India – To enhance its creative leadership in the southern markets, DDB Mudra has brought on board Priya Shivakumar as its new creative head for the South region.

Shivakumar brings a wealth of experience to her new role. She joins DDB Mudra from Wunderman Thompson (JWT), where she progressed from executive creative director to chief creative officer for the South region.

With over two decades of experience in the industry, Shivakumar has garnered numerous awards and accolades for her work, including multiple Cannes Lions, D&AD Pencils, One Show Pencils, and Spikes Asia awards. One of her recent achievements is for ‘Hidden Truth,’ a powerful campaign addressing domestic violence.

As the new creative head, Shivakumar will closely collaborate with Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group, and share leadership responsibilities with Menaka Menon, president of growth and strategy at DDB Mudra.

Speaking on the appointment, Matthew commented, “We have been evolving our offering in the South to go beyond national campaigns and offer specialised expertise for the five South markets. And we believe what will make our solutions even more effective is our creativity. Priya will play a critical role in us achieving this vision for the South Office. She has the unique ability to capture local and cultural nuances and execute them to international standards. I’m excited to have her partner with us on our journey.”

Meanwhile, talking about her new role, Shivakumar said, “I’m thrilled to join DDB Mudra and contribute to the legacy of creating culturally resonant brands. These are exciting times where you can take storytelling to new and unexpected places…through technology, craft, or experience…”

She added, “I’m looking forward to leveraging the power of emotions in my work, driving choices, creating conversations, shaping markets, and rewriting brand stories.” 

India – DDB Mudra Group has promoted its current national strategy head, Menaka Menon, to the role of president and managing partner for growth and strategy to lead the agency’s South office. 

Menon will take over Ranji Cherian, former president and managing partner, who successfully ran and scaled the south office for over 16 years and will now lead as the head of client excellence at the group.

In her new role, Menon will take charge of the operation and strategic thinking for clients based out of the Bengaluru office. 

With over 23 years of experience in business and strategy, she has experience across advertising, broadcast media, and strategic consulting. Menon has spent over 15 years in advertising, with stints at agencies such as FCB, VML, and Leo Burnett. 

Commenting on her new role, Menon said, “I am super excited about this new role and look forward to further strengthening the South operation and building a strong, closely knit team, geared towards creating great work that has the power to move people.”

Also speaking on the promotion, Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group, said, “We believe that everything we do is built on strong strategic pillars, be it our work or how we do our work. In her new role, Menaka will use her strategic background to add more value to our client’s business while building a strong culture of creativity in the office. Over the last few years, some of our best work has come from our South office, and I’m really excited to work with Menaka to push us to newer heights.”

India – Volkswagen India has partnered with integrated marketing agency DDB Mudra Group for its latest ‘Whatever Diwali Brings You, We Got You’ campaign that explores the chaotic fun of last-minute Diwali preparations.

The new campaign featured a series of digital films that encapsulated the imperfect yet memorable moments of Diwali plans that don’t turn out the way they are supposed to. The humorous storytelling highlights Volkswagen as the key to saving the day.

In the first film, ‘A Decoration Situation, a family attempts to put up the Diwali lights. However, upon realising they picked the wrong size, they immediately made a dash to the store to rectify the situation.

Titled ‘Same Pinch’, the second film, on the other hand, shows a girl finding an unexpected outfit clash with someone at the party. She immediately goes back to change, only to later find out that someone else brought the same gift as hers.

Meanwhile, in the third film titled ‘Forget-me-nots’, a family that’s on their way to celebrate Diwali suddenly makes a swift U-turn after the husband recalls leaving behind the festive gifts. And lastly, in the ‘Tight Spots’ film, a young boy makes a spontaneous trip to buy a new pair of pants when his own pair doesn’t fit him well anymore.

Volkswagen India’s new campaign aims to show the automobile brand’s capabilities to fix last-minute festivity problems in a more seamless and enjoyable way, showcasing the brand’s safety and fun-to-drive features.

The automobile manufacturing brand wanted to depart from the traditional product-centric approach of advertising and transition into more warm, human-centric stories, emphasising togetherness during the festive season.

The campaign aligns with the new brand positioning of ‘You’re in a Volkswagen’ which built robust emotional equity in the market, underscoring the joy of owning a Volkswagen and how it made owners feel when they drove it.

Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group, shared, “With ‘You’re in a Volkswagen,’ we aimed to capture the various emotions that we unlock in the lives of our customers. So for Diwali, we decided to look beyond the typical festivities and embrace the significance of little moments.”

India – Mars Wrigley India has collaborated with marketing agency DDB Tribal on its newest television commercial campaign for its 25-year-old fruity bubblegum brand, BOOMER. 

The new campaign is built on the brand’s theme of creating little moments of fun and its jingle, ‘BOOM BOOM BOOMER’, evolving its humorous essence to ‘Har pal fun kar, Boom Boom Boomer! ’ but with a spooky twist. 

The digital film highlights the brand’s humor combined with a little eeriness and features the calm and composed star pacer Jasprit Bumrah, also referred to as ‘Boom Boom Bumrah’ for his bowling, to provide a haunting yet hilarious television commercial. 

The film is available on TV and digital platforms in eight languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. 

Announcing the latest collaboration, Varun Kandhari, director of marketing and customer marketing, at Mars Wrigley India, said, “With over 25 years in India, Mars Wrigley’s BOOMER® is a legacy brand that has been holding a strong sense of nostalgia among Millennials and Gen-X consumers for decades. Through this new collaboration with one of the finest cricketing talents of India, Jasprit Bumrah, the brand aims to inspire moments of happiness in the brand loyalists and attract the Gen-Z audience by showcasing BOOMER® as the preferred indulgent gum.”

Expressing his excitement about the collaboration, Jasprit Bumrah adds, “Teaming up with such an iconic brand brings back incredible childhood memories and takes me down memory lane. From playing with friends to representing India on the international platform, BOOMER® has been my constant companion. Through this latest TVC, the brand perfectly captures moments of joy that it has been adding to our lives for years and delivers a fun-filled experience to the audience.”

Speaking on the latest campaign, Iraj Fraz, creative head at DDB Tribal, also said, “BOOMER® isn’t just chewing gum; it’s a hack to unlocking unlimited fun. Hence, the brand platform of ‘Har Pal Fun Kar’. This is an extraordinary story of Boom-Boom-Bumrah turning a scary moment into hilarity, starring in a supporting role a never-seen-before creature imagined by Director Sukriti Tyagi in collaboration with the Mars and DDB teams. The campaign is building a world of ‘anytime fun,’ and BOOMER® fans will interact with a lot of fresh and amusing content featuring India’s favorite seamer, Jasprit Bumrah.”

Mumbai, India – Indian payment services RuPay has launched a new campaign for the current season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) with a humorous ad that had cricketer Dinesh Karthik dealing with an unlikely predicament – trying to juggle and catch falling artefacts in a museum. A guy then appears offering Dinesh a ‘safe catch service’. 

The ad, conceptualised by DDB Mudra Group, is a metaphorical hit on RuPay’s ‘game-changing’ product which allows users to access their RuPay credit cards through the UPI platform. The Unified Payments Interface is an instant real-time payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) which facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer and person-to-merchant transactions.

RuPay parent company NPCI has partnered with IPL to launch the campaign on the opening day of the season. The ad aims to highlight the benefits of RuPay credit card linkage on UPI, encouraging consumers to inquire with their bank about the feature.

Additionally, as part of the campaign, three other films developed by DDB Mudra Group will also be released throughout the league season. The films playfully describe how customers will be able to use UPI, whilst also enjoying rewards and the loyalty points program of their favourite credit card.

“We, at NPCI, are proud to share this path-defining offering of RuPay Credit Cards on UPI and believe it would play a significant role in India’s credit journey,” Praveena Rai, COO at NPCI, commented. “We have always looked to create innovative products facilitating convenience for better payments systems for the nation. Our partnership with IPL, just like the partnership between RuPay and UPI, will amplify our efforts in consumer awareness on the benefits of having access to credit on UPI. The RuPay campaign is witty and breaks clutter. We hope consumers enjoy the ads, as they do IPL.”

Meanwhile, Rahul Mathew, CCO & executive director of DDB Mudra Group, commented, “RuPay is the first credit card that allows you to pay through UPI. It’s such a breakthrough and disruption in the category. We felt a product that’s so differentiated and is a standout, needs work that is the same.”

The use of the card is live on cards issued by HDFC Bank, BoB Financial Services, Canara Bank, Indian Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, and Axis Bank. Other banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank shall also soon be live with their UPI functionality on RuPay credit cards. 

India – German automotive maker Volkswagen in India has released a new campaign aiming to demonstrate the safeness of their cars. But there’s a catch: the campaign doesn’t feature any cars at all. 

Conceptualised by the DDB Mudra Group, the campaign leverages the brand’s affinity for simplicity and human storytelling through crisp, amusing home life metaphors for the safety features on every Volkswagen.

On a more technical level, the campaign was launched on the back of the Volkswagen Taigun model recently scoring a five-star rating in Global NCAP’s crash tests. Taigun has become one of the first car models in India to achieve five stars, for both adult and child occupants’ protection.

Speaking on the work, Rahul Mathew, chief Creative Officer, DDB Mudra Group, said, “As a brand, Volkswagen has been built around human stories. It’s in the name of the brand itself. Therefore, we thought the best way to illustrate our safety features would be through examples of how we navigate our every day.”

Meanwhile, Abbey Thomas, head of marketing and PR at Volkswagen India, commented, “Safety is at the core of Brand Volkswagen. We build our cars with lots of emotion and passion, the same goes for our communication; emotional and light hearted. Together with our creative team, we hope to deliver this very important messaging on safety in an interesting and engaging manner to our consumers.”

India – Advertising company DDB Mudra Group has unveiled key appointments to its local leadership, namely Menaka Menon as national strategy head and Nitin Pradhan as creative head for South.

Both appointees cumulatively bring over at DDB Mudra Group 40 years of experience in creative thinking and strategic planning across brands and categories.

Menaka started her journey in advertising in account management and eventually moved to other marketing roles. She has also spent time in media, consulting and social sectors, all of which have contributed to her unique perspective on culture and consumer behaviour. She has also previously worked with FCB, JWT and Leo Burnett. Her diverse portfolio included brands such as ITC foods, Amazon, HUL, Star Network.

Commenting on her new role, Menon said, “DDB Mudra Group is at an exciting juncture, having created beautiful and impactful work, with a clear focus on building on the same. I look forward to being part of a stellar team working towards a shared mission and bringing in a fresh perspective to work.”

Meanwhile, Pradhan has worked on campaigns such as the Masalas of India for Maggi noodles, Make My Trip’s ‘MMT Assured’ campaign and brands such as Samsung, Tata Sky, KBC and Sony Network. His last stint was with Cheil India with previous experiences at Ogilvy, McCann, Publicis Groupe and Leo Burnett. He is also a filmmaker, having directed popular films for Truecaller and the Government of India.

Commenting on the role, he said, “The vision of making DDB Mudra, the integrated agency of choice in the industry is something that inspired me to take up the South creative mandate. The Bengaluru office has recently proven its intent to push creative boundaries with mainline campaigns on BGMI and Indeed. And given the vast portfolio of brands that it has across categories, I’m quite excited to partner the team in its new phase of growth, where creativity will have a more central role to play.” 

Talking about the senior appointments Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group said, “Bernbach had said that creativity is the most powerful force in business. And those words form the core of what we’re trying to build at the DDB Mudra Group. But how strong the force of creativity is, depends on the talent that wields it and leads it. In Menaka and Nitin, we found strong leaders and wielders of this force. I look forward to working with them and creating some really exciting work on some of our biggest brands.”

India – Sanitary brand Stayfree has launched a new campaign in celebration of Daughter’s Day in India, encouraging parents to educate their sons about periods among women, which has perpetuated a long-standing stigma in the country.

The campaign’s ad, conceptualised by DDB Mudra, aims to positively change the narrative of shame and silence around periods. Commonly, men have been kept away from the menstruation conversation for generations, thinking of periods as a women’s secret – unsure of their role and choosing to make themselves unavailable because they don’t know how to offer the much-needed support.

Manoj Gadgil, vice president of marketing at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, said, “Stayfree set about to normalise period conversations to create a world where no girl feels embarrassed of periods. The campaign #itsjustaperiod started this journey 2 years back. This year, Stayfree urges parents to talk to their sons and tell them it’s just a period. When boys too are part of the conversation, we can truly create a period friendly world. Having an open dialogue and addressing a child’s curiosity of periods can help us build a generation that is free of societal shame around menstruation.”

Stayfree has also launched a microsite stayfree.in/talktoyoursons to help parents understand how to talk to their sons about periods and urges them to take a pledge to teach their sons about menstruation.

Meanwhile, Pallavi Chakravarti, creative head for West at DDB Mudra, commented, “At what point do children find out that periods are to be spoken about in hushed tones or preferably not spoken about at all? When we say a girl is ashamed about her period, do we ever wonder why? Or stop to think of whom she is hiding from?”

She added. “These were the questions we sought answers to, as we took the platform idea of ‘It’s Just A Period’ into another year. Stayfree has long believed that normalising the conversation involves everyone – not just one section of society – it was this belief coupled with our explorations that led us to the next chapter in our campaign – this Daughter’s Day, talk to your sons.”

India – Job platform Indeed has launched a new brand campaign called ‘#HireBetter’ which highlights the issues that companies face if one does not rely on proper recruitment tools to hire employees. 

Conceptualised and created by DDB Mudra, the ad campaign is directed by Vivek Kakkad. The series consists of three ads and showcases hilarious goof-ups when hiring through referrals in three different scenarios. The concept pulls from the insight that while there’s a shift in online recruitment for SMBs, oftentimes SMBs still rely on their first party sources to hire.

The ad films and creatives will be spread across various digital and print platforms that employers and job seekers choose to watch such as YouTube and physical press across regional and national newspapers. 

Nishita Lalvani, director at Indeed India and SEA, said, “Our campaign is focused on reaching out to SMBs – the high-growth market in India. This campaign will address their concerns regarding hiring employees, through a series of relatable films which resonate with them. Indeed provides easy hiring solutions for SMBs and aims to constantly innovate to help these companies find the right talent through its platform.”

Meanwhile, Sooraj R Pillai, senior creative director at DDB Mudra, commented, “Hiring in small and medium businesses in India gets done through word of mouth over legitimate channels. And this may turn out to be a problem since the owners appoint employees with mediocre aptitude, causing potential losses for the businesses.” 

Pillai added, “The objective of this campaign was to target SMB owners specifically and encourage them to subscribe to the platform. Thus, changing their typical approach towards hiring and their standard practice of appointing someone they know instead of hiring someone who knows what to do.”

India – Advertising agency DDB Mudra Group has appointed Manish Darji as its new head of art for West. This appointment reinforces the agency’s commitment to craft at a time when visual storytelling is constantly evolving.

In his new role, Darji will be leading the design mandate for the agency’s west office and will be reporting to Pallavi Chakravarti, DDB Mudra’s creative head for West. He will also be exploring applications of craft in newer categories like digital, data, entertainment, and content. 

With a career spanning two decades, Darji has worked on some of India’s leading brands like Coca-Cola, NDTV, Big Bazaar, Volkswagen, and Marico, as well as Viacom 18, and Mondelez. He has also served as executive creative director and associate creative director at DDB Mudra in the year 2014 and 2010 respectively. Moreover, Darji has worked at BBH, McCann Erickson, Ogilvy, and Rediffusion Y&R, as well as Bates 141.

DDB Mudra said that its Unexpected Works philosophy lays a strong emphasis on creating clutter-breaking work that drives results, and craft plays a crucial role in this advanced approach. 

Speaking on his appointment, Darji said, “Bill Bernbach was the first to put Art and Copy on the same floor, back in the 60s, and that’s been the model for all agencies ever since. With it comes the opportunity to let craft shine as we pursue our promise of Unexpected Works. I am truly excited to be on this ride.”

Meanwhile, Chakravarti noted, “It is impossible to look at a piece Manish has worked on and not be wowed. His passion for craft and grasp of distinctive visual languages are skills sorely needed in this day and age. We’re delighted to have him on board to further the creative vision for DDB Mudra West.”