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 New Zealand inks deal with Bollywood
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key looks to have successfully wooed India’s multibillion dollar film industry across the Indian Ocean, inking a film co-production agreement with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a visit last week. The deal provides Indian production companies with access to funds and incentives, as well as help with temporary immigration and the import of equipment. New Zealand currently offers production companies grants of up to 15% of qualifying production expenditures, along with additional grants for large-budget screen productions. With Indian film output outpacing Hollywood’s last year, the agreement could mean millions of dollars for New Zealand.
New Zealand’s attraction as a picturesque location spot for Bollywood film producers has been steadily growing. Indian director Rakesh Roshan may have started the trend when he shot part of his award-winning 2000 film ‘Kaho Na Pyar Hai’ (Say… You Love Me) in Queenstown, New Zealand. More recently, director Abbas Mastan shot sequences in New Zealand for his film ‘The Players,’ a remake of the Hollywood movie ‘Italian Job,’ in Wellington. Peter Jackson’s much-talked about prequels to The Lord of the Rings triology ‘The Hobbit’ started shooting in Wellington earlier this year. New Zealand’s screen industry recorded gross revenue of 2.9 billion New Zealand dollars (US$2.4 billion) for the year ended March 2010, according to Statistics New Zealand. New Zealand’s Mr. Key wasn’t just interesting in wooing film producers. His trade mission included attracting tourists, too.
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Wizcraft, Apra plan Kingdom of Dreams 2
 After hooking on audiences in Delhi, Kingdom of Dreams (KOD), India’s first live entertainment complex, is all set to script its success story beyond the precincts of the national capital region. The company, promoted by one of the country’s largest event management firms, Wizcraft International Entertainment, and real estate developer Apra Group of Companies, has firmed up plans to invest Rs 500 crore to set up a second live entertainment hub in Mumbai. The company has earmarked an investment of Rs 500 crore for the project. KOD Mumbai would be funded through a mix of internal accruals, equity dilution and loans from financial institutions. GINC had invested around Rs 300 crore to set up the first destination at Gurgaon in Haryana in September last year.
The company has also entered into an agreement with Creative Artists Agency which will showcase home production, musical extravaganza ‘Zangoora -The Gypsy Prince’ in countries across the world. Sharma declined to specify details of the revenue-sharing arrangement with CAA, but said the agreement is for a period of 10 years. Talks are also underway with firms in Las Vegas, Singapore, Dubai, United Kingdom and South Africa to take Kingdom of Dreams overseas. Last December, the company had inked an agreement with Dafeng Industries (China) to set up 10 live entertainment destinations in China. Dafeng, a leading stage equipment manufacturer in the world, is a $4-billion company. The venture has roped in the China Tourism Board which will provide land for the entertainment complexes.
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 Brands chase Hollywood films for co-branded agreements
With Hollywood films growing in popularity in India, an assortment of brands is riding on the back of big budget films, opting for co-branded television commercials and on-the-ground promotions. When Cars 2, sequel to the popular animated Disney movie Cars, released last week, the film partnered with brands in product categories such as toothpaste, apparel, deodorants, stationery, biscuits, health drinks and toys. Green Lantern, the latest superhero movie from Warner Bros Pictures, has partnerships with apparel brand Bioworld and toy brand Mattel, among others. Warner Bros is offering a collection of T-shirts by Bioworld, toys by Mattel and Green Lantern video games distributed by express Interactive Software Pvt. Ltd. Indian films, in Hindi and regional languages have traditionally been a popular medium for brands to reach their target audience. But more recently, Hollywood movies are also beginning to attract Indian brands. If X-Men: First Class from Fox Star Studios had a partnership with Tata Photon, the brand from Tata Teleservices Ltd, Transformers 3 had one with VH1 India, the music channel under the Viacom 18 network banner. Brands associated with Cars 2 include Pepsodent, Britannia, Funskool, Mattel, Reebok, Horlicks, Godrej Yummiez, Dabur Real juices and Dell computers. ESP, the branded entertainment unit of GroupM India, says it has handled brand partnerships for 127 hours with Wildcraft adventure gear and Tata Photon, Rio with McDonalds and Horlicks cookies, and for Kung Fu Panda with Horlicks. Hollywood films also allow a marketer to select audiences based on the genre of the film, which is more sharply defined.
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 Dhoni clinched endorsements worth over 200 crore
New Delhi-based Rhiti Sports Management company has revealed that Indian cricket captain M. S. Dhoni has clinched business worth over 200 crore rupees since they signed him in July 2010. Dhoni had signed a two-year deal with the company to manage his long list of endorsements and brand associations.
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Temple Advertising wins creative mandate for Pearson Education Services
 The Bengaluru-based agency won the account after a multi-agency pitch that was called about two months ago. After a 60-day hunt for an advertising partner, Pearson Education Services has awarded its creative mandate to the Bengaluru-based agency, Temple Advertising. About six agencies pitched for the business, and eventually, four agencies were short listed. Pearson Education Services is a 100 per cent subsidiary of TutorVista, one of the world's largest online tutoring companies, while the mother company Pearson, holds 80 per cent of Tutor Vista’s shares. The company has offerings in three business verticals -- Edurite DigiClass, the information and communication technology solutions vertical that offers multimedia-based digital classrooms, Pearson Schools, which manages, operates and builds high-quality schools across the country, and Edurite Learning Centres, which offer technology-aided coaching classes and test preparation services for various entrance (CET, AIEEE, IIT-JEE, AIPMT) and school/board (State Board, CBSE, ICSE) exams. Temple Advertising will handle the communication needs of all three verticals. He says that the company decided to go ahead with a hot shop rather than a larger agency since it is a specialised category; Pearson was looking for an agency that would understand the business well and be hands-on in partnering the brand in the long run.
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 TIMES NOW launched in Singapore
TIMES NOW, has been launched in the Island nation of Singapore on 15 July 2011, marking its first presence in South East Asia. Singapore has a significant number of people of Indian origin and is the 5th highest destination for air traffic from India. It will now receive the latest breaking news and analysis with TIMES NOW. TIMES NOW will be a part of the basic bouquet of channels of the mio TV platform of SingTel which is the fastest growing television service in Singapore. TIMES NOW targets the urban premium audiences in India and will readily connect with the large and affluent Indian and Asian community’s resident here. Mio TV has over 300,000 subscribers for its pay-TV service across the country. SingTel operates mio TV, a revolutionary Pay-TV service with innovative features and a wide variety of channels, programmes and movies.
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Komli acquires Zestadz, enters mobile Ad market
Online media network platform Komli Media has acquired mobile advertising and publishing network, Zestadz that will help the company enter the mobile advertising network market. The acquisition, the fourth in over a year for the digital company that has bought over digital start-ups in markets such as Australia, UK and Singapore in the past. Zestadz  was founded in 2007 by Asif Ali , Nat D Natraj and Terry Uppal and the core team works out of Los Angeles and Chennai. The company has customers in the US, South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand and a number of European countries apart from India. The company enables targeted mobile advertisements and claims to deliver 5 billion mobile ad impressions (the point at which an ad is viewed once by a visitor or displayed once on a web page) globally each month. While e-retail ventures are being valued at five times revenue, Deloitte's Senior Director in India Rajiv Sundar said for a technology start-up the valuation is not driven by current revenue or profits. It is India's over 840 million mobile phone users (according to Trai) that mobile advertisers and companies are targeting. While the exact data for number of Indians who access the Internet through their mobile phone is not available, Google estimates that this number is 40 million. Companies are now not setting aside a portion of their ad budgets for online and mobile; they are increasing their total budgets according to industry watchers. In fact, mobile research site Mobi Thinking predicts mobile ad spend worldwide to reach $3.3 billion in 2011 and $20.6 billion in 2015. India is estimated to be the largest mobile ad impressions market in Asia, with over 41% of Asia's total ad impressions generated in the country.
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