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Prime Video has greenlit ‘Beast Games,’ a new series from MrBeast. Adapted from his popular YouTube show, ‘Beast Games’ is poised to become what they are calling the largest reality competition ever, featuring 1000 contestants vying for a $5 million cash prize, the biggest in TV and streaming history. 


MrBeast will host and executive produce the show, which will exclusively debut on Prime Video in over 240 countries and territories globally.


"MrBeast has captured the attention and imagination of fans of all ages, from all walks of life, and all over the world," said Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon MGM Studios in a press statement on Monday.


“We are excited to work with Jimmy and his talented team to bring his brilliant, high production, and stakes-raising concepts to Beast Games for our global customers to experience,” Salke added.

  "When Mr Beast first told us about his concept for the show, we were blown away by his ambition to make Beast Games the biggest reality competition series ever. We’d like to thank Aaron DeBevoise, Nic Paul, and the Spotter team for the introduction and kickstarting this journey for us,” said Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon MGM  “My goal is to make the greatest show possible and prove YouTubers and creators can succeed on other platforms,” said MrBeast.


 Jimmy Donaldson is a YouTube creator, entrepreneur and philanthropist known as ‘MrBeast'. In November 2022, he became the most subscribed YouTube creator worldwide and now has over 244 million subscribers.  

Mr Beast's 'Beast Games' set to make TV history with Prime Video deal

Festive season started with a bang as e-commerce players clocked in a sale of $3.5 billion in sales between 22 and 25 September, contributing to 60 percent of the projected GMV (gross merchandise value) of 5.9 billion for the whole first wave of festive sales, according to Redseer Strategy Consultants.

The first wave of festive sales comprises Flipkart’s Big Billion Days, Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, Meesho’s Mega Blockbuster Sale, besides sales on other platforms such as Myntra, Ajio, and Nykaa amongst others.

Redseer's report further states that the first four days of the festive period saw the overall Daily Average GMV (gross merchandise value) rise to 5.4x compared to BAU (business as usual) days for overall online retail. First 4 days of festive sale this year is 1.3x the first four days of the previous year festive sale.

“Redseer had earlier projected a GMV of $5.9 bn (Rs 41, 000 Cr) for festive sale 1 and as expected, we are on track to achieve this figure. 60 percent of our forecast is already achieved in the first 4 days of sale," says Sanjay Kothari, associate partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants. 

Around 50 to 55 million shoppers made purchases during the first four days of sales. In terms of categories, mobiles continue to be the top category driving the sales. The report states that during the first four days of sale 1,100 mobile phones were sold each minute, with a total of Rs 11,000 crores of mobiles sold on large e-commerce players. Premium phones (iPhone 12, 13 and OnePlus) drove mobile sales.

This has happened on the back of upgrade programs and new launches supported by value offers.

In terms of units, 60-70 lakh mobiles were sold in the first four days.  “We are expecting a total sale of 90 Lakhs - 1 Cr units of mobiles for Festive week 1. We are also seeing premium phones driving mobile growth this year,” said Sanjay Kothari, Associate Partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants.

Fashion category witnessed a 4.5x jump in terms of daily average GMV from BAU days, to reach Rs 5,500 crore in the first four days, it said.

E-commerce marketplaces usually hold up to three sales leading to the festival of Diwali. The first of these sales is usually the largest and usually accounts for more than 50 percent of the sales during the festive period. 
 
 
 


Ecomm players clock $3.5 bn in festive sales in four days: Redseer report

Manish Tiwary on Amazon India’s big festive campaign

Manish Tiwary’s favorite Amazon advertising campaign is 2016’s Apni Dukaan. However, the newest campaign out of the ecommerce giant’s marketing stable, ‘Amazon Se Liya’, is giving the former a run for the number one spot. 

It’s that time of year again. The great Indian festive season is here and brands across the board have started unleashing their mega marketing campaigns. 

The ecommerce juggernaut is launching its biggest campaign of the year in India -  Amazon Se Liya and its digital-first extension, Find Life.  

In an exclusive conversation with Storyboard18, Tiwary, who is the country manager and vice president of India Consumer Business at Amazon India, tells us about the genesis of the campaign and how it brings out the brand's purpose. 

Tiwary also shares his outlook for the festive season or, as it is informally known, the Fifth Quarter.  

Edited excerpts. 

We are into the great Indian festive season. It's an important time for Amazon. Let's talk about the campaign that's coming up and its genesis and objectives?

It is that time of the year which our sellers and our customers look forward to. This year is a little more special for the sellers because of the last two years. So it's very critical for us and sellers to have a great demand here.  

Just to take a step back. Over the past nine years, Amazon, in its own modest way, brought sellers online and gave customers an experience of shopping. Over time, Amazon became synonymous with online shopping.

We've just launched a digital campaign which is focused around ‘Find Life. It anchors on something very simple: Behind every delivery, every product, there are emotions, expectations and expressions of the seller and the consumer. It's far more than just a commodity and every order in its own way has a story behind it. 

Amazon sells over 123 million products. We help customers find all kinds of products, but more than products we help customers find life in almost everything and anything they do. That's what the digital campaign is focused on. It's about stories of real people, real experiences and how Amazon helps them find products, and in turn find the emotions during this festive season. 

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Tell us more about the hero campaign - Amazon Se Liya, and how that ties in with what the brand wants to deliver on the marketing communication front? 

The big customer-facing campaign for the season is deeply rooted into how we look at the festive season and how Bharat shops. If you have bought something new, the first question anybody - friend, acquaintance, family, would ask is ‘kahan se liya?’. That's the most obvious question. It's about who we are as a country. 

The entire Amazon campaign is focused on this innate customer expression of saying ‘kahan se liya’ and the big idea of the hero campaign is that. During this festive season, when your acquaintances, your colony or mohalla asks you “kahan se liya?”, the customer would say “Amazon se liya”. And in some way the entire country would say Amazon se liya. So that's the big idea behind the campaigns.

Which cohorts are you specifically addressing through these campaigns that are coming up and how has the significance you attach to some of these consumer and customer groups changed over the years? 

When you leverage a very deep insight, it has the ability to cut across cohorts. There will be various local expressions of ‘Kaha Se Liya, Amazon Se Liya’, but it will cut across metros, towns, and customer segments. That's the beauty of it. We are The Everything Store for everybody. We have committed ourselves to deep-rooted universal customer insights. 

Taking a step back. Over a decade's digital acceleration has happened in the past two years. Today, close to 80 percent of new customers are from small towns. Over nine years ago, shopping online was largely a metropolitan phenomenon. But now we get orders from 99.9 percent of India’s pincodes. That just tells you how deep the customer base is. It's also true for a very important stakeholder for us - the sellers. 50-55 percent of our sellers are coming from small towns. 



<blockquote>We are preparing everything. In Amazon, we have a saying: Focus on the input. You can't control the output. That's what we're focused on.</blockquote>



What we've managed to create in terms of the brand and the customer confidence in the brand is trust. It is enabling customers to come online and buy and move the flywheel for sellers much faster. 

Coming back to the festive season. Which categories do you see firing for Amazon and what are some of the categories that you think need a bit of a push?

We have a very large base of Prime customers and this base has accelerated during the pandemic. So Prime customers are comfortable not only shopping online but they use our payment services, our other products like Kindle and music. These are what we would call Pinnacle customers and they shop across not only for events. 

New customers will enter online shopping through categories like fashion. When you look at the season starting from Dhanteras, electronics is, of course, a huge category. Brands, manufacturers, their product cycles, etc, everything is in sync with this season. 

Look at the television industry. It used to be 32-inch a few years back and very quickly the sizes are moving up, it's moving into LEDs. There are reasons for that. The seller community, the brand community and us with products like Amazon Pay have worked hard to help realize aspirations. 

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How have your expectations of hero marketing campaigns like Apni Dukaan and Amazon Se Liya changed over the years? 

I believe consistency of messaging is super critical. If you pick up any campaign, it's always about building trust with the customers and that is at the core of what we are trying to achieve in this country. We would enable the right services whether it's speed or fulfillment selection. Our sellers will get the right pricing and the product, and the customer experience will be a seamless one. 

From a marketing point of view, we've been very consistent about Amazon as a brand which drives trust. We feel good when that is echoed back to us during customer research and third-party market research. So that's the pivot of our marketing campaigns. Of course, we look for executional differences and bring some newness into it. 

What is your outlook on the Golden Quarter or Fifth Quarter as it’s informally known? 

There's a lot of expectations. But there are more than 11 lakh sellers who are looking forward to it more than me. I’m cautiously optimistic about the season. All our pre-season sentiment studies clearly show that people are looking forward to this festive season. 

The last few years have been very difficult for everyone personally, professionally and on the income front. In some ways this festive season will unlock our next level of customers and consumption and that's how we are looking at it. 

We are preparing everything. In Amazon, we have a saying: Focus on the input. You can't control the output. That's what we're focused on. So fingers crossed, quite optimistic about the season.

Watch excerpts of the conversation on Storyboard18 - CNBC-TV18.

Exclusive: Manish Tiwary wants the whole country to say ‘Amazon Se Liya’

Keep up with all the key people movements in the brand marketing ecosystem in Storyboard18’s CXO Moves. Here’s a round-up of the executives who are in, out, and in-between in the past two weeks.

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Devika Bulchandani

Previous: President, McCann

Present: Global Chief Executive Officer, Ogilvy

Advertising agency Ogilvy has appointed Devika Bulchandani as the global chief executive officer, succeeding former Deloitte hand Andy Main who joined Ogilvy in 2020. In her new role, Bulchandani will be responsible for all aspects of the creative network’s business across 131 offices in 93 countries which would span across its advertising, public relations, experience, consulting, and health units. As she takes on her new role, she will also join WPP’s executive committee. Bulchandani had spent 26 years at McCann in various leadership roles which also includes being the president of McCann North America. With Bulchandani leading Ogilvy, she joins the long list of Indian-origin leaders at the helm of multinational conglomerates as chief executive officers. The list includes Chanel’s Leena Nair, Twitter’s Parag Agarwal and Google’s Sundar Pichai. At the recently held APAC Effie Awards 2022, Ogilvy Mumbai was named as the Agency of the Year. 

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Wendy Clark 

Previous: CEO, Dentsu International 

Dentsu International’s CEO Wendy Clark has stepped down. Clark took charge of the Japanese-owned advertising network on 1 September 2020. Prior to that, she was the global chief executive of DDB, the Omnicom-owned creative agency. Wendy is regarded as the most respected female agency leader in the global advertising circuit. She was previously a marketer at Coca-Cola. At Cannes Lions this year, Clark made an official announcement on the creation of Dentsu Creative as the company’s lead creative agency network and her vision to set up “One Dentsu” strategy that will bring Dentsu Japan and Dentsu International’s businesses closer. Under her leadership, Dentsu Creative Bengaluru went on to win Ad Agency of the Year at Cannes Lions 2022 – the first time a Dentsu agency won the prestigious award. Dentsu is the world’s fifth largest agency group with about 65,000 staff. The international business outside Japan employs around 45,000 people. Under Clark’s leadership, the network also went through an accelerated ‘transformation’. This massively hit Dentsu International’s operations globally and in India. A series of leadership changes, consolidations and dissolutions of agency brands has been happening, especially in India, over the past year and a half.

Hiroshi Igarashi, who is chief executive and president of Dentsu Group Inc, heading the two subsidiaries - Dentsu International and Dentsu Japan, will take direct control of the company. 

Sameer Khetarpal

Previous: Director - Grocery, Food and Health, Amazon

Present: Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, Jubilant FoodWorks

Sameer Khetarpal has been appointed by Jubilant FoodWorks, a food service company, as the chief executive officer and managing director. Khetarpal has 25 years of experience and has worked across Unilever, Genpact, and McKinsey and Company. 

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Radhika Burman

Previous: Vice President, Strategy, BBH India

Present: Vice President & Head, BBH India

BBH India, a Publicis Groupe agency, announced the promotion of Radhika Burman to the position of vice president, and head of the agency’s Delhi branch. In her new role, Burman will be responsible for current clients, people and new business performance in Delhi, along with driving strategic thinking across clients. Burman, who has an experience of more than a decade, has worked across Dentsu, JWT, FCB Global, and Platinum Guild International. In her last role, as the manager – strategy and consumer insights at Platinum Guild International, she spearheaded the launch of Men of Platinum, men's platinum jewellery brand and Platinum Evara, a bridal jewellery line. Prior to that, she has led strategic thinking on brands like Zee, PepsiCo, Hero, Mahindra, Microsoft and Cargill, among others.

In July, George Sebastian had joined the agency as the executive creative director. In April, Arvind Krishnan, who was BBH India’s managing director, decided to move on to be the chief executive officer and founder of Manja, a company he set up with Prajato Guha, former national creative director at Leo Burnett India.

Nitin Sharma

Previous: Vice President - Business, Infectious Advertising 

Present: Senior Vice President & Head of Client Services, Publicis Worldwide India

Publicis Worldwide India has appointed Nitin Sharma as the senior vice president and head of client services. In his new role, Sharma would manage some of the agency's key brands while accelerating Publicis Worldwide’s upward growth and ambitions in the marketplace. Sharma has more than two decades of experience and has worked across Ambience, Ogilvy & Mather, Leo Burnett, and UAE Exchange. He was also a brand and marketing consultant for two years and one month. Recently, Publicis Worldwide India appointed Oindrila Roy as the managing director. 

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Saugata Mukherjee

Previous: Head Of Content, India - HBO Max, Warner Bros. Discovery

Present: Head of Content, Sony LIV

Streaming platform Sony LIV has appointed Saugata Mukherjee as the head of content. In his role, he will lead the content division for the digital businesses of Sony. Mukherjee, who has more than two decades of experience, has held leadership roles across digital media which is OTT, broadcast television and publishing. His key focus is on business strategy and planning, content creation and curation. Mukherjee has worked across HarperCollins Publishers, Rupa Publications India, NIIT, Star TV Network, Hotstar, Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI) and HBO Max. 

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Narayan Devanathan

Previous: Chief Client Officer, Dentsu International

Present: Chief Strategy and Communication Officer, National Foundation for India

Narayan Devanathan has joined National Foundation for India, a non-profit organisation as the chief strategy and communication officer. Devanathan, who had more than two decades of experience, had a 11 year stint at Dentsu International. He started his career with RK Swamy BBDO as a copywriter, and he worked across Vyapthi Communications, Admerasia, Ogilvy & Mather, Euro RSCG, Dentsu Marcom, Dentsu India Group and Dentsu Creative Impact Group. 

Ritu Nakra

Previous: WPP India Lead & Senior Vice President - Pepsico Foods, WPP

Present: General Manager, Landor & Fitch

Design agency Landor & Fitch has appointed Ritu Nakra as the general manager. Her responsibility is to bolster business growth and develop strategic partnership with clients in Delhi. Nakra, who has more than two decades of experience has worked across Wunderman Thompson, Fullerton India Credit Company Ltd, and Grey Group. Nakra is experienced in managing P&L, building, driving growth and revenue for businesses across categories.

Nikhil Madhok

Previous: Executive Vice President, Disney+ Hotstar

Present: Head of Hindi Original Content, Amazon Prime Video

As per reports, Nikhil Madhok will be joining Amazon Prime Video as the head of Hindi original content. While at Disney+ Hotstar, he was responsible for the entire slate of Specials from content strategy, ideation, curation, script development, production and launch. Madhok, who has two decades of experience, started his career with Unilever as an area sales manager. He rose up the ranks to be the global marketing manager. He has since then worked across Turner, Discovery Inc, and Star TV Network. 

Ahmed Rahimtoola

Previous: Head of Marketing, Allied Blenders & Distillers Pvt. Ltd.

Present: Chief Marketing Officer, Tilaknagar Industries Ltd.

Beverage company Tilaknagar Industries Ltd. has appointed Ahmed Rahimtoola as the chief marketing officer.In his new role, Rahimtoola will be responsible for leading the entire marketing function, and spearheading consumer marketing in order to strengthen the company’s regional presence,aid expansion and drive the growth of its brands across geographies. Rahimtoola has an experience of 25 years, and has worked across Triton Communications, United Breweries Ltd, and Reliance ADAG. Recently, Tilaknagar Industries launched the Mansion House Reserve French Style Brandy, the premium variant of its flagship brand Mansion House. This launch is a part of expanding the liquor major’s premium brand portfolio. 

Meenakshi Menon

Present: Chairperson, icogz

Business intelligence platform icogz has appointed Meenakshi Menon as the chairperson. Menon has more than four decades of experience and has worked across Lintas India, Zee TV Sales & Marketing Company, Carat India and Carat APAC etc. She is also the founder and chairperson of Spatial Access Pvt Ltd, and the co-founder of WayBeyond Media Pvt. Ltd.

Sujay K Rachh

Previous: Executive Director, Leo Burnett

Present: Head of Marketing, Edelweiss Wealth Management

Financial services company Edelweiss Wealth Management appointed Sujay K Rachh as the head of marketing. In his new role, Rachh will direct the financial major’s strategic marketing activities for business growth. As a part of the executive leadership team, Rachh will also be responsible for overseeing the execution of the company’s marketing strategy. Rachh has more than a decade’s experience and has worked across Concept Communication, Swamy BBDO, Lowe Lintas and Partners and Brand Capital. His specialties range across advertising, business development, concept development, customer relations, marketing management to strategic and television. Recently, Amit Nandwani who was the executive creative director and head of content at Leo Burnett India resigned from his position. And, in July, the agency bagged the creative mandate of PepsiCo India. 

Ashutosh Chaudharie

Previous: Marketing Manager, Pernod Ricard

Present: General Manager Marketing, Vi-John Group

Ashutosh Chaudharie has been appointed as the general manager of the marketing division by Vi-John Group, a men's grooming personal care brand. Chaudharie, who has more than 15 years of experience, has worked across Tata Motors, IMS Learning Resources, Henkel, Dabur India Limited etc. He has also worked as a marketing and content consultant.

Sandeep Negi

Previous: Regional Sales Head - South & East, VEVE

Present: Associate Director of Sales, AVOW

App growth marketing company AVOW has appointed Sandeep Negi as the associate director of sales. His role would be to lead all of AVOW’s business development initiatives in the country as part of the company’s domestic expansion plans while positioning AVOW as a well-known name in the mobile original equipment manufacturer (OEM) marketing ecosystem in the region.

Negi has more than a decade’s experience and has worked across Myntra, Radio Mirchi, Bennett Coleman and Co. Ltd., 9X Media Pvt. Ltd, Star TV Network and Zapr Media Labs. 

Compiled by Kashmeera Sambamurthy

CXO Moves: Ogilvy, Dentsu, Publicis, Sony Liv, Prime, Edelweiss, Jubilant and more

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