MxMIndia

Category: ADVERTISING

  • For the fifth consecutive year

    WPP recognised in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index

    By Our Staff

     

    WPP was today named in the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI) for the fifth consecutive year.

     

    The 2023 GEI represents companies from 45 countries and regions, measuring gender equality across five pillars: leadership and talent pipeline, equal pay and gender pay parity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies, and external brand. WPP’s inclusion in this year’s index acknowledges the company’s continued implementation of best-in-class policy development and data reporting against a global threshold established by Bloomberg.

     

    Mark Read, CEO of WPP, said: “Nurturing diverse and inclusive workplaces not only creates an environment where our people feel supported to grow their careers and be innovative, it benefits our client and partners too. We want WPP to be the employer of choice for all, and I’m proud of our inclusion as a Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index industry leader for our ongoing focus on improving gender equality in the workplace.”

     

    Peter T. Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg and Founding Chairman of the U.S. 30% Club said: “Congratulations to the companies that are included in the 2023 GEI. We continue to see an increase in both interest and membership globally, reflecting a shared goal of transparency in gender-related metrics.”

     

  • To lead strategy and ideation for integrated solutions across media platforms

    Sarfaraz Ansari joins DDB Mudramax as Senior Vice President – Integrated Media

    By Our Staff

     

    Sarfaraz Ansari
    Sarfaraz Ansari

    DDB Mudramax boosts its media expertise with the appointment of Sarfaraz Ansari as Senior Vice President – Integrated Media. He will be responsible for leading strategy and ideation for integrated solutions across media platforms.

     

    With over 17 years of experience, Ansari has worked across industries like FMCG, financial services, telecom, and worked with brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Spotify, Mahindra, Hershey’s, Finolex Pipes, Marico among others. His previous stint was as the buying lead at Lodestar Media.

     

    Speaking on the new appointment, Rammohan Sundaram, Country Head and Managing Partner – Integrated Media, DDB Mudra Group said, “Sarfaraz’s calm and composed demeanour backed with solid conviction and science makes him one of the best in the business. Especially with some of our large clients, where we needed someone who can fit into our culture and at the same time solidify our leadership in strategic buying across all media. To that effect, he is perfect and has already impacted positively to our setup at Mudramax”

     

  • To help deliver disruptive brand experience solutions for its clients

    TBWA\India appointed Russell Barrett as CCEO

    By Our Staff

     

    Russell Barrett
    Russell Barrett

    TBWA\India has appointed Russell Barrett to the newly created position of chief creative experience officer, a further nod to the agency’s commitment to delivering disruptive brand experience solutions for its clients.

     

    Previously at BBH India, Barrett brings close to 27 years of experience creating some of the markets most impactful work for brands like Abbott, Google Chrome, Red Bull, Audi, Skoda, Uber, Mahindra Racing, Marico, UNIQLO and Johnny Walker to name a few.

     

    Barrett will be charged with setting the creative vision and delivering TBWA\India’s total brand experience approach to the agency’s portfolio of clients. Barrett will work closely with the key management team in India and the global creative leadership to drive the global ambition for TBWA’s creative product.

     

    Said Govind Pandey, chief executive officer: “There is a need to deliver modern brand experiences to our clients, and I’m confident Russell will elevate our disruptive creative thinking that our environment and our clients demand. His depth of experience and varied skill set will sharpen our creative thinking and deliver ongoing value across the entire brand experience for our clients.”

     

  • To strengthen creative team

    Wavemaker India appoints George Kovoor as CCO

    By Our Staff

     

    Wavemaker India, the agency from GroupM, today announced the appointment of George Kovoor as the Chief Creative Officer (CCO). Kovoor will report to Ajay Gupte, CEO – South Asia, Wavemaker and will be based out of Bengaluru. He joins Wavemaker after his eight year long stint with Ogilvy where he was Digital Lead – Mumbai and South operations.

     

    Speaking about the appointment, Ajay Gupte said: “We are witnessing an exciting phase of transformation in the media industry where traditional methods are challenged at every step. Data, Content and Technology have always been the three key pillars at Wavemaker and we have all experienced the magic when these three ingredients are used in the right proportion. In his previous roles, George has played an instrumental role in integrating mainline and digital creative teams. He enjoys an incredible reputation in the creative industry for his impressive work which has been recognised at local and global platforms. With George coming in as the Chief Creative Officer, I am quite confident about taking our creative offerings a notch higher.”

     

  • Encapsulates advertising in today's world

    Dentsu India presents Digital Report 2023

    By Our Staff

     

    Dentsu India presents Digital Report 2023. The 2023 edition of the Digital Report simply encapsulates advertising in today’s world, keeping in mind the many facets of today’s consumers. It offers a 360-degree view for brands to fruitfully plan their advertising budgets.

     

    Said Simi Sabhaney, Chief Growth Officer, Dentsu India: “The world witnessed a year of normalcy in 2022 after the Covid outbreak, however, the pandemic definitely accelerated digital growth in India. With brands going back to business as usual, the media budgets were seen to be flourishing across sectors. The Indian advertising industry grew at 18.1% over 2021 and is expected to witness a compounded growth of 15.07% by the end of 2024. Digital advertising in India continued to be at the tip of the iceberg with a substantial spike of 39.5% over 2021, putting TV advertising in a tight spot. The Indian government too helped pave a path towards digital success, through its initiatives and programs, business transformation drives, and focused efforts on propelling digital commerce. India is seeing a relentless push towards ‘Digital India’.”

     

    As the digital economy paces up, with a talent pool like ours that is fluent in English, and digitally literate, we are certainly up for growth in varied directions. This may indeed vary the stance that businesses have held for the many years. Indian consumers are poised to adopt the dynamically evolving technology.

     

    Key Highlights:

    Indian advertising industry currently has a market size of Rs 85,769 crore, having grown at 18.1% over 2021. It is expected to further grow at a compounded rate of 15.07% to reach Rs 1,13,575 crore by the end of 2024.

    Indian digital advertising industry stood at a market size of Rs 29,784 crore, growing at 39.5% over 2021, and is predicted to reach Rs 51,110 crore, with a compounded growth rate of 31%, by 2024.

    Television has the largest advertising spends share of 40%, followed by digital media and print media with a share of 35% and 21%, respectively. Digital media is expected to overtake the ad spends share of television in 2023.

    The FMCG sector contributes 30% of total advertising spends, followed by the e-commerce category at 18%.

    FMCG and e-commerce are the largest contributors to the digital media industry, accounting for 38% and 20%, respectively, followed by consumer durables, pharmaceuticals, and automotive.

    Digital media spends is driven by social media with a contribution of 30%, followed by 28% from online video and 23% from paid search. The spend on online video is expected to grow rapidly and be at par with social media spends by 2024.

    FMCG spends a large portion of its digital media budget on online video, whereas pharmaceutical and e-commerce spend the majority on paid search.

    Due to the rapid adoption of the next generation of Web3 technologies and the development of mass markets, Indian consumers’ expectations are set to evolve toward convenience, commerce, experiential media, and marketing in the new digital economy.

    The evolution of the new digital economy will lead to the emergence of new markets and pave the opportunity for creating value and increasing the worth of customers, ushering in a new dawn of marketing and creativity that will be more spatial, experiential, and immersive.

     

  • To build an inclusive and world class digital team

    FoxyMoron appoints Vivek Das as CEO

    By Our Staff

     

    Zoo Media Network’s flagship creative and digital agency FoxyMoron has appointed Vivek Das as its CEO. His role will be to build an inclusive and world class digital team capable of delivering outcomes focused digital solutions to clients. He will report to Pratik Gupta and Suveer Bajaj, founding partners of Zoo Media and FoxyMoron.

     

    Said Pratik Gupta, Co-Founder of Zoo Media & FoxyMoron: “Having known Vivek professionally for a long time we’re delighted to finally have him amongst us. While his professional credentials speak for themselves, what drove us to him was the alignment of vision and values. Our vision of building a data obsessed and customer experience focussed agency will come to the fore under his leadership. His ability to build process focused, high performing teams makes me excited for the future of FoxyMoron.”

     

  • Will be responsible for handling digital channels for MBI

    Ayatiworks bags digital mandate for Mantovanibenne

    By Our Staff

     

    Ayatiworks, a Chennai-based digital marketing agency has recently won the digital marketing mandate for Mantovanibenne, or the MBI brand, that manufactures heavy machinery and equipment for the building, recycling, demolition and earth-moving industries based in Italy.

     

    Ayatiworks will work on enhancing the overall brand presence of MBI Group across the web and social media channels. As part of the mandate, the agency will be responsible for creative content creation and data-led social media campaigns.

     

    Said Upendran Narendran founder of AyatiWorks: “This year, we’re all prepared to implement, disrupt, and drive campaigns for the brand to help it soar to new heights. We want to assist them in developing greater success stories and stronger connections with their audience through our holistic approach. We are confident of leveraging best-in-class strategies to make MBI stay ahead in a highly competitive market. We would follow the approach of generating impactful conversations for the brand and take their presence to the next level.”

     

    Talking about the association, Jacopo Mantovani, Sales and marketing head of MBI added: “We are delighted to have Ayatiworks onboard. We will have a long association with the agency that led our digital presence across the channels. We are certain that the agency is aligned with the brand’s vision and we look forward to exciting things that the agency brings to the table.”

     

  • To boost marketing and digital ecosystem

    WT appoints Richa Dholi as VP, Strategy Planning

    By Our Staff

     

    Wunderman Thompson India has appointed  Richa Dholi as Vice President, Strategy Planning. Based in Mumbai, Dholi will be the strategy lead on Wunderman Thompson India’s Unilever brands, lending her extensive experience in the marketing and digital ecosystem to the businesses.

     

    A planner at heart and a writer by passion, Dholi has honed her strategic thinking and critical insights working with leading FMCG and lifestyle brands at Capgemini, Ogilvy, Lowe, McCann and most recently at India’s very own Twitter, Koo.

     

    Commenting on Dholi’s appointment, Anurag Tandon, Managing Partner, Wunderman Thompson Mumbai, said: “In the post pandemic world, consumers engage very differently with brands. We need to constantly recalibrate our thinking and creatively innovate to be ahead of the curve in terms of brand engagement and customer experience. With Richa on board, we get the right blend of understanding business and strategy. We are excited to have her as part of our team and wish her the very best in her new role.”

     

  • With multiple senior appointments

    WT South Asia Group strengthens planning team

    By Our Staff

     

    Antara Dey
    Antara Dey
    Nikhil Thakkar
    Nikhil Thakkar
    Richa Dholi
    Richa Dholi

    With a view to enhancing strategic business solutions for brands and helping them improve brand engagement and customer experience, Wunderman Thompson South Asia Group has announced several new appointments to its planning team. Nikhil Thakkar has been appointed as VP & Strategic Planning Director in Gurgaon, Richa Dholi has been appointed VP, Strategy Planning in Mumbai, and Antara Dey has joined the Kolkata office as Account Director.

     

    Pinaki Bhattacharya
    Pinaki Bhattacharya

    Commenting on the new appointments, Pinaki Bhattacharya, Chief Strategy Officer, Wunderman Thompson India, said: “The agency is an at exciting point in its transformation journey and finding strategists that fit our transformed purpose is a challenging one. We need them to have a robust understanding of brands, of levers of brand growth, of consumer journeys and modern marketing. With a pulse on popular and emerging culture. And above all, they need to be interesting people. Not an easy mix to find, you would agree! Which is why I am delighted to have Nikhil, Richa and Antara join the strategy team at Wunderman Thompson. In them we have found just the kind of strategists we want. I am looking forward to working with them and to some really exciting work on the brands they are working on.”

     

  • Elevated roles in APAC and EMEA reflect agency's growth and business trajectory

    We Communications bolsters International Leadership Team

    By Our Staff

     

    WE Communications (WE), a global independent integrated communications agency, has announced new international leadership appointments that showcase the agency’s commitment to global expansion and future growth. Nitin Mantri has been promoted to Regional Executive Managing Director, APAC, along with maintaining his current responsibilities as Group CEO of Avian WE, and Ruth Allchurch to Regional Executive Managing Director, EMEA.

     

    Through these newly created roles, Mantri and Allchurch will be responsible for strengthening WE’s APAC and EMEA operations, including oversight of client retention and business development, nurturing the teams of talent, and playing cross-agency roles in driving strategic growth initiatives like the development of new client services and capabilities. Mantri and Allchurch will continue to report to President of International and Global Chief Operating Officer Kass Sells, who will maintain oversight of WE’s eight international markets and its affiliate network.

     

    Said Melissa Waggener Zorkin, Global CEO of WE Communications: “Our sector and services growth, expanded client partnerships, and acquisitions in these international markets have created an exciting inflection point for our business. We are well positioned to make strategic changes to our broader international leadership team that will enable us to build our blueprint for future growth.”

     

  • Will help in delivering transformational work for the agency

    Cheil India appoints Neeraj Bassi as Chief Growth Officer

    By Our Staff

     

    Neeraj Bassi
    Neeraj Bassi

    Cheil India communication solutions agency appoints Neeraj Bassi as Chief Growth Officer. He will lead Cheil India’s business growth by adding to the roster of new clients and help in delivering transformational work that builds on Cheil India’s capabilities in Creative, Media, Data, Activation, and Retail.  In his current role, Bassi will report to Carlos Limseob Chung, MD, Cheil India, and Sanjeev Jasani, COO, Cheil India.

     

    Talking about his appointment, Sanjeev Jasani, COO, Cheil India said: “We are all geared up for the next chapter in Cheil India’s growth story.  We are uniquely positioned as a Business Connected Agency that offers an integrated result-oriented offering of various services to our clients. The presence of veterans like Neeraj helps us take this value proposition forward with our clients and deliver high-impact work that benefits the bottom line of our client.”

     

  • Here are GroupM's trends for the year 2023 presented along with the annual TYNY report

    GroupM’s Trends 2023

     

    With every edition of the annual This Year Next Year report, GroupM also presents its trends for the year. Here’s what it presented to the media and the industry at large on Tuesday.

     

     

    Moving towards attention planning

    With the acceleration of digital media and shifting experiences of consumers, it’s important to understand the impact of attentiveness of the consumer as he engages with media/media assets. We have enhanced our understanding on exactly how many impressions for a single medium or multimedia lead to cross-channel optimisation.

    What we haven’t been able to capture is the viewability impact of each impression on intent & purchase. The way forward is an “attention response curve”, which allows for new planning and pricing discussions. New measures like quality cost per thousand [qCPM] are beginning to be explored and traded. We need to ensure q is measured in a way that represents real quality.

     

    Content breaks boundaries and creates new opportunities

    OTT platforms themselves are becoming popular enough to be licensed into products and promotions. From a marketing and promotion standpoint, brands are looking at leveraging platform like Netflix and Prime Video across their portfolio to create campaigns using multiple shows, movie library and even popular music from some shows. Today we see audience embracing content from multiple geographies and language. A Kashmiri from Srinagar is watching and appreciating Malayalam or Telugu content. We all have seen the audience pan-India celebrate RRR, Pushpa or KGF. We have content in abundance to suite consumption patterns for eclectic/niche audiences as well as the masses.

    Likes of Post Malone (Feeding India), Russ (India Tour), Imagine Dragons & Jackson Wang (Lollapalooza) have come to India in the last 12 months; and on the other end we’ve Diljit Dosanjh performing at Coachella 2023 as part of the festival’s expanded global line up. We will more of this in 2023.

    The myth that’s getting broken is the belief that typically Indians don’t pay for content & experiences. As mentioned above, we see that Indians actually do pay and they are willing to pay premium for some curated experiences.

    From an advertiser POV, these are highly engaged, high-spending audiences, making these events a perfect platform to capitalise on.

     

    Rise in retail media

    Retail media in India is expected to double by 2027.

    With demand for accountability on every single rupee of ad-spend, retail media offers an end-to-end solution from discovery to shopping, with the ability to connect data between consumer, the online marketplace and brands.

    For publishers, monetisation via retail media amplification with the fusion of data and power of programmatic will be growing demand channel.

    In India, the rise of adspends on digital retail media will depend on how the retail media networks are able to demonstrate the value by complementing search efforts and not competing with them.

    Usage of effective hyper-localised and personalised creative at each stage of the funnel of retail media will be critical in realising the full potential.

    While retail media will be used primarily for CPG, it will also be leveraged by non-endemic clients to find audiences with relevant category usage.

    Challenges will continue to exist on measurability beyond end level attribution.

    At GroupM, we have launched our retail media product named Discovery Commerce. It connects all dots from marketplace insights, media, creative, programmatic to purchase in one funnel.

     

    Visual search goes mainstream

    Visual Search delivers instant relevance to a consumer search. It allows users to get exactly what they want rather than a lookalike.

    Visual search also allows for conversion of interest in one specific product (e.g. apparel) to the entire collection – expanding the shopping cart It leads to a huge edge on SEO and how we enhance our marketing ROI. While tagging for search typically needed real people to tag individual products, with Visual search the images are SEO ready and increase the chances of discoverability More importantly, marketers can tap into consumers’ state of “What I didn’t know I want” and increase the ARPU.

     

    New dimensions of omnichannel

    The dramatic shifts in consumer behaviour during the pandemic saw most agile brands shift to multichannel retail, with ecommerce getting a huge surge.

    Post the Pandemic, we are seeing further shifts in consumer behaviour. While ecommerce continues to grow, the rate of growth is slowing down. We are witnessing re-emergence of physical trade, with high street rentals moving up and consumers opting for the joy of physical shopping, touch & feel, etc. We see a rise in “Experience centers” across both traditional and new age brands. The emergence of Metaverse and the growth in AR/VR will power new shopping experiences for consumers.

    Brands will go beyond multichannel to deliver a true omnichannel experience. The first step is to recognize consumers across Physical & Online environments and then give them a seamless, consistent and rewarding brand experience at every touchpoint.

     

    Democratisation of commerce with ONDC

    ONDC is promising to be the new jewel from the India Stack. What UPI did to payments, ONDC is expected to do to Commerce.

    The momentum gained in 2022 will lead to larger participation from brands and marketplaces to be enabled on the ONDC network.

    Currently over 22,000+ sellers are on this open network.

    With transparency and level playing field for all partners at the core, ONDC will help businesses have more choices, larger demand spectrum and avoidance of search bias.

    To build trust in an unbundled and democratic environment, setting up key elements such as Issue and Grievance Resolution, Scoring and Badging, Reconciliation and Settlement, Cataloguing Services will become important.

    In 2023, we will see emergence of hyperlocal marketplaces. Your nearest Kirana shop can possibly be enabled on the ONDC protocols.

    Birth of ecommerce services companies will increase as India’s share of GMV online increases across categories.

    We see exciting times ahead with screen-to-door commerce enabled by ONDC.

     

    Sporting nation in the making

    We see a strong move towards localisation of sports, encouraging local/ regional players and providing opportunities for the nation to become a playing nation rather than just a “watching” one.

    While top dollars are being committed at the top of the funnel with IPL and ICC Media Rights, we see apps/platforms democratising sports broadcast space at an amateur level by providing streaming platforms to local sports tournaments and amateur games. It’s essentially developing smaller cohorts of sports enthusiasts who play, watch, support and enjoy their friends and family performing on-field at local, community events. With more Indians becoming fitness conscious and participating in active sports, we see this medium developing further, creating and catering to a niche audience and corresponding set of advertisers

     

    Inclusivity becoming mainstream

    Indian sports ecosystem went through a metamorphosis in 2008 with the advent of IPL. Cut to 2022, IPL hit an unprecedented high with media rights crossing 100 Cr. per match! While that’s been the headline for the sporting industry, diversity, equality and inclusion has been slowly making its presence felt in the Indian sports arena. We saw early signs of it with Women’s Kabaddi Challenge as a part of Pro-Kabaddi OR Women’s T20 Challenge towards the fag end of regular IPL season. Come Mar 2023, India is ready to host a full-fledged Women’s Premier League with 5 franchises (sold at a whopping total 4670 Cr.) and matches broadcast on Viacom18 network. We expect more of these in days to come.

     

    Docuseries leading to more immersive sports

    GenZ is greatly interested knowing the “inside scoop” when it comes to the sports world and that explains the plethora of sports docuseries making its way into our television sets. We expect this to go a notch up with the shift in content happening from the production house perspective to the athlete themselves reliving the moment to their own fans on their preferred platforms. From an advertiser’s lens, as LIVE sports keeps getting more expensive, docuseries and ancillary content in sports becomes a great asset to leverage and engage with passionate fans in a different context.