Tag: Wavemaker

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.

February 24, 2018
GroupM, Ogilvy launch Effectiveness Lab in India

MUMBAI: Wavemaker, GroupM’s media, content and technology agency, has 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.

GroupM South Asia country manager, WPP India and CEO CVL Srinivas says, “At WPP, our focus is to provide ‘horizontality’ across our agencies and create a seamless structure to provide effective solutions. While we have a wide range of services on offer, the focus of our agencies is on creating efficient solutions to help our brand partners strengthen their engagement with the audience. Launching the Effectiveness Lab as a combined initiative by Wavemaker and Ogilvy is a great example of this.”

Wavemaker managing director of South Asia Kartik Sharma adds, “At Wavemaker, we connect media, content and technology to drive growth for clients and we understand how effective marketing can be. By being able to better understand how content moves consumers to action along their purchase journeys, we’ll be able to help our clients to make informed decisions on how and when to create engaging content and therefore drive growth for them across their consumer journeys.”

Ogilvy India CEO Kunal Jeswani mentions, “The Effectiveness Lab will bring the best minds at Ogilvy and Wavemaker together to throw light on creative effectiveness across new age platforms. With digital communications across multiple platforms becoming core to any integrated campaign strategy, the industry needs new thinking on effectiveness. Ogilvy has always stood for Great Work That Works. The more informed we are, the better we will get at delivering creative effectiveness.”

February 20, 2018
Wavemaker India retains media duties for Tata Sky

MUMBAI: Wavemaker, GroupM’s new billion-dollar revenue, media, content, and technology agency created from the merger of Maxus and MEC has retained the media duties for Tata Sky.

Maxus (now part of Wavemaker) has been the media agency on record ever since the DTH service provider launched its operations in India in 2006.

Wavemaker South Asia managing director Kartik Sharma adds, “I am grateful to Tata Sky team for selecting us as their strategic media partners right from the start of their launch in India. Associating with Tata Sky for over a decade now has been an enriching experience for all of us. Tata Sky is one of our oldest client partners in India and we are extremely happy to continue our relationship with them.”

Tata Sky chief communications officer Malay Dikshit says, “GroupM has been associated with Tata Sky for the past 10 years and it was time that we scanned the media industry for best practices, great leadership and sound commercials. While there were some brilliant and very strong contenders delivering on all of these requirements, team Wavemaker stood a step ahead with their strategic steer and detailed planning.”

February 6, 2018
Perfetti Van Melle hands over media duties to Wavemaker

MUMBAI: Perfetti Van Melle India has handed over its media duties account to GroupM’s content and technology agency Wavemaker.

The agency was created from the merger of Maxus and MEC. Maxus (now part of Wavemaker) has been the agency on record and had first won the media mandate for Perfetti Van Melle India in 2006.

Wavemaker managing director South Asia Kartik Sharma said, “We are extremely delighted to continue our decade-long partnership with Perfetti. It is a huge moment of pride as this is the first win for us as Wavemaker. We couldn’t have asked for a better start to this year.”

Perfetti Van Melle India director of marketing Rohit Kapoor says, “Wavemaker (erstwhile Maxus) team has played a significant role in building our brands over the years. We are excited to share that our partnership with Wavemaker will continue after a comprehensive media agency validation process. Wavemaker has consistently demonstrated adequate capabilities to support us to achieve key business objectives, drive performance and innovation rigour.”

The pitch was for the entire portfolio of brands and involves only offline duties. The multi-agency pitch saw participation from other leading agencies.

January 15, 2018
GroupM’s Wavemaker launches India biz

MUMBAI: Wavemaker, GroupM’s new billion-dollar revenue, media, content and technology agency created from the merger of MEC and Maxus has opened its business in India.

Wavemaker India will open with a team of 700+ professionals, lead by the recently announced new managing director Kartik Sharma and will serve a portfolio of clients including FMCG giant ITC and L’Oréal.

Wavemaker India will be headquartered in Mumbai with offices in Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Thrissur and Cochin.

Wavemaker India managing director of South Asia Kartik Sharma says, “I am excited as Wavemaker officially starts operations in India. All our people, processes and technology are united through our focus on understanding, accelerating and optimising purchase journeys; making them more satisfying for consumers and more effective for our clients.”

November 10, 2017
Mindshare, Wavemaker retain respective titles at EMVIEs, Star India and Vodafone become ‘Clients of the Year’

MUMBAI: The 17th edition of EMVIEs concluded with a fanfare on a Friday evening and saw the best of industry stalwarts and visionaries come together to celebrate the industry’s success.

Mindshare India triumphed with ‘Media agency of the year’ award yet again for the third consecutive year with a total of 265 points. Wavemaker, previously known as Maxus India, continued to retain its position at number two this year as well with its total amounting to 235 points.

Rejoicing on the win, Mindshare India head of content at Devendra Deshpande said, “We feel at top of the world with this win although we were skeptical about winning agency of the year award this year. To propel our growth further, we will continue to use data, technology and creativity together and it will always be based on business challenge and consumer insights.”

Both, Star India and Vodafone India emerged as clients of the year with a grand total of 80 points. Hindustan Unilever Limited, that has been the champion for four consecutive years from 2013-2016, settled at number two position this year with a grand total of 75 and missed the mark with only five points.

The Grand EMVIE for the ‘Best media innovation in Digital Search’ was awarded to Madison Media and Asian Paints for their campaign on Hindi search ads for the first time in India.

Adjudged by a distinguished jury of around 211 industry leaders, EMVIEs saw over 816 entries this year. With over 816 entries, the awards have continued to grow in scale and strength, emerging as the gold standard amongst media awards recognising path-breaking brand campaigns and innovations.

EMVIEs 2017 awards chairman Punitha Arumugam said, “India has been at the forefront of many ingenious campaigns that showcase high effectiveness and the EMVIEs remain committed to recognising such outstanding communication stories.”

The Advertising Club president Vikram Sakhuja said, “We are engaging with some top global content sites to showcase the best of our archives to the world.”

Read the entire EMVIE 2017 Client of the year tally

Read the entire EMVIEs 2017 Agency of the year tally

October 14, 2017
WPP’s merged MEC and Maxus entity to be called Wavemaker

MUMBAI: The new billion-dollar revenue, media, content and technology agency to be created from the merger of MEC and Maxus will be named ‘Wavemaker.’

The brand, along with a new visual identity, will go live locally as the merger completes in each country, to be finalised by January 2018. Wavemaker will have offices in 90 countries and over 8,500 employees. Major global clients include L’Oreal, Vodafone, Marriott, Colgate-Palmolive and Paramount.

Making waves happens when media, content and technology come together – activating against our unrivalled purchase journey understanding for the clients we represent.

The brand mark Wavemaker reflects the agency’s heritage, born from WPP and GroupM.

MEC and Wavemaker’s global CEO Tim Castree, said: “Our purpose is to provide advertisers with the power to transform and grow their business through our Purchase Journey obsession; and importantly to do this through the integration of Purchase Journey insights and data with [m]PLATFORM, GroupM’s proprietary global audience technology. Our Wavemaker brand and positioning is a compelling manifestation of that purpose.”

GroupM global CEO Kelly Clark added: “Wavemaker is an exciting new global agency brand with a powerful proposition for clients. Tim and his team have the full support of GroupM’s scale, resources and expertise.”

September 6, 2017