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Tag: White Rivers Media

  • White Rivers Media powers launch campaign for ‘Kehne Ko Humsafar Hain’ S2

    White Rivers Media powers launch campaign for ‘Kehne Ko Humsafar Hain’ S2

    MUMBAI: White Rivers Media helped ALT Balaji, the OTT platform from Balaji Telefilms Ltd, in successfully launching the second season of one of its marquee series Kehne Ko Humsafar Hain by creating a three-week long digital campaign ‘Will the heart ever be happy with what it has’,  for its promotions. The idea was to establish the show’s premise, where the audience could experience a heightened emotional relatability.

    The 360-degree campaign was inclusive of packaged as well as organic content, which pushed POVs of the characters to maximise social sentiments of audience w.r.t each during pre-buzz. With a concentrated approach, the campaign flowed towards the launch, while instigating an equitable conversation around dynamics of a complex relationship, aspirations of an emancipated woman, and life after divorce.

    White Rivers Media chief executive officer and co-founder Shrenik Gandhi said, “We’ve been associated with ALTBalaji since its inception. If a show comes from Ekta Kapoor, one knows it has to be about breaking records and much more! This campaign brings back the nostalgia of success we achieved for the brand with this marquee show’s first season. This one is even special because we broke through all pre-set benchmarks from the previous year. We are very happy with the positive response and look forward to a similar response for ALTBalaji’s power-packed line-up this year.”

    ALTBalaji senior vice president and head of marketing Divya Dixit said, "Ekta Kapoor undoubtedly understands the pulse of Indian OTT entertainment better than anyone else, and produces one blockbuster after another. Kehne Ko Humsafar Hain is very special to us as a concept, and so was this launch campaign for this second season. Right from the build-up of this campaign to the launch of the show and activity line-up, it has been a data-intensive and strategic call. It gives me immense pleasure to see that what was once up on our whiteboards is now at play on digital grounds with collaborative help from White Rivers Media. We are also grateful to our millions of subscribers for their support and we are glad it is winning hearts.”

    February being the month of love #GetLoveZoned being the social theme at ALTBalaji; the launch hit close to home with its matured take on love and relationships. The campaign has already hit 20 million views on social media itself in 2 weeks and is rearing to go forward. Netizens, influencers, and celebrities across the country have flooded all social and digital platforms with outpouring of love.

  • “How digital changed in 365 ways, in 365 days” – an e-Book launched by White Rivers Media

    “How digital changed in 365 ways, in 365 days” – an e-Book launched by White Rivers Media

    MUMBAI: The year 2018 has been a great year for the advertising industry and especially for digital marketers. It was a celebratory year where digital became critical to every advertiser and the industry saw some amazing campaigns and use of technology becoming integral for marketers.

    White Rivers Media, one of the India’s fastest growing independent digital marketing agency has launched their second e-book on how the digital scenario changed in 365 ways in 365 days, in the year 2018. The e-book showcases how digital players introduced new features that enhanced user experience and some features that enabled brands to target their audiences in a better way.

    The e-book has been curated with an aim to help the marketers and digital stakeholders get a better picture of the year that went by, which will in-turn help them gear up for 2019. The e-book comprises of all the significant changes, updates and events that happened in the digital world in 2018.

    For instance, social media giant Facebook rolled out a new tool to prevent harassment and also developed chatbots with improved conversation skills. The platform also introduced new AR filters to spice up Facebook stories. Snapchat launched its in-app store for company merchandise. Everyone’s favourite, WhatsApp allowed users to delete their sent messages within 8 minutes, which was a relief for so many people!

    The latest e-book mentions 365 such updates which affected the industry and ensure that one can indeed keep in touch through the daily evolution of digital media. It is an essential read for any marketer, entrepreneur, journalist and student anywhere in the world.

    This book is a part of their series of e-books, which was launched last year, on their 6th Anniversary.

  • White Rivers Media wins Shorty Social Good Award for Viviana Mall’s ‘Stop Acid Sale’ Campaign

    White Rivers Media wins Shorty Social Good Award for Viviana Mall’s ‘Stop Acid Sale’ Campaign

    MUMBAI: White Rivers Media has won the esteemed Shorty Social Good Award for Viviana Mall’s ‘Stop Acid Sale’ Digital campaigns.

    The Shorty Social Good Awards honour digital media endeavours for a social cause, and the Stop Acid Sale campaign was one of only two campaigns to make it to the finals of Human Rights category, globally. Past winners of this award include DJ Khaled, Adele, J.K. Rowling, Jenna Marbles, Malala Yousafzai, Hannibal Buress, Casey Neistat, Tyler Oakley, and Taylor Swift.

    Viviana Mall ran this initiative to raise awareness and empathy for the survivors of acid attacks, on the occasion of Women’s Day. They partnered with their digital marketing agency, White Rivers Media to bring to light the unheard, untold stories of Indian women who had been subjected to the heinous experience of an acid attack, and to empower others by spreading the word on how they dealt with it. The objective didn’t just end at awareness, but also extended to restoring the survivors’ dignity and giving them the equal footing in society that they deserve.

    Shrenik Gandhi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of White Rivers Media said, “Our one and only goal with the Stop Acid Sale initiative was to empower the survivors of acid attacks. My hope is that the chatter and visibility that comes from our initiative receiving a Shorty Social Good Award serves to better achieve that goal. Congratulations to Team Viviana Mall, Team White Rivers Media & everyone involved in the campaign on being recognised for doing good. It is our honour to be working with a brand that’s willing to do good over doing well.”

    Rima Pradhan, Senior Vice President (Marketing), Viviana Mall commented, “This campaign is now a landmark moment in our brand’s history. I want to thank all our partners who worked with us to make our Women’s Day campaign into a great initiative.”

    Every year, the Shorty Social Good Awards aim to raise global awareness around, and thereby encourage, the positive impact that brands, agencies, and non-profits can have on society.

  • White Rivers Media Ranked 25th, in Fastest Growing Tech, Media & Communications Companies on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2018

    White Rivers Media Ranked 25th, in Fastest Growing Tech, Media & Communications Companies on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2018

    Mumbai, 29th October, 2018: White Rivers Media today announced that it ranked Number 25 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2018, a ranking of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in India.

    White Rivers Media’s Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Shrenik Gandhi credits all its stakeholders, team, media and clients for the company’s revenue growth over the past three years.

    He said, "It has been an amazing year for White Rivers Media and we are humbled to be featured for the third consecutive year in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 2018. This signifies that our work is being recognized and acknowledged by industry experts."

    "Making the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 is commendable in today’s highly competitive, fast-changing technology industry," said Rajiv Sundar, Program Director – Technology Fast 50 India 2018 and Partner, Deloitte India. "We congratulate White Rivers Media on being one of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the India."

    White Rivers Media previously ranked at #43 (India) and #473 (APAC) in 2016 and #10 (India) and #173 (APAC) in 2017 Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

    Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India program selection and qualifications

    The Technology Fast 50 India program, which was launched in 2005, is conducted by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP (DTTILLP), and is part of a truly integrated Asia Pacific program recognizing the India’s fastest growing and most dynamic technology businesses (public and private) and includes all areas of technology – from internet to biotechnology, from medical and scientific to computers/hardware.

    The program recognizes the fastest growing technology companies in India based on their percentage revenue growth over the past three financial years.

  • White Rivers Media celebrates 6th anniversary

    White Rivers Media celebrates 6th anniversary

    MUMBAI: In India, one of the fastest growing independent agencies White Rivers Media has recently completed its six years in social media and digital marketing industry.  To celebrate the same, it has sent personalised thank-you messages to all individuals who have been a part of the journey.

    The company founded in 2012, has been the only digital marketing agency to be awarded the Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 twice, consecutively in 2016 and 2017. The core verticals of the company are digital, design, social and video to clients in B2B and B2C space, across industry verticals.

    As a give back to the industry, the agency has launched an e-book on Everything a marketer needs to know about #Hashtags. The book contains essentials, best practices and some crazy global bloopers. The same has been chosen given the fact, that a lot of brands across the globe still make hashtag errors or don’t use it optimally across digital and in adaptations in offline.

    Link to e-book: http://whiteriversmedia.com/eBook

    Speaking on the occasion White Rivers Media CEO Shrenik Gandhi said, “As we complete six years in the industry, we would like to thank everyone who has been a part of growth journey and helped us reach here. The industry has grown with break-neck speed and I strongly believe, this is just the beginning. Exciting times ahead!”

    White Rivers Media co-founder Mitesh Kothari added,“We have done some interesting work for brands across sectors in the last six years, and we look forward to building more meaningful and stronger connections with stakeholders across the industry. We look forward to this year as becoming one of the top mar-tech driven communication partner to brands across the country. The past years have been of learning un-learning and re-learning and we are eager to know what is stored for us in the future.”

    This e-book is one of the many to follow which White Rivers Media shall launch in due course of time, covering various topics concerning Indian and global digital marketers.

    Along with this the agency also ran an extension to its award-winning digital campaign, Honesty Breaks Clutter.

  • Ad industry calls for regulatory body to monitor plagiarism

    Ad industry calls for regulatory body to monitor plagiarism

    MUMBAI: Creativity sometimes takes inspiration from past creatives but what if it is an entirely copied one? Plagiarism (or inspiration), is a never-ending burning issue in the advertising world. A little similarity can be overlooked but complete knockoffs are just astonishing.

    Information sharing on the internet has led to rampant plagiarism. In the garb of creativity, sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, ideas tend to be entirely copied.
    Plagiarism with ads is much more difficult to pinpoint compared to a music piece or a film narrative, purely owing to the shorter format of the medium. Accepting that this does happen, The Glitch senior creative director Sunetro Lahiri admits that he has personally been part of campaigns where the main thought had to be tweaked in the event of another brand (that too, from a totally different category!) having launched a campaign with the exact thought. He affirms, “It does happen and that’s why it’s more about ethics than rules. We see elements of different auteurs in the work of a lot of current film-makers. Just the way you can’t label it plagiarism, there’s a larger grey area in advertising too.”
    Without naming any brands Grapes Digital COO Shradha Agarwal brings up that there are times that a client shares references to create a new piece of communication. After multiple rounds of changes and iterations, it becomes less of an inspiration and more of a ‘copy’. This is another reason why sometimes a creative agency, without the intention of copying, might actually end up copying a current campaign from an ‘inspirational’ campaign.
    Lesser known local brands tend to ape their famous counterparts. It was only last year when a 2015 ad for Wagh Bakri Tea conceptualised by Scarecrow Communications was plagiarised by a local Gujarati tea brand, Jay Jawan Tea. The local brand not only copied the entire ad but smartly replaced Wagh Bakri shots with its own product placement.

    Wagh Bakri ad:

    Jay Jawan ad:

    Recalling an old incident, Happy mcgarrybowen senior creative director Naren Kaushik read about a bike, named Gulsar, which was a rip off of Pulsar. He says that maybe years ago when internet didn’t make everything news, it was just easier to use existing ideas for which people would have spent time and money, and just rip them off as is. In today’s context, Jai Jawan gets their share of eyeballs very quickly. Now we all know such a brand exists.
    While there is no way to stop it and brands often just send a legal notice to the other party, maybe there is a need to have more stringent rules to keep a tab on plagiarism.
    Our experts view on this:

    BBH chief creative officer and managing partner Russell Barrett:
    The people who do that should be ignored. It’s the best punishment. It’s a vile habit that untalented poseurs have resorted to through the centuries. The best thing is for them to be forgotten and ignored. By their peers and their audience. The argument should not be about copied versus unique. Show me what you think is a unique idea and I will show you another one that is somewhat similar. The drive should be for freshness. Why is this idea different? Why should it exist in a new form? What’s fresh about it?

    Happy mcgarrybowen senior creative director Naren Kaushik:
    Needless to say, yes. A regulatory system for any big industry is important. There will always be me-toos bordering on illegal. If we walk around our own neighbourhood, how many salons do we see with actors’ and actresses’ pictures all over them? Surely they haven’t paid for endorsement. Even smaller and local fashion outlets use celebrities of all sorts. There’s no real way to keep track of who is copying who and where. We have also seen billboards when we drive out to smaller towns where some or other ad has been ripped off. It is very difficult to keep a track of this. But when it does come to someone’s notice, there should be some action that we can take. The trouble, though, is that this is a sketchy process right now. We don’t have a system to ensure quick results and more often than not, the petitioners end up losing time and money. That is a huge deterrent. If there’s a ‘regulatory body’ that can help fast-track this, more agencies will be encouraged to take their case up.

    The Glitch senior creative director Sunetro Lahiri:
    Ideally, it should. If various forms of media are protected, why should this field be left out? The lack of legal action stems from the lack of belief that there will be a possible resolution. Also, as a rule, as mentioned in the question, agencies and brands aren’t even aware of the said creative.

    Grapes Digital COO Shradha Agarwal:
    There are a lot of copyright laws that exist which are meant to safeguard the interests of advertisers from ones that are out to steal. But sometimes they are not enough as has been proven time after time. Things, like muting the audio or taking the entire video down, are currently practised on multiple social platforms as a good way to minimise copyright infringement. So yes, perhaps a regulatory body can help minimise the damage that this sort of plagiarism can cause. If the entire advertising community comes together as one and penalise the one that is stealing work from one of their own, it can definitely serve as a step in the right direction.

    White Rivers Media co-founder and CEO Shrenik Gandhi:
    Honestly, it is too small a problem for a regulatory body to be formed for. These are marketing techniques used by smaller brands to influence a smaller audience. So this has to be solved at a smaller level itself. And I don’t think at this moment there’s a need for a regulatory body to guide on this particular issue. There are much bigger issues the industry is facing and if a regulatory body exists, they should focus on those.
    While copying someone’s creative is a pertinent issue that needs to be looked at, maybe AAAI, ASCI (The Advertising Standards Council of India) and other regulatory bodies should come together to fight against this. If not, let us just leave ideas to breed other ideas just like this ad where oil brand, Sunny Lite filed a complaint with ASCI against the Aashirvaad Atta brand over a TVC where Sunny Lite claimed that the ad bears a striking similarity to its advertisement.

  • Canadian Wood hands over digital duty to White Rivers Media

    Canadian Wood hands over digital duty to White Rivers Media

    MUMBAI: In a multi-agency pitch, White Rivers Media has successfully bagged the digital marketing mandate for Canadian Wood. The account shall be handled out of the head office in Mumbai.

    Forestry Innovation Investment (also known as Canadian Wood) is the crown agency of the government of British Columbia (BC), the westernmost province of Canada. Started in the year 2013, its mandate is to promote sustainable and durable wood from BC to India, spread awareness and educate the Indian market about certified lumber and other wood species through seminars, exhibitions and other networking systems.

    White Rivers Media has been entrusted with the task of structuring the digital brand strategy, curating content marketing ideas and managing end-to-end digital and creative execution for the brand for the online and offline audience.

    Canadian Wood director of India market development Nirmala Thomas says, “White Rivers Media comes with creative-edge and strategic insight and we weren’t just looking for a digital marketing partner, but someone who is creatively strong and understands the category, business aspects, and markets we are operating in. We are hoping to see path-breaking ideas in this partnership.”

    White Rivers Media CEO and co-founder Shrenik Gandhi adds, “We are glad to be associated with Canadian Wood and look forward to creating some engaging B2B communication stories for them. Their messaging is highly clutter breaking and engaging and we hope to add on to the same.” 

    White Rivers Media is an independent Indian digital marketing agency, specialising in end-to-end digital, social, AI-driven re-marketing and video marketing for top e-commerce, B2B and B2C brands in India including HDFC Realty, OnePlus, ALTBalaji, Tata Cliq, Zivame amongst others and has offices in Mumbai and Gurgaon.

  • Video content will be the game changer in 2019: Shrenik Gandhi, White Rivers Media

    Video content will be the game changer in 2019: Shrenik Gandhi, White Rivers Media

    MUMBAI: A young professional just graduated from an MBA college would be thrilled to join a reputed company like Future Group. But Shrenik Gandhi’s entrepreneur blood wouldn’t allow him to work under someone else.

    Within a year, he quit and started his own digital marketing agency White Rivers Media and propitiously the agency’s first client was Future Group who handed over the signing amount cheque during Gandhi’s exit interview at the company.

    Gandhi began his entrepreneurial journey in 2012 with his MBA batchmate Mitesh Kothari, who was then working for another digital agency WATConsult. What started off as a two-man operation today has a team size of over 75 people in its HQ in Mumbai. With the new office in DLF Cyber City, White Rivers Media is looking to localise all the digital, video and AI-driven e-commerce solutions for its NCR-based clients and more.

    With a strong hand over national and international clients from more than eight countries, it has worked with some of the top-valued brands in the country, executing many of their flagship campaigns and grabbing eyeballs internationally. The agency has worked across a range of industries and verticals, including brands like OnePlus, Viacom18, TATA Cliq, Zivame amongst others.

    Indiantelevision.com caught up with White Rivers Media CEO and co-founder Shrenik Gandhi to discuss the company’s initial struggles, progress and how things are panning out today.

    Excerpts:

    What was your initial capital like when you started off White Rivers Media?

    Our initial capital was just a laptop and our collective brains and I think that is the good and bad thing about digital that there is zero inventory/investment. Today, anyone with a good laptop and internet connection and some brain can start a digital company. 

    How was the opening year for you? Was it hard for you to recover money from clients since you were a new agency?

    Yes, it was difficult to recover money but, luckily, acquiring clients was never a challenge for us because we made sure that the effort and passion we put in was 100 per cent. Our numbers grew only because of word of mouth. We hired a professional business development team only eight months back which only shows that our work spoke about the company for nearly four years. Today, we have 100 per cent growth year-on-year in terms of revenue. 

    Who were your initial clients? And do you think your clients have evolved over the time?

    Our first five clients are still with us. In the first year, we had less than 10 clients but today, we have on board 50+ clients. Most of our business comes from retainer clients and 60 per cent of our clients are retainers. Our clients have also evolved with us and gone are the days when people said that digital is the future. Digital is not the future. The future is now! Most of our clients have accepted that and give us the required freedom to come up with the best possible campaign for them. 

    You recently expanded your reach and opened an office in Delhi. What’s your team size there and was this the right time to expand?

    In Delhi, we currently have a team of four people but we are actively recruiting people to expand the team. Delhi is a big market and it only made sense to scale up and cater to our clients there, by physically being present.

    So is Bangalore the next step for you?

    Possibly!

    You are traditionally a digital marketing agency, but today agencies are looking at expanding their reach and getting more clients to have a diverse portfolio. Will you also be looking at doing traditional medium anytime soon or are you only going to focus on digital marketing?

    To be honest, going forward, I don’t see any offline campaign which will not be supported by digital. It will just not make sense. Yes, a newspaper article is very important but how do we measure it? The campaigns in future will have to be more integrated and digital by itself will not be always enough. As for us, we will do traditional stuff but the core will always be digital. If the offline campaign augments to digital we will definitely do it. 

    Will you be open to getting acquired at any time if a larger network approaches you?

    It is a difficult question to answer, but if it makes return on investment (ROI), we will but only if the ROI makes sense today, after a year and five years down the line. Being a part of something bigger will only make sense when whoever we talk to makes strategic sense and the acquisition helps us in getting a seat next to bigger brands to pitch better with the agency’s larger network. 

    Is it safe to say that India has become digitally evolved with the advent of Jio, free data and cheaper mobile phones?

    People in rural areas today are also using voice search, Google maps and internet. Kids as young as 10-12 years have their own YouTube channel. The younger generation has skipped the laptop and they have gone straight to using mobile phones.  If we look at the data, India consumed roughly 25 crore GB of data per month before Jio was launched. Just after six months of launch, data consumption has grown up to 6X. With over 125 crore GB data consumption in India, we are today the highest data consuming nation in the world. 

    Every brand today wants to be present on digital as that seems to be the latest trend. Do you think digital investment will go up in future?

    It will have to increase because brands will eventually realise that the amount they are putting in on hoardings is not yielding them with enough revenue. Clients might want to cut on the cost of two hoardings to invest on digital. Even if they see the same revenue coming in for the company, it is an ROI for them. You will see a lot of budget being shifted to digital. A lot of campaigns being devised for digital first. Gone are the days when people would say that lets create a digital strategy but the world today has become digital and agencies will have to create strategies which will ultimately be digital. 

    Which category do you think will make the most of digital for advertising?

    I think FMCG and automobile will invest majorly on digital. FMCGs have traditionally been pathbreakers in the use of digital and they will continue to bet big on the medium. Smaller brands, however, will have to scale up and divide their advertising budget accordingly. 

    On a parting note, what do you foresee to be the game changer next year (2019)?

    Without a second thought, it has to be videos. The video consumption in India has gone up rapidly. The consumption of short format six-second, 10-second and15-second videos is increasing. The micro video content consumption has become crazy because people have a lot of free data. Today, four out of 10 posts on your Facebook newsfeed will be videos. One would wonder what is the benefit for the social network in this? Well, it would result in better stickiness on the app and more chances of having videos with free data and better revenue for the social platform.