and Yum Restaurants, developing expertise in traditional and digital media buying.

    The appointment signals Devyani International’s ambition to strengthen its marketing capabilities as it expands beyond its traditional restaurant formats into higher-margin airport locations and new quick-service concepts.

  • Rahul Rajput takes the hot seat as VP–Investment at Dentsu India

    Rahul Rajput takes the hot seat as VP–Investment at Dentsu India

    MUMBAI: Dentsu India has elevated Rahul Rajput to vice president–investment, a move that cements his position as a key driver of the network’s media buying and planning muscle. The promotion comes after a one-year stint as associate vice president, during which Rajput steered the ship on high-stakes investment deals and cross-platform campaigns.

    Based in Gurugram, Rajput brings over a decade of experience to the role, including a six-year run at Dentsu Aegis Network as investment director and nearly three years at Mindshare, where he held the title of director–The Exchange. His career began at VivaKi and Havas Media, where he sharpened his chops as a media buyer.

    A self-described music enthusiast and natural networker, Rajput blends strategic thinking with people-first leadership. His mantra? “Everyone you meet has something to teach you.”

    With India’s digital and TV adex in flux, Dentsu’s bet on Rajput signals its intent to double down on smart, agile investment leadership in the months ahead.

  • Publicis Groupe launches ROAR

    Publicis Groupe launches ROAR

    MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe to bring together strategy, creative, user experience, media, and analytics under one roof has announced the launch of ROAR.

     

    It is an agency of hand-picked talent drawn from across the digital resources within the group.

     

    Embracing the idea that people are inherently analog and ultimately their behavior is rooted in emotion, ROAR will use a combination of intelligence (IQ), emotion (EQ) as well as technology (TQ) to transform the marketing strategy of its clients.

     

    ROAR will be headquartered in New York with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, London and Hong Kong. The agency launches with JPMorgan Chase and will selectively pursue additional clients.

     

    At the helm of the pride resides Sean Reardon as ROAR’s president. He will report to both at VivaKi chief strategy and innovation officer Rishad Tobaccowala as well as ZenithOptimedia chairman & CEO North America and chairman Performics Worldwide Tim Jones.

     

    ROAR’s leadership team includes executive vice president, lead across digital activities, and head of client service Madeleine Freind and executive vice president media Eric Pisick.

     

    “ROAR has been created to meet specific client needs while delivering the alchemy that comes with combining insight, emotion and technology to transform the business of our clients,” said Tobaccowala in a press statement.

     

    “Leadership was a vital component for this role. We wanted a leader with multi-discipline experience and strategic chops capable of leading us into the future – Sean more than fits the bill,” added Jones.

  • VivaKi scales audience on demand in APAC through regional activation center

    VivaKi scales audience on demand in APAC through regional activation center

    MUMBAI: VivaKi continues the global expansion of audience on demand (AOD) and announced the launch of a regional activation center for Asia Pacific, based in Singapore. Following substantial growth of AOD and increasing global demand, the center will launch and aggressively scale Publicis Groupe’s addressable media practice throughout Asia Pacific. Grace Liau has been appointed to lead the operations as regional GM.

    AOD is Publicis Groupe’s multi-channel digital addressable media buying practice that enables global and local advertisers to reach the right audiences, at the right time, at scale, across all digital touchpoints in real-time. Combining the talent of some of the industry’s leading addressability experts along with industry-leading technology and data partnerships, AOD delivers data-driven display, video, social and mobile advertising buys for Publicis Groupe agencies including Starcom MediaVest Group, ZenithOptimedia, Razorfish and DigitasLBi.

    As one of the first entrants in the real time bidding marketplace, AOD is recognised as the most trusted solution in the industry. Globally, AOD has served more than 280 billion impressions across more than 110,000 campaigns for 2,283 advertisers in 23 countries.

    VivaKi country chair in southeast Asia Jeffrey Seah said: “Audience On Demand (AOD) is VivaKi‘s proprietary trading desk technology. It represents the epitome of laser-targeting consumers – a real-time matching of advertising inventory to consumer profiles. Just like programmatic trading in the financial stockbroking houses, AOD will bring an industrial-level of efficiency over “retail” media buying and will provide our agencies with the competitive advantage needed in our technology-infused industry.”

    The aim of the regional Activation Center is to proficiently scale the Groupe’s digital addressable media practice across Asia Pacific, whilst maintaining global consistency and the high standards AOD is synonymous with. Following highly successful beta testing of AOD across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia this news also formally launches AOD in South East Asia.

    “AOD was built to provide clients with quality, service, safety and transparency in the programmatic space. Our commitment is to preserve these benefits even as we pursue an aggressive growth strategy. Establishing an activation center in Singapore, and installing a respected, experienced AOD expert at the helm, allows us to scale AOD in a vital region while ensuring the unique value proposition of the offering. Grace and her team will activate all the attributes of AOD, including the VivaKi Verified standards, which no other programmatic option can offer,” VivaKi CEO Frank Voris expounded.
    Originally from Singapore, Grace has spent the past 20 years living in Boston and transfers into her new role with a formidable track record in the online advertising sector. Grace is a digital marketing pioneer and was part of the original VivaKi team that launched AOD in 2008. Most recently at VivaKi, Grace has lead the Platforms Partnership team and the Ad Operations Center of Excellence (Ad Ops COE), an internal consultancy focused on establishing a community of world-class digital advertising professionals that develop and lead digital ad operations best practices across VivaKi.

    Prior to joining VivaKi, Grace headed up the Media Operations & Technology practice for Digitas where she was responsible for developing bespoke strategies for clients and leading their Advanced Targeting technologies work. Grace will transition into her new role at the beginning of October and will report into Kurt Unkel. Also joining the Activation Center team in Singapore is Stephen Tompkins as AOD Director. Stephen transferred to his new role in August and will be tasked with driving growth of AOD across the APAC network. Stephen joined VivaKi in 2011 as a platform expert and has been an instrumental part of the team. Most recently Stephen has been based in Beijing where he has been responsible for driving adoption of AOD across the region. Kurt Unkel, President, Products & Solutions for VivaKi comments: “Grace and Stephen are industry experts in addressable and programmatic media. Both have global experience, are proven collaborators which have made them instrumental to AOD’s success. They will preserve and enhance the benefits of AOD as we scale the offering and grow markets.” This news follows the recent announcement that VivaKi has launched an Activation Center in Amsterdam to proficiently scale AOD across Europe. A third regional activation center is currently being planned in China.

  • Srikant Sastri stepping down from his role as a country chair

    Srikant Sastri stepping down from his role as a country chair

    MUMBAI: In his more than two and a half decades of experience Vivaki country chair Srikant Sastri will be stepping down from his position on 1 July.

    Vivaki CEO Frank Voris said, “Sastri will continue to serve in a consulting capacity for Publicis Groupe in the near term, while also nurturing start-up companies in India and Asia-Pacific as an independent investor and operating partner as it is his desire to work with a new companies. But, he agreed to help the organisation on-board Neev, Resultrix and Convonix.”

    “Srikant has successfully orchestrated three acquisitions and integrations that have simultaneously fortified the founding Vivaki agencies, while also solidifying Publicis Groupe‘s position as the leading digital marketing operation in India,” added Voris

    For the foreseeable future, Sastri will continue to work closely with VivaKi and also with Razorfish & DigitasLBi in a consulting capacity. For the former, he will surface and evaluate emerging opportunities, exploring tech start-ups who can benefit the agencies of Publicis Groupe and their clients. For Razorfish and Digitas-LBi India.

    VivaKi Country Chair Srikant Sastri: “I‘ve successfully completed a big mandate as VCC in India and I am absolutely thrilled that we achieved the goal we set for ourselves 18 months ago—driving digital dominance in India through organic growth and three key acquisitions. We are now twice the size of our largest competitor. With this mission accomplished, I‘d like to focus more on three areas that I am passionate about. In addition to working with start-ups, I intend to foster the Indian start-up eco-system by actively leading key initiatives at professional and trade bodies, including The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) and Indian Angel Network. I will also help drive the growth of ventures that are focused on social enterprises and other Indian development issues.”

    Sastri has started his career from Ponds India as a regional sales manager than he has also worked with Tara Sinha Associates, TSME, McCann Erickson, Team4U, Solutions Integrated Marketing Services and Growth-For-All.

  • China’s Madhouse comes to India

    China’s Madhouse comes to India

    MUMBAI: China’s mobile marketing company, Madhouse, announced the launch of its India operations on 14 February to capitalise on the demand for customised mobile marketing solutions.

    Madhouse currently works closely with over 120 clients like HP, Intel, Coke, KFC, Unilever, VW and agency groups such as GroupM, Aegis, OMG, Vivaki and their associated agencies in China.

    Madhouse India aims to leverage the opportunity of using mobile as a mass media device given that there are more than 850 million mobile connections in the country. Current barriers to mobile marketing are dearth of scaled solutions in data, voice and text, harmonizing the different operating systems with multiple stakeholders across mobile inventory and lack of established tools and systems which makes it difficult to answer the question of how this medium can be leveraged by advertisers to reach out to their consumers.

    Madhouse India hopes to address this through unique and innovative services. Clients can look forward to mobile solutions across the spectrum of paid, owned and earned media on feature phones, smart phones and tablets.

    Madhouse provides service across all operating systems with precise targeting by geography, user demographics and psychographics to ensure minimal media wastage.

    Madhouse India chief operating officer Vinod Thadani said at the launch, “Mobile advertising is beginning to transform the way brands communicate with their consumers. Madhouse will offer mobile marketing solutions created and carried out for advertisers by a team of experienced media professionals that understand this medium. On a technical level, mobile advertising can now achieve accurate intelligent targeting and can provide real-time reporting – a very convincing proposition for advertisers. The need of the hour is to unlock the potential and we are determined to change the face of the Indian Digital Media Landscape and grow the mobile media market from 125 to 1000 crores within the next three years.”

    Madhouse sees tremendous growth potential in India. Said Madhouse founder and CEO Joshua Maa, “We are fully committed to investing in this market. With the right local partners, we believe that our technology and operational expertise can be leveraged to serve the unique mobile marketing needs of clients. In China, we have been working with partners such as Rovio, EA, China Unicom’s app store, and ad agencies to grow our leadership position. Similarly in India we value our association with WPP to help develop and take leadership in this market as well.”

    WPP country manager Ranjan Kapur explained, “Digital Media is evolving and innovating at a very fast pace in India where especially Mobile and handheld devices are poised to play a larger role in marketing communications. Madhouse India will help us build a unique value for our clients where in-depth domain and brand understanding is coupled with the strength of Madhouse technologies. A synergy is also established as our local market expertise and talent pool is well equipped in the Indian marketplace which is similar in complexity to China.”

    One of the companies in business with Madhouse is Rovio Entertainment, the makers of the game Angry Birds.