Newshounds- Group A1- Source- Pitch

MTV’s foray into ‘Phablet’ industry

(By Balaji Kalyanaraman)

1. MTV in association with Swipe Telecom announces the launch of its first co-branded 6” Phablet, the ‘MTV Volt’
2. Dual core processor, 8Mp camera, HD display and the latest Android Jellybean operating system.
3. Device mainly targeted towards youth providing communication, information and entertainment on the move.
4. MTV and Swipe have a two-year licensing agreement, where MTV  intends to create a range of about 8-12 products which  would be mobiles tablets as well as phablets, with a price point that will vary from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 20,000.
5.  Volt, pegged at Rs. 12,999, addresses the top three to four needs of the consumer according to MTV – gaming, HD content consumption, dual SIM and aesthetic value.
6. MTV Volt is India’s first 6” co branded product is going to be available at 10,000 retail outlets mainly multi brand outlets, telecom MBOs and also focus is on modern retail.
7. MTV Volt will be available on ecommerce platforms too

Fevicol betting on B2B marketing; engages architecture and design students

(By Manjiri Durge)

                                                                                                            

                                                                                                            

• In a B2B marketing effort, and hopping to engage students of design and architecture, Fevicol from Pidilite Industries, recently hosted the Pidilite Awards for Excellence (PAFE) ceremony.
• HISTORY:

These awards provide a platform to young architecture and interior design students to showcase their work. PAFE was incepted in 2004 and from initially being held in Mumbai and Pune, it now covers more than 12 centres. This year 39 students from seven architecture and interior design institutes were felicitated.

• MANAGER SAID:

Vishal Malhan, Chief Marketing – Fevicol Division, Pidilite Industries says that the company believes that young talent needs to be appreciated and their efforts recognised and PAFE is one such initiative in this regard.

• FUTURE PLANS:

This year Fevicol is planning to reach-out to more than 180 colleges and 750 students in 12 centres. Besides these awards, which promote and encourage excellence in the field of architecture and interior design, Fevicol also organises a variety of interactive meets, sponsorship, training programmes and product demonstrations for architects and interior designers on a regular basis through the year.

Berkshire, 3G To Buy Heinz for $23 Billion

(By Anurag Sinha  - February 14, 2013)

H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ) agreed to be acquired by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) and 3G Capital for more than $23 billion.

Under the terms of the deal, which has been unanimously approved by Heinz's board, shareholders will receive $72.50 in cash for each share, a 20% premium to Wednesday's close.

Shares of Heinz, which has been trading at all-time highs, were up 20% at $72.82 premarket, topping the offer price and suggesting investors might be looking for a higher bid.

Including debt assumption, the deal is worth $28 billion.

The packaged-foods company has struggled with weaker North American sales. But, Heinz is continuing to exhibit strong sales in emerging markets.

"The Heinz brand is one of the most respected brands in the global food industry and this historic transaction provides tremendous value to Heinz shareholders," Heinz Chief Executive William R. Johnson said.

What the US Airways and American Airlines Merger Means for Travelers

(By Anurag Sinha – Feb 14)

American Airlines unveiled a new logo on Jan. 17, 2013.

American Airlines and US Airways announced Thursday they will merge their operations and become one airline, called American Airlines. Together, they are the world's largest airlines by passenger traffic.

The new American Airlines will be headquartered in Dallas-Fort Worth.

The CMO League – an Exclusive Club for Marketers, launched in India

(By Anirudh Seshadri – February 14^th,2013)

·         The CMO League, the first of its kind exclusive club for marketers was launched in the capital on Wednesday. 

·         The League, an initiative by exchange4media, seeks to serve the purpose of high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision makers across product and service categories.

·         Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker, Don Tapscott was the guest speaker at the inaugural edition of the CMO League

·         The CMO League has been designed with the idea of bringing together the industry stalwarts to discuss and deliberate on the issues being faced by the Indian marketing landscape today. 

·         Through power dinners, roundtables, summits and talks involving marketing industry leaders from across the world, the League will create a platform for effective dialogue.

·         The membership of the club is by invitation only and is open to individuals holding a current CMO or Marketing Director or an equivalent position, reporting to a CEO of a company with an annual turnover of no less than Rs. 1,000 crore ($ 200 million)

·         A 10-member Advisory Board representing the club members will set the agenda for club activities.

Marketing Orion- Group B7- Source- Exchange4media

Anand Kripalu reveals Cadbury’s five-point success formula

In this article Anand kripalu,the managing director of Cadbury India talks about the five point success formula that the company has followed to achieve the hallmark of 'Most Awarded Advertiser of the Year'.

From 'Aaj pehli tareek hai'  to 'Kuch meetha ho jaaye',Cadbury's campaigns have always captured the hearts of consumers.

According to kripalu, the ambition of the company holds most importance in the organization as everything right is achieved with the right thinking and ambition. He says that it's hard to have a big ambition and it's hard to have that ambition but it's something that has to be done to achieve excellence.If an ambition is set too low,you will achieve low.He says that it's a science and a dream and that it's not a set formula.

Secondly ,he said that two third of the company's performance comes through the study of its projects and the rest one-third is derived from external factors.

The next element is 'focus'.The power of focus can help a company sustain in the most difficult times. Many ideas may not succeed at first but with time,they may work.

He then talks about  mixing local and global brands. He talks about how brands can communicate in 30 seconds and how can brands communicate to people by bringing in international culture.

The last point is about the focus to create a star team i.e building a team that performs well and not having a team of stars i.e individuals. Every member should feel accountable and has to be interactive.

Kripalu shared that just getting the above factors in place might not be enough. Once all the elements are in place and the team is ready to go, the leaders need to step aside and let the team do its job.

practice of having 30 minutes show.

'Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy?

As all the big brands were brainstorming for innovative ways as expected OGILVY came up with a innovative one.

'Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy?' That was the message, in Hindi, stamped on over 2.5 million chapattis at the Maha Kumbh Mela , the largest congregation of human beings on the planet.

The unusual advertising medium certainly had pilgrims taking notice. The campaign enabled Unilever, the company that makes the soap, to reach a large audience in a low-cost but effective manner.

Unilever has the advertising agency Ogilvy Action to thank for the brilliant advertising idea.

Vipul Salvi, the 34-year-old National Creative Director of Ogilvy Action, is the one of the people behind the campaign. He says the idea needed to be big and innovative. "The obvious options were to put up stalls and play games around health and hygiene, but that would have been too gimmicky," remarks Salvi.

Those ideas were rejected since the Maha Kumbh is a spiritual affair. The mandate, therefore, was to look at other ways of getting the consumer in touch with the brand.

The ad agency deliberated over the campaign for close to eight months and came up with over 200 ideas before zeroing in on the roti campaign.

A heat stamp was specially made to make an impression on the chapattis. The agency tied up with over 100 dhaba owners in the vicinity and handed out more than 2.5 million chapattis stamped with the Lifebuoy. message.

Focus on adding brand value in 2013: Industry experts

February 12^th 2013, exchange4media.com

The year 2012 was not one of the best years for the Indian marketing industry thanks to the economic slowdown. Amid tough times, brands are now expecting agencies to be brand owners and add effective brand value. Joy Chakraborty, Director, Response, Times Group emphasised, “Big brands in the country have already built their identity. The focus now should be on how value addition can bring a difference to the brand, and innovation is the only key to bring this difference.” many Indian brands prefer mass communication vehicles such as television and print which continues to be the first choice of communication for Indian marketer’s. For instance, Asian Paints launched its signature store ‘Colour with Asian Paints’ four years ago. The experiential flagship store doesn’t sell any paint; the aim is purely to inspire Indian consumers to be more confident with colours for their homes. Ashok Venkatramani, Chief Executive Officer, MCCS (India) strongly believes that broadcasters can bring immense value addition to brands that come to advertise through their medium. He said, “In the process of outsourcing to seek communication solutions, brand managers often forget that broadcasters too can bring immense value addition for the brand, and not just at the inventory level.”         

            With digitisation, fragmentation is expected, which will give a boost to niche genre. Regional channels will blossom which will help brands to segment their target audience. According to the Pitch Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2013, ad spends are expected to grow by 7.4 per cent in 2013 and the word for the year ahead is ‘cautious’. However, with an optimistic approach, brand owners, agencies and broadcasters can hope to sail through safely in 2013, but with a different outlook.

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New opportunities for TV industry

Source: 4 P’s Business and Marketing

Starting Oct 31, 2012, four metro cities in India went completely digital in terms of TV broadcast service. For TV broadcasters switch to digitalisation will bring around 55 billion revenue per year. This will also help the state government to reap in good dividends in terms of service charge as compared to local cable operators who weren’t disclosing their whole customer base. Digitalisation will not only help the consumers by giving them access to more number of channels but will also be profit for set top box manufacturers. The full benefits of digitalisation will become visible when the exercise will be completed on a pan-India level by 2014.

Radicals - Group B2- Source- T.V. ads

Celebrities tweeting it wrong

By- Kaushik Narayan

The concept of Twitter didn’t seem like the next big thing when it was launched in the year 2006 but 7 years later it is becoming a platform where celebrities and eminent personalities interact with their fans directly and express their views about everything. The micro blogging site has taken the digital world by storm. More than 500 million users on platform which ensures constant engagement with their idols and creates a niche position for the celebrities to endorse and promote a product of their choice. Like everything has a drawback this too has a draw back. It has been seen that there is lot if misses than hits. This article talks about how celebrities are often misusing this digital platform and turning this digital platform into money making business. This trend has given launch to social media managers who handle everything on behalf of the celebrity. Poonam pandey has 17 brand managers working for her and she takes roughly 80,000rs per tweet and thus turning this social media into a money making venture.

Only few celebrities like Narendra modi , Amitabh bacchan , Priyanka chopra are able to use this platform to its fullest and thus creating an healthy interaction between their fans and them and striking a balance between promotion and interaction. This article further explains how professional teams are created to tackle hurtful messages which are or might be posted on celebrity’s blog. How to mitigate and reduce the damage and all this has given rise the a new era of reputation managers.

Implication:- This article talks about the potential of a digital media and how it can be used. Digital media is a double edged sword and must be handled properly.

Youth brands not getting it right

By Utsav Joshi

Most exciting brands of 2012 says ,”Mercedes, Bata, Peter England, Maruti Suzuki are top 3 in their respective categories. The reason behind this top of mind recall . Now the task for marketers is to find out if there is a disconnect between what India wants and the ground reality. The article says that the brand need not be a new brand , a brand can have a heritage but the important factor is to change and keep on innovating which will create an image about the product in the minds of its consumers. The another reason is the interaction of the brand with the youth today . The agility in the ability to innovate is the crux for any brand to sustain in the market. The example of Bata was highlighted the Czech brand which is in India known as a homegrown brand was able to survive only because of constant innovation and availability of the product to the consumers. This article also talks about how blackberry went out of the way to change its business look to a youth look. We can recall the T.V commercial  “we are blackberry boys” this is a result of innovation and the efforts taken by the company to look young in the minds of the consumer. According to ASSOCHAM report of 2012 it says that an average youth spends around 4000 rs per month on apparels but when he wants to go for a big product he is ready to shell out countless money. Thus the marketers need to tap this potential and need to understand that only cool quotient is not enough value for money is also essential to sustain in this competitive market.

The marketers- Group B4- Source- Rural /Retail

‘Roti Reminder’ a hit for Lifebuoy during Kumbh

  Neha Sankpal

Ø  MahaKumbh Mela 2013 at Allahabad is an opportunity for the marketers to promote and brand their various products. Through this companies can communicate to the small-town and rural population.

Ø  HUL country’s one of the largest consumer products along with Ogilvy has come up with an innovative way to promote their product Lifebuoy.

Ø  The company has partnered with around 100 dhabas and hotels to serve the special rotis that have a message “Lifebuoy se haath dhoye kya”. This message is stamped on the rotis with the help of special heat stamps.

Ø  They have also hired 100 promoters to stand in 100 kitchens across the mela. HUL hopes to create these reminders on 2.5 million rotis. The campaign will run for 30 days starting from 1^st Feb.

Ø  Sudhir Sitapati –General Manager at HUL states that Kumbh mela is a platform where all marketers are trying hard to sell their products at enormous cost whereas this ‘Roti Reminder’ gets the attention of massive audience at a low cost.

Steel Companies need to explore rural market: SAIL

Ø  SAIL chairman CS Verma has exhorted the steel manufacturers for exploring the rural market as he see a huge and untapped market in that segment.

Ø  At present, SAIL has a countrywide retail network comprising around 2,400 dealers at the district level and around 500 dealers at the taluka and block level.

Ø  With per capita consumption of steel at a level of only 15 kg in rural India, a vast potential exists for steel marketers to enhance sales in the segment.

Ø  With rural incomes rising in recent years and aspirations of the rural populace changing in tandem, strengthening of retail marketing has become imperative to retain the company’s market leadership.

Two wheeler sales zooming in Rural India

13/02/2013

Ø  Latest report by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) says utility vehicle sales grew by 56.8% in the April 2012-January 2013 period.

Ø  The rural oriented passenger vehicles sales grew by 6.8% - car sales in contrast was down just under 2%. The domestic automobile sales grew by just under 5% year on year in the April-January period. Van sales up by 2.6% and the entire two wheeler segment grew by 4.5%. Sales of scooters increased by 17.8%, moped sales rose by 2.4% and motorcycles sales increased by 1.4%.

Ø  The last two segments are important because they are widely taken to be the barometer of economic sentiment in the rural hinterland

ITC to invest Rs 500 Cr in Assam

11/02/2013

Ø  ITC founded in 1910, is one of the largest multi-business corporate enterprises with turnover of US$ 6 billion.

Ø  The company's non-tobacco businesses including food, personal care, hotels, paper, agriculture, IT and others account for around 40% of its revenue.

Ø  ITC Chairperson Y C Deveshwar assured Assam's CM Tarun Gogoi to invest Rs. 500 Cr in the FMCG sector especially in the food processing industry. He said ITC would also set up industrial units at Chaygaon and Dhubri.

Lipton Tea runs Instagram photo challenge

Unilever-owned Lipton Tea is targeting a younger demographic for the first time, with an Instagram photo-challenge campaign.

Lipton Tea: launches Liptagram photo-challenge campaign

The campaign, called 'Liptagram', created by OgilvyOne, will run for four weeks and will target a younger, 22- to 30-year-old demographic. Currently, Lipton Tea has an older demographic of drinkers.The photo challenge will invite fans of the brand to tag their Instagram photographs with weekly themed hash tags, which celebrate Liptons' core values – for example, #LiptonBrightness.

A Liptagram Facebook app houses the competition, which will offer weekly prizes to the winners of each challenge. One overall winner will win an all-expenses-paid safari trip to Kenya for two.The Liptagram competition is running across 11 countries. OgilvyOne has created films to promote the four themes that have been seeded via Facebook.

Anthony Wickham, chief digital officer for Unilever, at OgilvyOne UK, said: "By harnessing the cross over between Instagram users and Lipton's target demographic, Liptagram taps into an existing behaviour, while bringing fresh relevance to the brand.