It is learnt that Abraham Thomas has quit Red FM as COO. Thomas had reportedly put in his papers three months ago and had been serving his notice period since then. No official confirmation was forthcoming, however, industry sources close to the development have confirmed the news. It is further believed that Thomas has plans to float his own venture.
If sources in the know are to be believed, then Bates 141 is scaling down its operations in Bangalore. In fact, there has been a strong buzz in the ad fraternity regarding this for quite some time. When contacted, both Sandeep Pathak and Manosh Mukherjee denied that Bates141 was shutting shop in Bangalore. Pathak, however, admitted to have “scaled down our operations”.
Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific has announced its plans to expand its entertainment portfolio in Asia with new entertainment channel, truTV. Scheduled for launch in early 2010, truTV will be the only pay TV channel in Asia programmed to give viewers the opportunity to watch moments of real drama with real consequences.
Mudra Connext, the media agency of Mudra MAX, has been assigned the media duties for female care brand She Comfort and electrical appliance brand V-Guard. The cumulative account size of these two businesses has been estimated at Rs 50-plus crore in terms of media spends. The two accounts will be handled out of the agency’s Mumbai and Kochi offices.
After introducing its ‘per second billing’ plan for calls on mobile phones, Tata DoCoMo has now launched ‘Diet SMS’, which allows consumers to pay only for the characters they use. Draftfcb Ulka has conceptualised a witty commercial that could be said to be a fallout of the ‘Kareena effect’ on Saif Ali Khan, though the two actors are nowhere in the picture.
The Indian Magazine Congress (IMC) is back in its fifth year, and this year the focus will be on the ‘Magic of Magazines’. IMC 2009 is being held in Delhi on November 5-6 and would see the participation of who’s who of the media and advertising fraternity. An initiative of the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM), the IMC is presented by Worldwide Media (WWM), in association with Chitralekha and Canon.
The CASBAA Convention 2009 is all set to kick off in Hong Kong on November 4. The speakers’ list includes industry stalwarts like Zee Group’s Subhash Chandra, BCCI’s Lalit Modi, World Federations of Advertisers’ Bernhard Glock and ESPN International’s Russell Wolff, among many others. The Convention will culminate on November 6 with the CASBAA Charity Ball, which is themed on Bollywood this year.
Park Avenue, the apparel brand from the Raymond Group, is reviewing its creative duties and is said to be in talks with various agencies. The account size has been pegged in the region of Rs 12 crore. Dentsu Marcom is the incumbent agency.