Urban Company has collaborated with Meta to jointly develop a series of films promoting its weekly bathroom cleaning service.
Said Rahul Teotia, Vice President – Marketing at Urban Company: “We are thrilled to collaborate with Meta on this innovative campaign for our Weekly Bathroom Cleaning Service. This partnership allows us to leverage Meta’s cutting-edge platform capabilities to create engaging and impactful content. By focusing on Meta-first creatives, we can better connect with our audience in a way that feels natural and entertaining. This campaign represents a significant step in our digital brand journey, and we are excited to see the positive impact it will have on our brand awareness and customer engagement.”
Added Shweta Bajpai, Director, Financial Services, Media, Travel & Real Estate (India), Meta: “People are naturally in discovery mode when they come on our platforms, and they are looking to be entertained even while consuming brand messages. We’ve consistently noticed that brand campaigns that build mobile-first creatives built for our platforms perform better across both brand and performance metrics. Additionally, brands can use hyper-local targeting across our platforms to reach their customers accurately. We’re thrilled to work along with Urban Company to create a campaign that builds on the key strengths of our platforms to drive delight for their customers and deliver performance for their business.”
The Times Group has announced the appointment of Varun Kohli as Chief Operating Officer for the News Broadcasting Business. Varun will report to Managing Director Vineet Jain’s office while working closely with N Subramanian , Executive Director and Group CEO, Non-Publishing Business, Times Group. Kohli’s last assignment was with Bharat Express as Director and CEO. MK Anand, who led Times Network as CEO and MD will now work in the Times Group MD’s office and will continue to report to Jain.
All functions in the television news broadcasting business other than finance and distribution will report into Kohli. Jagdish Mulchandani, who heads the Finance, Legal and Distribution function for news broadcast will work with the MD’s office for the finance and legal functions. For the distribution function and the entertainment business, Mulchandani will report to Rohit Gopakumar, CEO – Entertainment Business , Times Group. Mulchandani will continue to work closely with the news, entertainment and the TTN digital verticals.
According to a circular issued, these changes will be effective immediately.
ABPLive, the digital news platform from ABP Network, has unveiled ABPLive Premium, a subscription service. Initially, it will be available in English and Hindi.
Speaking on the launch, Avinash Pandey, CEO of ABP Network, said: “ABPLive Premium is the natural evolution of our success, allowing us to provide an even more enriching content experience for our audience. It is designed to cater to a discerning audience that values quality and depth in their news consumption. Whether you’re interested in a deeper understanding of complex political issues, nuanced takes on business and technology trends, or insightful cultural commentary, ABPLIVE Premium offers a richer, more rewarding news experience. Our commitment is to empower our subscribers to stay informed and ahead of the curve.”
Integrated marketing consultancy, One Source, has bagged the corporate communication mandate for Vitraya Technologies, an insurtech company.
Said Avdhesh Sharma, India-President at Vitraya Technologies: “Our vision at Vitraya Technologies is to redefine and transform the healthcare claim settlement process. By providing seamless, accurate, and fast settlement systems, we enhance the experience of the entire healthcare ecosystem and bring tangible value to our clients, setting new standards in the industry. We want to partner with a firm which is equally invested in our brand, and One Source was the clear winner.”
Added Sandeep Rao, Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer, One Source: ” By aligning our efforts with Vitraya Technologies’ mission to enhance efficiency, trust, and value in the healthcare system, we are confident in our ability to foster mutual growth and success.”
A new report from global cloud communications platform, Infobip revealed that brands prioritise customer interaction by increasing budget allocations to improve the overall experience. In India, 83% of businesses in IDC’s Future of Customer Experience Survey 2023 are investing heavily in customer service/support interactions to deliver superior customer satisfaction. The Infobip report “Driving Meaningful Customer Engagement with Conversational AI” features insights from leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC.
The research highlights that customer expectations have evolved in today’s digital age. They now demand authenticity and more personalized attention from brands. However, many organisations still lack the capabilities to deliver unique experiences. As per the IDC survey, 60% of the organizations in India do not have the tools to maintain customer context across the customer journey and channels.
The rising demand for omnichannel communication and the need for scalability and flexibility are encouraging businesses to adopt unified platforms with conversational capabilities. According to IDC research, companies are investing in conversational apps — such as live collaboration tools, intelligent digital assistants, and digital avatars — to provide more effortless and seamless customer experiences. In India, 82% of businesses surveyed plan to maintain or increase their spending on conversational applications.
The report further highlights the increasing relevance of unified AI-powered conversational solutions in India and the Asia Pacific region. The industry’s shift towards improved customer experience (CX) is not surprising. Previously, customers had to wait for a service agent to respond to their queries. Now, APAC businesses are enabling customers to independently find answers, request services, and complete transactions using omnichannel communication solutions powered by conversational AI.
Said Harsha Solanki, VP GM – Asia, Infobip: “It’s no surprise that businesses in India are prioritizing superior customer experiences through conversational AI. Increasingly, brands are using a network of diverse chatbots and AI algorithms to facilitate timely actions at crucial stages of the customer journey. In today’s AI-driven landscape, CPaaS is enabling businesses to seamlessly orchestrate customer engagement throughout the entire journey, enhancing efficiency and maximizing value. This approach allows businesses to achieve more with less, reducing costs and improving operational effectiveness while focusing on long-term customer relationships. At Infobip, we are prepared to support businesses on this transformative path.”
Added Lavanya Jindal, Senior Research Analyst, Asia/Pacific Customer Experience and Value Streams, IDC Asia/Pacific: “Generative AI has reshaped conversational experiences. Having a single source of truth across interactions and channels powers context. This customer context allows for more relevant and intelligent conversations and raises the bar for personalisation.”
IAM group of companies has been appointed by Pearson India, an educational publishing company, to lead its strategic marketing initiatives in higher education. This collaboration brings together Pearson’s world-class educational offerings with IAM’s expertise in data-driven marketing strategies and innovative solutions.
“We are excited to be working with Pearson India,” said Aditya Uppal, COO at IAM Group of Companies. “Their commitment to high-quality education aligns perfectly with our values. We look forward to developing impactful marketing campaigns that resonate with educators and learners alike.”
Vinay Kumar Swamy
Added Vinay Kumar Swamy, Country Head of Pearson India: “We are thrilled to partner with IAM Group to drive our marketing initiatives for our higher education business in India. The higher education sector is experiencing significant growth, driven by digitalisation and internationalisation, and is increasingly focused on providing quality education for learners and educators. Collaborating with IAM Group allows us to effectively reach academia and learners with our offerings and support initiative.”
Caption: Photo: Roger H Goun on Flickr | Creative Commons Licence
By Jacob L Nelson
Journalism faces a credibility crisis. Only 32% of Americans report having “a great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in news reporting – a historical low.Journalists generally assume that their lack of credibility is a result of what people believe to be reporters’ and editors’ political bias. So they believe the key to improving public trust is to banish any traces of political bias from their reporting.That explains why newsroom leaders routinely advocate for maintaining “objectivity” as a journalistic value and admonish journalists for sharing their own opinions on social media.The underlying assumption is straightforward: News organizations are struggling to maintain public trust because journalists keep giving people reasons to distrust the people who bring them the news. Newsroom managers appear to believe that if the public perceives their journalists as politically neutral, objectively minded reporters, they will be more likely to trust – and perhaps even pay for – the journalism they produce.Yet, a study I recently published with journalism scholars Seth Lewis and Brent Cowley in Journalism, a scholarly publication, suggests this path of distrust stems from an entirely different problem.Drawing on 34 Zoom-based interviews with adults representing a cross-section of age, political leaning, socioeconomic status and gender, we found that people’s distrust of journalism does not stem from fears of ideological brainwashing. Instead, it stems from assumptions that the news industry as a whole values profits above truth or public service.The Americans we interviewed believe that news organizations report the news inaccurately not because they want to persuade their audiences to support specific political ideologies, candidates or causes, but rather because they simply want to generate larger audiences — and therefore larger profits.
Commercial interests undermine trust
The business of journalism depends primarily on audience attention. News organizations make money from this attention indirectly, by profiting off the advertisements – historically print and broadcast, now increasingly digital – that accompany news stories. They also monetize this attention directly, by charging audiences for subscriptions to their offerings.Many news organizations pursue revenue models that combine both of these approaches, despite serious concerns about the likelihood of either leading to financial stability.Although news organizations depend on revenue to survive, journalism as a profession has long maintained a “firewall” between its editorial decisions and business interests. One of journalism’s long-standing values is that journalists should cover whatever they want without worrying about the financial implications for their news organization. NPR’s Ethics Handbook, for example, states that “the purpose of our firewall is to hold in check the influence our funders have over our journalism.”What does this look like in practice? It means that journalists at the Washington Post should, according to these principles, feel encouraged to pursue investigative reporting into Amazon despite the fact that the newspaper is owned by Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos.While the effectiveness of this firewall in the real world is far from assured, its existence as a principle within the profession suggests that many working journalists pride themselves on following the story wherever it leads, regardless of its financial ramifications for their organization.Yet despite the importance of this principle to journalists, the people we interviewed seemed unaware of its importance – indeed, its very existence.
Bias toward profits
The people we spoke with tended to assume that news organizations made money primarily through advertising instead of also from subscribers. That led many to believe that news organizations are pressured to pursue large audiences so that they can generate more advertising revenue.Consequently, many of the people interviewed described journalists as being enlisted in an ongoing, never-ending struggle to capture public attention in an incredibly crowded media environment.“If you don’t get a certain number of views, you’re not making enough money,” said one of our interviewees, “and then that doesn’t end well for the company.”People we spoke with tended to agree that journalism is biased, and assumed that such bias exists for profit-oriented rather than strictly ideologically oriented reasons. Some see a convergence in these reasons.“[Journalists] get money from various support groups that want to see a particular agenda pushed, like George Soros,” said another interviewee. “It’s profits over journalism and over truth.”Others we spoke with understood that some news organizations depend primarily on their audiences for financial support in the form of subscriptions, donations or memberships. Although these interviewees saw news organizations’ means of generating revenue differently from those who assumed that the money mostly came from advertising, they still described deep distrust toward the news that stemmed from concerns about the news industry’s commercial interests.“That’s how they make money,” one person said about subscriptions. “They want to entice you with a different version of the news that is not, I personally believe, overall going to be accurate. They get you to pay for that and – poof – you’re a sucker.”
Misplaced concern about bias
In light of these findings, it appears that journalists’ concerns that they must defend themselves against accusations of ideological bias might be misplaced.Many news organizations have pursued efforts at transparency as an overarching approach to earning public trust, with the implicit goal being to demonstrate that they are doing their work with integrity and free from any ideological bias.Since 2020, for example, The New York Times has maintained a “Behind the Journalism” page that describes how the newspaper’s reporters and editors approach everything, from when they use anonymous sources to how they confirm breaking crime news and how they are covering the Israel-Hamas War. The Washington Post similarly began maintaining a “Behind the Story” page in 2022.Yet these displays do not address the chief cause for concern among the people we interviewed: the influence of profit-chasing on journalistic work.
Instead of worrying quite so much about perceptions of journalists’ political biases, it might be more beneficial for newsroom managers to shift their energies to pushing back against perceptions of economic bias.Perhaps a more effective demonstration of transparency would focus less on how journalists do their jobs and more on how news organizations’ financial concerns are kept separate from evaluations of journalists’ work.
Cable news as a stand-in
The people we interviewed also often appeared to conflate television news with other forms of news production, such as print, digital and radio. And there is ample evidence that television news managers do indeed appear to privilege profits over journalistic integrity.“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said CBS chairman Leslie Moonves of the massive coverage of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2016. “The money’s rolling in.”With that in mind, perhaps discussions about improving trust in journalism could begin by acknowledging the extent to which the public’s skepticism toward the media is well-founded – or, at the very least, by more explicitly distinguishing between different kinds of news production.In short, people are skeptical of the news and distrustful of journalists, not because they think journalists want to brainwash them into voting certain ways, but because they think journalists want to make money off their attention above all else.For journalists to seriously address the root causes of the public’s distrust in their work, they will need to acknowledge the economic nature of that distrust and reckon with their role in its perpetuation.
Jacob L. Nelson is Associate Professor of Communication, University of Utah. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Over the last year or two, there has been escalating media coverage how remunerations demanded by Bollywood stars are making Hindi film-making an increasingly-difficult business. The top rung of stars, such as the three Khans, have either turned producers, or forgone their fee against what’s called a ‘backend’ deal (typically referring to a distribution or licensing deal), the next line continues to operate on fixed fee structures, where the numbers increased significantly since before the pandemic. There’s also a lot of conversation about star entourages, and how ridiculous their costs are.
Now all this would just be gossip, if the stars could justify these fees through their box-office performance. But that’s not happening at all. The biggest ‘Hindi’ language film of the first six months of 2024 is likely to be the dubbed Hindi version of Kalki 2898 AD, which released yesterday. A non-starcast, concept-led film Munjya is set to cross the Rs 100 cr mark, even as star-led titles made at much higher budgets, such as Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, Maidaan, and Chandu Champion, have fallen well short.
For a year or two after the pandemic, streaming platforms were in a mad rush to acquire theatrical films. Since these deals happened before the theatrical release, the star power came into the picture. With time, and facing their own share of challenges related to stagnant subscriber growth and profitability, streamers have become conscious, and are often insisting on deal structures that have box office linkages.The message is clear: If the star cannot pull an audience in the theatres, he (or she) is not ‘saleable’ on OTT either.
Movie channels in linear television have been on the decline anyway in the post-NTO world. Licence fees for satellite rights is no longer a prominent item on the P&L of most films. The reliance on theatrical (box-office) revenues is only going to go up in the coming year or two. And all evidence suggests that stars cannot pull in the audience anymore on their own strength, and need the story or the concept to work for the film to stand any chance on the theatrical front.
It is hard to imagine how any of this is sustainable. Hindi film producers cannot even make films that go direct to OTT anymore. There is no demand for such films, either from the streamer or the audience side. There is only one way out: Stars must understand that the audiences and the marketplace has evolved, and bite into the humble pie that a pay cut can be. They can also be a lot more prudent in their film selection, aligning it with evolving audience tastes and expectations in a digital-first, post-pandemic era.
Inera, agri-inputs brand, has unveils its latest campaign titled ‘Meri Mitti, Mera Yakeen’, featuring cricketer MS Dhoni.
Said Ravi Banka, Founder and CEO of Eggfirtst, the agency behind the campaign:: “Having created numerous impactful rural brand campaigns, this one stands out as it directly enhances the lives of farmers. Dhoni’s alignment with the brand, given his persona and popularity, brings unparalleled value.”
Market Research Society of India (MRSI), the apex body for market research in India, has announced the formation of the Managing Committee for the tenure of 2024-2027. Nitin Kamat, Chief Growth & Partnerships Officer, TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd was elected President and takes over from Paru Minocha, Managing Director, South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar. Kamat worked as the treasurer for MRSI’s Managing Committee 2022-2024. He was also part of the MRSI’s ISEC Committee.
Additionally, Puneet Avasthi and Shuvadip Banerjee were elected as Vice-Presidents, Anila Vinayak as the Secretary, and Parijat Chakraborty as the Treasurer for MRSI. The new Managing Committee was announced at MRSI’s 36th Annual General Meeting held on Thursday in Mumbai.
Congratulating the newly elected President, Paru Minocha, Managing Director, South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar, and outgoing President of the Market Research Society of India said: “I am grateful for the unwavering trust MRSI members placed in the current Managing Committee. Key initiatives like the launch of the Socio-economic Classification System, ‘ISEC’, and the Market Sizing report of FY 2022-23, have given a new direction and scale to the vision of the association going forward. As I pass on the baton, I wish the incoming Managing Committee under the leadership of Nitin Kamat all the best.”
On being announced as the newly elected President of MRSI, Nitin Kamat, Chief Growth & Partnerships Officer, TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd., said: “I am honoured to take forward the role of MRSI President. The market research industry has seen a seismic shift, making it crucial to stay ahead of the curve. My focus will be to engage new minds, to not only maintain existing standards but also implement a new set of ideas and initiatives. In addition to building MRSI’s three Pillars – Profile, Pride, and Network, I firmly believe, ‘Building Trust’ is another crucial pillar that we will work upon. I look forward to strengthening global connects, deepening government connects and driving more initiatives for active participation from regional players. I am confident of achieving these goals along with the new elected managing committee members.”
Nazara Publishing, the publishing arm of gaming company Nazara Technologies, along with nCore Games has entered a publishing partnership for FAU-G Domination. This is the latest game from the FAU-G franchise, the previous version of which garnered up to 50 million downloads.
Said Nitish Mittersain, Joint MD and CEO of Nazara Technologies: “Made in India games have a huge potential to address the growing needs of the Indian gamer with locally relevant content and we are excited to partner with nCore to bring FAU-G: Domination to all our players.”
Added Vishal Gondal, Co-Founder of nCore Games: “In recent times, the Indian government has called upon its citizens to support homegrown apps through the ‘Make in India’ initiative. FAU-G: Domination is our humble response to PM Modi’s ‘Make-in-India’ call, and we’re thankful that Nazara shares our vision to bring the best of India to the world. This signals India’s arrival as a major player in the global gaming industry.”
Said Deepak Ail, Co-Founder & CEO of Dot9 Games: “We’re grateful that India’s biggest gaming company is supporting us to bring FAU-G: Domination to the world. Gaming is for everyone, and FAU-G: Domination is our effort in making that a reality.”
Torque Pharma has collaborated with the Punjabi film ‘Jatt and Juliet 3’.
Commenting on the ad film launch, Abhay Iqbal Singh Bedi, Director, Torque Pharma said: “We are thrilled to collaborate with ‘Jatt and Juliet 3,’ a film that has a wide set of fanbase, much like Torex Cough Syrup that embodies health and wellness. This partnership enhances our brand presence while reaffirming our commitment to delivering effective cough relief, allowing our customers to savour life’s moments free from the discomfort of a cough. We are confident that this co-branding initiative with ‘Jatt & Juliet 3’ will forge a deep and lasting connection with audiences.”
Added Manmord Singh Sidhu, the MD of White Hill Studios and the producer of the film: “We’re excited to partner with Torex Pharmaceuticals for ‘Jatt & Juliet 3.’ This collaboration brings together two trusted brands to deliver an unforgettable experience to our audience. We look forward to a successful journey together and can’t wait for everyone to experience the magic of ‘Jatt & Juliet 3’ in theatres.”
“We are excited to be working with Pearson India,” said Aditya Uppal, COO at IAM Group of Companies. “Their commitment to high-quality education aligns perfectly with our values. We look forward to developing impactful marketing campaigns that resonate with educators and learners alike.”
Over the last year or two, there has been escalating media coverage how remunerations demanded by Bollywood stars are making Hindi film-making an increasingly-difficult business. The top rung of stars, such as the three Khans, have either turned producers, or forgone their fee against what’s called a ‘backend’ deal (typically referring to a distribution or licensing deal), the next line continues to operate on fixed fee structures, where the numbers increased significantly since before the pandemic. There’s also a lot of conversation about star entourages, and how ridiculous their costs are.