Nikhil Kishore, Associate Director, Madison Communication, Bangalore, has quit. He is joining Starcom Malaysia on March 17, 2007, as Strategic Planning director. He will report to Starcom’s MD in Malaysia. At Madison, Kishore was handling the TVS Motors account. He has earlier worked with Mediacom and FCB-Ulka. At Mediacom, he was Group Head, handling the Johnson & Johnson account.
Prashant Gupta has been promoted as MD of Mobifusion’s India Centre. Mobifusion, a US-based global developer, publisher and distributor of mobile applications and technologies, recently announced the establishment of its India office in Delhi. Gupta will play a key role in not only the management of the employee pool, but will also be instrumental in overseeing content production and platform development. Prior to joining Mobifusion, Gupta had handled RAZR Maxx at Motorola.
N. S. Padmanabhan is joining Future Group next month as Product Director, and will be reporting to V.G. Jaishankar, Business Director. He is moving after a two-year stint with Times Music as Sr. Product Manager. He has previously worked with Creative Global Services and Aptech.
Amitesh Banerjee has assumed charge of Comma Consulting’s Mumbai operations as Client Services Director. Before joining Comma, he worked as Associate Director-Strategy & Market Development with Perfect Relations based in Mumbai. He brings 25 years of multi-country experience in marketing, advertising and communications management. Banerjee returned to India last year after a 14-year stint as Head of Communications of Seychelles Marketing Board. In Seychelles, he founded the Public Relations Society of Seychelles. Prior to Seychelles, Banerjee worked as Senior Manager with Sahara India Mass Communications. He started his career with Dubai Advertising Agency in UAE.
Brand relationships and authenticity are, after all, the critical foundations of print. Given the past decade's focus on digital, it might seem counterintuitive that the same qualities that make print unique prime it for success in the attention economy.
A year after acquiring Balsara's home & hygiene business, Dabur has turned around several of the brands in the portfolio with at least one of them expected to become a Rs 100-crore brand.
In an attempt to market its digital component products as consumer products, Samsung India has rechristened its IT peripherals division as Samsung Digital Imaging Solutions Business.
MSN India has been hosting live music concerts on its portal through its association with Control Room. The concerts, which have featured artistes like Beyonce Knowles, Snoop Dogg and Kylie Minogue, are broadcast live and are also available via on-demand streaming at the portal.
India News Communications Ltd (INCL), which specialises in PR, and its creative arm, Macaw Inc, have bagged the business of Rama Paper Mills. INCL will deliver customised corporate communications solutions to the company aiming to bring better brand image and greater market penetration for the company.
Italy’s largest coffee company, Lavazza Group, has signed an agreement with the Sterling Infotech Group to acquire 100 per cent stake in Barista Coffee Company Ltd and Fresh and Honest Café Ltd. The transaction is expected to be completed over the next four weeks.
The outdoor campaign for Tata Sky took home the top honours at O&M’s Annual Awards. The other contenders included work done for brands such as Hutch, Motorola and Reebok, among others.
‘Outdoor Advertising’ magazine, previously ‘Outdoor Today’, stated to be India’s only magazine for the OOH advertising community, is changing its format and frequency to address industry requirements better.
Media Transasia recently launched the Indian edition of ‘Better Homes and Gardens’. One of America’s best-known women’s magazines, ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ has been brought to India as part of a licensing agreement with its US publishers Meredith Corporation.
Apeejay Finance, which was bought over by Societe Generale of France, one of the largest financial services groups in the Euro zone, last year, is scouting for an advertising partner.
Buoyed by ABC’s recent report that puts Malayala Manorama daily’s circulation at 15 lakh copies, the Kerala-based media major is planning to come up with more editions in the state.
Along with English news channels, Hindi news channels, too, are gearing up for the Cricket World Cup. From celebrities to experts, these channels are going the whole hog to keep viewers glued to their television screens. exchange4media takes a look at what to expect from these channels.
METRO Cash & Carry India, the sales division of Metro Group, has appointed Martin Dlouhy as Managing Director. He will be based in Bangalore. Dlouhy will succeed Harsh Bahadur, who has decided to pursue career opportunities outside METRO Cash & Carry. Dlouhy is currently MD of METRO Cash & Carry's Business Unit Czech Republic and Slovakia. Prior to this he was Expansion Director for Russia.
R Ravichandran has been appointed by Intel as South Asia Sales Director. He will be responsible for overall consolidation of all sales activities in South Asia across channels and OEMs. Ravichandran has been with Intel for more than 13 years. He is now moving back to Intel India from Intel Technology Asia, Singapore, where he spent the last seven years driving several initiatives to grow the desktop and server platforms business.
Rakesh Raicar has been appointed as Cathay Pacific’s Sales & Marketing Manager for India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan. Since November 2002, Raicar has been Cathay's Airport Services Manager, Mumbai. He joined Cathay in 1992 as a Customer Services Agent at Mumbai Airport. In 1994, he took on the role of Sales Officer and later became Sales Manager for Delhi and Northern India in March 2001.
Peter Winkler, Director, Entertainment & Media Advisory Practice, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, has been appointed Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer of global broadcast intelligence company Teletrax. Winkler, who has over 15 years’ experience in marketing, brand strategy and management consulting, had served for six years in New York, London and Los Angeles as Global Marketing Director of PwC’s Entertainment & Media Practice.
"The challenges that the digital media is throwing up right now will probably get accelerated five years from now. Our openness to dabble in spaces which are not comfort areas for us but probably comfort areas for a fresh college graduate is going to define how well we shape up in times to come. These are days when one can learn a lot from juniors."
"Today, a client is open to new media as long as it is relevant to the cause and to the idea. I think the need of the hour is for agencies to become more idea-centric. If it is genuinely an idea and not just an ad, it will be extendable. The problem is that very often we tend to confuse between an idea and an advertisement. A good advertisement could be a work of craft but not necessarily a good idea."