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Ariel’s ‘My Story, My Ariel’ campaign draws to a close

Ariel's ‘My Story, My Ariel' culminated at an event at Mantra, The Park, New Delhi on Aug. 29. Executed by Encompass, this culmination event was attended by Bollywood actor Chitrangada Singh, along with 51 members of the print and electronic media.This initiative aimed to highlight people's emotional bond with their favourite garments, which they treasure above all else and try to preserve so it just like it was when it was new. The campaign is reputed to be among the best engagement campaigns for Ariel, having generated maximum impact across digital, PR and IVR platforms. Till date, around 220,000 stories have been received from consumers about their treasured garments, across these platforms.The culmination event was conceptualized by Madison Public Relations and Encompass. Encompass was also responsible for designing the set, and executing the media event. At the event, Chitrangada Singh revealed her treasured garment story.A registration desk/backdrop with Ariel branding was installed at the pre-function area. The ballroom had a main stage, also with Ariel branding. While they waited for the event to start, the audience could read the shortlisted consumer and celebrity stories mounted on the Ariel Consumer & Celebrity story walls. The stories highlighted on how Ariel helped consumers preserve their treasured garments for a long period and helped consumers keep the memories attached to their treasured garments intact.The Ariel Legacy Wall, a panel highlighting the total number of stories received during the campaign, was revealed at the start of the event using a split backdrop. The celebrity wall, where Chitrangada Singh's treasured garment story was printed on the panel with space to pin her treasured garment, was also revealed to the media at a later stage during the event, again using the split backdrop.Speaking at the event, Singh said: "I have always aspired to be an actress, but it was my treasured sari which turned the fortune for me and got me here in Bollywood and made me what I am today. If not for my treasured sari, I would have been a nutritionist. I still remember the day when I auditioned for my first movie and I chose to wear this sari. It's from that day, that I have treasured it and Ariel helps me keep it shining like new." Commenting on the event, Anirudh Bhagtani, Sr.Manager - Client Servicing, Encompass said: "It was a wonderful experience going through all the consumer stories and stories shared by well-known faces on their treasured garments and the profession they would had perused without their treasured garment. The key highlight of the event was Chitrangada Singh arriving at the event, looking like a nutritionist, which stunned everyone for a few minutes before she could share her treasured sari story and the profession she would have followed had it not been for her treasured sari. To come up with this strong drama on-stage, that would resonate with the core communication of the campaign was a challenge, and we managed this well along with Madison Public Relations."

Indian cinema fraternity joins hands for Parikrma Jeaneration campaign

The Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Bangalore that provides under-served children access to world class education, has launched an initiative called Parikrma Jeaneration. Under this initiative, the biggest movie stars on Indian cinema will participate in a global auctioning of their jeans to raise funds for scholarships which will give the poorest children access to the best colleges.Founded in 2003, Parikrma aims to address all aspects of a child's life by providing ICSE English language education, nutrition, comprehensive healthcare and family care. The non-profit looks after children who come from slum communities and orphanages in Bangalore, from kindergarten to Grade 12 and then provides them with scholarships to go to college.Sept. 1 saw the announcement of the launch of Parikrma Jeaneration at Taj Lands End, Mumbai. This initiative is being partnered by Phase 1 Events and Entertainment, and the Embassy Group, Bangalore-based real estate developers. The launch event was attended by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, author and social commentator Shobhaa De, Shukla Bose, Founder-CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation, and Shaina Ganapathy of the Embassy Group. Bachchan also interacted with the children of Parikrma, as he handed over his autographed pair of jeans.The jeans will travel across on-ground events in four cities around the world, during the two-week period of the online auction, celebrating the global reach of Indian cinema. There will be a launch event in Mumbai on Oct. 27, Chennai on Oct. 30, Singapore on Nov. 3, and San Francisco on Nov. 10. Parikrma is working with eBay to conduct this auction."This is the first time we are taking the story of Parikrma to a global audience and already we are overwhelmed by the response from the film fraternity," said Shukla Bose, Founder-CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation. "Our children are doing exceedingly well in college and with the funds we raise we will be able to get them into the very best universities and fuel the revolution for equal education even more. I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to the Embassy Group for supporting this program. They have been integral to our ambition of sending children to college. I also thank eBay for their fantastic support. Jeanaration, our most ambitious program could not have had a better start than having Mr. Amitabh Bachchan launch it. Our children are delighted that he is part of us now. All of us at Parikrma are grateful for his invaluable support." This initiative has been conceptualized by Parikrma but is being executed by Phase 1 Events and Entertainment. Phase 1 is responsible for the event production and is consulting on the whole process. Commenting on their involvement with this campaign, Oum Pradutt, Director, Phase 1 Events and Entertainment said: "As an agency, we align ourselves with causes that are close to out heart. We have been patrons of Parikrma as an institution over the last few years and have been executing all their events. We are partnering with them for this event across all four cities. The intention is to bring high net worth individuals from across these cities to align with this cause over a long term and sponsor atleast one child over the course of their education." Overall, the campaign aims to raise half a million USD across the cities. While Mumbai, Chennai and Singapore are by-invite events, the San Francisco event will be a ticketed affair.Sixteen stars have already committed their denim wear to the cause. From Bollywood, participation is coming from Amitabh Bachchan, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Saif Ali Khan, Anushka Sharma, Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Anil Kapoor and Kangana Ranaut. From the South, Suriya, Madhavan, Trisha, Dhanush, Rana Daggubati and Vikram have agreed to be a part of the campaign.Shobhaa De, spokesperson for the Parikrma Jeanaration global campaign said: "As they often say, it's all in the jeans! Parikrma's DNA is impeccable. And our movie stars have demonstrated the power of theirs by parting with their favourite denims for a worthwhile cause. One pair of signed star jeans equals a life altering transformation for an under-served child. The revolution has just begun...." Pradutt concluded saying: "This is a collective effort by everyone involved to make this campaign as large as it can be. This is going to be beyond an event. Bollywood is going to invade eBay for the first time, on an international level."

Tata Indicom breaks a billboard

The broken billboard highlights the campaign communication, 'Aab Adhey Me Ban Jaye Baat'. To grab eyeballs, the billboard has been strategically placed near metro stations frequented by the target group.Get down at Jhill Mill Metro station in East Delhi and what attracts your eyes is a half-broken billboard. It hasn't broken naturally but is an interesting way to draw attention to Tata Indicom's new pack - Special tariff voucher (STV) 23, wherein the calling benefit is doubled and the expense is reduced to half. Hence the campaign is called 'Aab Adhey Me Ban Jaye Baat'.The idea behind breaking the 20X8 feet billboard into two halves is to communicate the campaign message that highlights that the customer can get all the benefits at half the cost. Therefore, half of the billboard is upright while the other part is shown falling apart. The upright part displays the message, 'Aab Adhey Me Ban Jaye Baat - 1.2 paise/2 second local/STD'. Keeping in mind the brand image and perception, MOMS, the out of home division of Madison, planned and executed this campaign using core sites at select locations frequented by the target group (TG).Commenting on the campaign, Ajit Chaturvedi, hub head, Delhi, Tata Indicom, says, "The objective was to communicate our half rate tariff proposition interestingly and innovatively. For an outdoor campaign, the visual has to be striking to make that critical difference. We simply split the hoarding into two pieces - seemingly simple but hugely effective; high noticeability and 20 per cent increase in product off-take are the results." The client brief was to promote the half rate scheme through media innovation, clutter breaking thought and unique visibility and thereby build a strong brand connect and perception for the new plan. The metro station location was selected due to its strategic importance as well as the type and volume of traffic that it commands. Dipankar Sanyal, chief operating officer, MOMS, says, "MOMS is a 'thinking' OOH agency, and that is our key strength in creating difference in our service offering to our clients. We have delivered unique ideas and innovative media applications in the OOH space that are in the best interest of the brands and campaign themes. We strive to create benchmarks and push the limits, campaign after campaign, which are best illustrated with multiple innovative ideas conceptualised and executed for our various clients including Tata Indicom."The campaign started on August 1 and targets consumers in the age group of 15-55 years. It took around four days to execute the innovation."The challenge faced while executing the campaign was to remove the entire structure, erect the half structure with heavy crane, make it trip over the iron platform and keep it fixed there without disturbing and creating nuisance on the road/traffic," adds Sanyal.

Times Internet Limited launches BoxTV.com

Times Internet Limited (TIL) on Tuesday announced the launch of BoxTV.com, a premium video service that would allow users to stream movies, TV shows and short films directly on to their computer, smartphone or tablet. The service, which is conceptually similar to Hulu and Netflix that are available in the US, aims to serve local users and Indian diaspora across the world. It would allow users to stream Bollywood and Hollywood films as well as video content in local languages like Tamil. Currently, the service is in invite-only alpha stage. The public availability is expected in a few months. People interested in using the service can request an invite at www.boxtv.com "BoxTV is a product with a user-centric design approach, backed by a large content bank with anytime-anywhere access for subscribers. We are very excited about the launch and the roadmap for the next few months as we add more users and content," said Satyan Gajwani, CEO of TIL. BoxTV would be accessible via web browsers, iPhone, iPad, Android devices and even popular TV-connected platforms such as Roku. Gajwani said that TIL started working on the service around one year ago. The company said that it would have over 30 content partners for BoxTV. Of these, 12 firms, including Sony Pictures, UTV and Shemaroo, would be launch partners. BoxTV has a 'freemium model'. This means that a part of the content would be available on an ad-supported basis. This content would be free. The rest of the content, however, would be available on a monthly subscription basis. For now, the subscription for Indian users would cost Rs 199 every month. For users in the US, the cost would be $4.99. "We feel there is a huge opportunity in India to do a premium-content service. Our focus is on the quality and we want to make sure that we delight our users with this service. This will set us apart from other video streaming websites and services," said Gajwani. The BoxTV player has been designed with unique features for a 'lean back' experience with three different modes - normal, wide and full screen. It also uses an auto bandwidth optimizer that takes into account the speed of the internet connection and optimizes the video streaming for best possible experience.

TIMES NOW and ET NOW lead supreme in the English News genre

TIMES NOW, India’s most watched 24-hour English news channel along with ET NOW, India’s #1 Stock Market Channel continue to reign in the English News network genre with a 46% combined viewership share (Source: TAM, CS AB M 25+, 2nd Sept - 8th Sept 2012, week 36, relative share of viewership), while CNN IBN + CNBC TV 18 and NDTV 24x7 + NDTV Profit attained 32% and 22% share respectively. Last week, TIMES NOW, aired an exclusive interview on Frankly Speaking with Arnab Goswami of firebrand politician Raj Thackeray. This show garnered a staggering 97% viewership across all India 1 mn+ markets. The channel also broke the news of the PMO note on Coalgate that clearly stated that the PMO approved continuing allotting coal blocks. Alongside, ET NOW also presented numerous stories that were first broken by the channel such as Tech Mahindra's buyout of the Hutch BPO, Parthasarthi Shome's first interview after the GAAR report was submitted, the 2G auction licensing norms, Jim Rogers on outlook for commodities and Jim O Neill on expectations from the ECB meet. Stay tuned to ET NOW for more stock tips, trading strategies, market moving stories & exclusive interviews and keep your eyeballs focused onto TIMES NOW for powerful news analysis from India and around the world.

Flipkart's new ad campaign focuses on social media

The recently launched flipkart campaign, which forms third in the series of the brand's communication so far, has done something clutter-breakingly different by deploying social media as an active and also the primary medium. It previewed its new campaign - to its dedicated base of 50 lakh users - first even before it went live on television. Going one step further, the brand took the feedback from the social media to tweak and fine-tune the media plan. According to Ravi Vora, Sr. Vice President - Marketing, Flipkart.com, the qualitative response as well as the 'likes' actually helped in sharpening the media-plan and changing the relative weightage of the ads within the campaign.The current campaign that is supposedly created from real life stories is the third leg of the brand's campaign and comprises 3 flipkart IT ads and 6 category ads, in all.The flipkart ads have had a good recall for using the kids in a refreshing manner in their campaigns so far. Explaining the logic of using the kids and how it has worked well for the brand, Kartik Iyer, chief executive officer, Happy (the agency behind the campaign) says, "Initially when we were working on the first campaign the idea was to have a treatment that was fresh and also to build trust for the category - and who better than children to help build trust." The idea worked and the brand has continued to use the same set of characters and extending the storyline with the central thought. "So much so that now using the kids as adults is a language that everyone identifies as a flipkart idea", adds Iyer.While the results are yet to come in, the brand has indeed managed to use its strong user-base innovatively. After all 50 lac unique user-numbers is more than what many channels can deliver. According to Vora, "Many users have actually got back to us saying that they are happy at having been treated as more than just a 'like' or 'fan' statistic."

'The X-Factor' earmarks 80% of marketing budget for OOH

Widespread marketing campaigns have become a part and parcel of all big TV shows today. Channels are leaving no stone unturned to ensure maximum audience aggregation through various promotional activities on different media platforms such as television, print, digital, out of home, etc. Big CBS Networks has launched a 360 degree marketing campaign for ‘The X Factor’ which was launched on September 14.The channel has earmarked a budget of Rs 4 crore for the marketing campaign of the show – 80 per cent of which has been allotted to out of home, while rest to other medium. The campaign has been launched in top metros such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai and would span across a time frame of four weeks.Anand Chakravarthy, Business Head, Big CBS Networks stated, “Since reaching out to our target viewers at every touch-point is very essential, the network has launched the marketing campaign with the intention to connect with our TG on every level.”The campaign encapsulates television, radio, out of home, multiplex and digital platform.As a part of the promotional activities on television, Big CBS would be using the RBNL Network of channels – Big CBS Prime, Big CBS love, Big CBS Spark, Spark Punjabi, Big Magic and Bloomberg TV India. The radio campaign comprises Big FM, which is playing spots across five cities along with show bumpers, RJ mentions and contests; RadioOne which is being used across Mumbai and Delhi markets; and Radio Indigo for the Bangalore region.The outdoor campaign covers prime locations in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata. In case of multiplexes, key PVR cinemas across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are being utilised for on-air as well as off-air branding.The network has also launched a contest on the Facebook pages of the Big CBS channels called ‘Xport to LA’, the winner of which will get a chance to watch ‘The X Factor’ live in Los Angeles. The show is also being promoted extensively through social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

JWT bags Titan's fragrances business

JWT has bagged the creative mandate for Titan Industries' upcoming fragrances business. The agency's Bengaluru office will handle the account.Highly placed market sources have confirmed the news to afaqs!.The win is the result of a closely fought multi-agency pitch that was initiated around June this year. The pitch saw the participation of five to six leading creative agencies, including those that handle the creative duties for some of Titan's other products.The upcoming fragrance product will mark Titan's entry into a category that the company does not have presence in so far. This fragrance product is slated to be launched in the market within the next five-six months. Even the upcoming ad campaign for the brand will be released after five-six months.JWT will work on the launch campaign and brand strategy for the product. The agency will also be required to partner the Titan authorities to come up with a marketable brand name for this product.Sources further inform that the product will be targeted at young adults (both men and women) in their twenties, who are on the threshold of professional life. Titan's media spend for the launch campaign is pegged at Rs 5-8 crore, as per market estimates.Titan is currently present across segments including time products (watches, clocks), jewellery, eyewear, and also has a precision engineering division.Some of the popular brands under the Titan umbrella include Fastrack, Tanishq, Xylys, Titan Eye+, Titan Raga and Sonata, amongst several others.Several creative agencies have been involved with the creative duties of Titan's brands in the recent past. For instance, Lowe Lintas & Partners has worked on the communication for Fastrack, Wieden+Kennedy has worked on Xylys, and recently, Ogilvy India conceptualised an ad campaign (featuring brand ambassador Aamir Khan) for Titan's new watch range called the HTSE (High Tech Self Energised).Maxus is the media planning and buying agency on the Titan account.Recently, JWT won the creative mandate for Louis Philippe, the premium apparel brand from Madura Garments.

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