Tag: India

Mumbai, India – In response to a recent survey stating that 80% of respondents do not notice disclaimers in ads, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has tightened its ‘Guidelines for Disclaimers made in supporting, limiting or explaining claims made in advertisements’.

The ASCI survey was done with 130 consumers, which also revealed that 33% of the respondents could not understand the disclaimers clearly even after adequate exposure time while  62% of them felt that the disclaimers were excessively long.

Moreover, the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC) have also observed that the frame of the advertisements containing the disclaimer was ‘very crowded’ and distracted the viewer’s focus.

To address these issues, ASCI has made some amendments to the guidelines, including limiting long and complex disclaimers to two full-length lines only. The disclaimers should also be readable, in a single frame, and must remain on screen for more than four seconds for every line.

Meanwhile, for regulatory requirements where the disclaimer exceeds two lines, additional hold duration should be inculcated. The ASCI also added that all forms of text appearing on screen at any one point in time should likewise be counted calculating the hold duration of disclaimers.

The ASCI has however retained guidelines such as restricting disclaimers from attempting to correct a misleading claim made in an advertisement and attempting to suppress material information with respect to the claim, amongst others.

Manisha Kapoor, CEO and secretary-general at ASCI commented on the amendments, stating, “While ASCI has had disclaimer guidelines since 2016, it was observed that over-use of disclaimers made it difficult for consumers to understand all the information presented in the ad. This is evident from our survey where 80% of consumers did not even notice the disclaimers.”

The ASCI has also previously partnered with K&S Partners to identify unfair trademark practices used by brands.

Mumbai, India – Influencer marketing agency Barcode Entertainment has announced the appointment of Ajay Kulkarni as its business head, where he will be bringing his diversified experience in revenue, brand management, communications, and marketing, amongst others.

In his new role, Kulkarni is expected to bring seamless processes to the agency, as well as help grow its businesses with the aim to make the company one of the most prominent players in the social commerce, influencer marketing, and content space.

Prior to joining Barcode, Kulkarni led the content and strategic partnerships at TikTok (ByteDance) for South Asia and was assistant vice president for international business at Times Network. He has also worked with notable organisations in India such as Star India Pvt Ltd, Tata Teleservices, and Times Group.

Speaking on his appointment, Kulkarni said, “I am delighted to be part of the immensely specialised and talented team at Barcode Entertainment. The rapid rise of influencers and the creator economy at large is a force to reckon with in today’s digital landscape.”

He also added that he believes Barcode is well-positioned to be the leading company supercharging the influencer marketing, content, and live commerce space.

Rahul Khanna, co-founder of Barcode Entertainment, also commented, “We are immensely happy to have Ajay on board as the Business Head at Barcode. Having experienced growth at a lightning-fast pace, we are setting our sights on leveraging this growth momentum and scaling new heights to be the next big thing in the influencer, content and live commerce space.”

Founded in 2019, Barcode Entertainment helps various brands connect and collaborate with more than 20,000 macro and micro-influencers across the country.

India – Made in collaboration with marketing communications agency Wunderman Thompson India, Indian English-language newspaper The Times of India (TOI) has launched its new campaign that elevates unity despite the diverse differences in India.

Titled ‘The Idea of India’, the campaign featured a short film that invites every Indian to participate and celebrate their perspective of India in their own way through the hashtag #WhatMakesUsOne.

The visual thread for the film is the festival of lights captured by cinematographers and drone photographers and timelapse content creators throughout the festive season. It also included a narrative taken from the speeches of India’s inspiring leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Subash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Indira Gandhi, AB Vajpayee and Narendra Modi — the voices that set fire to the ‘Idea of India.’

“In this context, our new initiative from TOI – #WhatMakesUsOne, focuses on the many unifying threads that make up our Idea Of India. Despite our diversity and multiculturism, the threads that unite us also drive our growth in the world today powerfully,” said Kaustuv Chatterjee, brand director at TOI & Languages.

He also added that through the campaign, TOI hopes to spark conversations and connections around what makes Indians one as they celebrate the country’s 74th year of becoming a Republic.

Meanwhile, Wunderman Thompson India’s Chief Creative & Film Director Senthil Kumar also commented, “India was an idea long before it became a free nation… It is the same thread that continues to bind us as one nation, in spite of our diverse differences. It is the invisible ektara that stirs our souls and ignites our hearts. This binding thread of tolerance and inclusivity is represented as the thread of light cinematically and metaphorically in the powerful Times Of India narrative form.”

Joy Chauhan, senior VP & managing partner at Wunderman Thompson Delhi added, “The idea of India is a campaign that makes you pause and yet again fall in love with our magical nation… It was an opportune time to celebrate our diversity and #WhatMakesUsOne. We are proud to partner [with] the iconic Times of India in this celebration.”

The campaign is live across national news media, social media, and various digital platforms. 

‘The Idea of India’ follows TOI’s ‘Maa Aashcen. Tumi Kothaye?’ campaign in October 2022, which was targeted at celebrating togetherness and connection between loved ones during Hindu festival.

Singapore – Wootag, a Singapore-based interactive visual marketing platform, takes a new step in expanding its global presence by launching its operations in India. Simultaneously, the company appointed Aditya Singh Chauhan as its first country manager.

With this expansion, Wootag still aims to further develop its growth strategy for India despite being one of its fastest-growing regions in the Asia-Pacific market. The company sets its eyes on strengthening regional partnerships for its visual marketing growth. 

As the inaugural country manager for India, Chauhan will lead the company’s go-to-market functions, and be responsible for driving client satisfaction and the adoption of the ‘Wootag for Ads’ in India. In his last stint, Chauhan worked as associate director of brand partnership & monetization for Myntra and led business development for Affle.

Recently, Wootag has introduced Wootag for Ads across Asian markets which aims to provide marketers with expanding offerings in interactive and intent-based audience engagement across various forms of advertising. 

Raj Sunder, CEO & founder of Wootag, said, “Not only does India boast the second-fastest growing economy in the G20, its marketing industry has evolved rapidly to keep up with [the] emergence of the video consumption and ecommerce ecosystem and ever-changing demands of consumers. This makes India such an important market for us in the region, contributing significantly to our business across Asia Pacific.”

Meanwhile, Chauhan commented, “I am thrilled to be joining Wootag and I would like to thank the company for trusting me to lead the team into the next chapter. I am excited to contribute to the company’s growth journey and empower our clients to succeed in a distributed and rapidly changing world.”

Wootag is currently operating in 13 countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong SAR, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and now India

Mumbai, India – Wunderman Thompson has appointed Harsh Shah as its new chief digital officer for South Asia. Shah will be responsible for accelerating the digital transformation of the Wunderman Thompson Group and will work with its agencies across the creative, communication, tech, health, and commerce practices. 

In his last stint, Harsh was with Dentsu Creative as President – West, and led operations, revenue, people and culture for Dentsu Webchutney, and regional business for the rest of Dentsu Creative. For the new role, he will be reporting directly to Shams Jasani, chief executive officer of Wunderman Thompson South Asia.

Jasani said, “We are Delighted to welcome Harsh to the Wunderman Thompson Family. He brings in a wealth of experience across Digital, Technology and Commerce. Our work at Wunderman Thompson harnesses the power of creative, technology, and Commerce to drive unprecedented growth for some of the world’s biggest brands. We are glad to have Harsh onboard at a critical juncture when we are keenly looking at offering end-to-end capabilities to our clients at scale.”

Meanwhile, Shah commented, “I am deeply excited by the vision drawn up at WT and my specific charter as a key growth partner. I look forward to drive this vision and unlock growth with my highly experienced and talented peers at the agency.”

Mumbai, India – Media network Omnicom Media Group (OMG) in India has announced the launch of its market-leading repository OMNI Auto ROI Vault, targeted at making media spending’s impact on revenue a focus.

The launch also aims to empower OMG’s clients to reach their desired revenue objective by allocating budget across various channels, benchmarking categories to measure performance, and predicting models for future sales and revenue.

The Auto ROI Vault allows OMG’s automobile clients to precisely curate investment planning and channel plans for both short-term and long-term payoffs. Moreover, teams can also calibrate and optimise their investment plans across OMG’s agencies OMD and PHD.

“OMG’s data-led approach delivers on our ambitions of exceeding the needs of our clients, being their most trusted partner on their journey of transformation and being able to uncover business-led insights with a tangible impact on revenue growth,” said Kartik Sharma, group CEO of OMG India.

He also added that the repository is primed to help brands see the effectiveness of media planning as a long-term investment instead of approaching it as another cost incurred.

“With it in our arsenal, we are uniquely positioned to focus on revenue-driven outcomes for our clients and further deliver on our promise of our transparent and client-centric approach to brand building,” Sharma concluded.

OMNI is Omnicom Group’s people-based precision marketing and insights platform, designed to identify and define personalised consumer experiences at scale across creative, media, CRM, and other Omnicom practice areas.

OMG India has also previously launched the second edition of its Digital Bootcamp in collaboration with executive upskilling platform ELEVES, aimed at stimulating growth in the ever-changing industry.

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 – Dentsu Programmatic has announced the launch of ‘Dentsu Curate’, a strategic programmatic supply solution, in India. Said solution enables advertisers to target premium and brand-safe inventory, allowing them to bring better performance leading to high operational efficiency for all campaigns.

In addition, the solution aims to improve media quality by consolidating supply and involving deeper integrations with tech platforms and data partners.

Dentsu Curate is built on dentsu international’s global clean supply initiative. The programmatic supply solution guides advertisers in buying digital inventory across media on behalf of dentsu X, Carat, and iProspect in a brand-safe and fraud-free environment.

This is done through robust evaluation mechanisms, with industry-leading partnerships offering high-quality premium supply coupled with supply path optimisation modelling.

Speaking on the launch, Divya Karani, South Asia chief executive officer for media at dentsu said, “Dentsu Curate offers our clients’ assurance and trust in maximising fraud-free, brand safe, and viewable inventory. Dentsu’s ability to fulfil these assurances entails working with the right supply partners with robust solutions and value to ensure clean supply in building a marketplace for our advertisers.”

Through Dentsu Curate, clients can once again get control by building up their bespoke marketplace across Display, Mobile, CTV, DOOH, and native. India’s fragmented landscape in OTT and growing CTV as with this solution they can curate across publishers but drive a certain campaign objective of video or viewability. It allows them the flexibility to have control across their inventory via multiple parameters such as third-party audiences, context, inventory type, among others.

Salil Shanker, chief operating officer at Dentsu Programmatic said, “At dentsu, we are committed to investing our brand dollars to deliver maximum efficiency and efficacy whilst safeguarding brand legacy. With the launch of Dentsu Curate, we are equipped to help enable great value and outcomes for our clients and support a fair marketplace.” 

Meanwhile, Saagar Sethi, president at Amplifi India commented, “It is all about finding the right mixture of quality publishers and partners that align with our defined quality KPIs. Our Inventory Superiority Mechanism is used to analyse the quality of a publisher across a variety of our trusted partners. With Dentsu Curate we safeguard transparency on the overall media operations.”

Mumbai, India – Global brand and customer experience agency VMLY&R has announced the appointment of Saurabh Saksena as chief executive officer of VMLY&R India. 

He will be based out of Mumbai and will report to Hari Ramanathan, CEO of VMLY&R, South and Southeast Asia and Japan. 

In the new role, Saksena is expected to drive the integration of VMLY&R’s capabilities across India, such as creative excellence and transformational solutions at the intersection of brand and customer experience, data, platforms, and commerce.

Prior to joining VMLY&R India, he was the president of Red Fuse Communications India. He also held the CEO position at J. Walter Thompson Worldwide and brings with him experience in social, commerce, data and CRM, shopper marketing, full-funnel management, and new-age media, amongst others.

On his appointment, Saksena said, “I’m thrilled to take up this new role and lead the VMLY&R operations in India. The agency houses a great pool of talent across specialisations that don’t usually exist together in a single agency, making it well-positioned to harness creativity, technology, and culture to create connected brands.”

He likewise mentioned that VMLY&R has outstanding growth potential in India and that he and his team will continue to build on it.

Ramanathan further commented, “India is an anchor market for us in Asia and with a breadth and depth of offerings that are unmatched in the industry, VMLY&R India, under Saurabh’s leadership, is all set to help clients get their ‘unfair’ share of growth in a vibrant market.”

VMLY&R India also previously appointed Rajshekar Patil as its executive creative director last year.