Snap’s Ajit Mohan: Now that we have the scale, it is time to build a business around it

IPL on digital ensures laser sharp targeting for brands, says DDB Mudra’s Chirag Bhatia

Storyboard18 Insider: Friendly rivals, tough-love from a client, season of effectiveness in awards

Sirona becomes victim of smear campaign; founder mulls action

Polyamoryfication of adland: Why are brands getting together with multiple agency partners?

In Conversation With Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard

Shahid Kapoor And Varun Ganjoo Speaks On PokerBaazi's Campaign

In conversation with IHCL’s Puneet Chhatwal & GroupM’s Kate Scott-Dawkins

Why are brands including e-sports in their sports marketing itinerary?

Storyboard18 x The English Nut: How to pronounce these 10 brand names

Experts' Take On Reinvention Of Ad Campaigns Through Technology

Experts Speak On Key Emerging Trends In Cannes Lions Entries

Leaders of the future have to be outstanding human beings: Nestle MD

In conversation with VMLY&R’s Hari Ramanathan

Storyboard18 Exclusive:  Wavemaker India wins Reckitt Benckiser's Rs 1600 Cr media business

Weekly Shorts: Ways to use influencer marketing for promoting sustainable travel and tourism

Over 95% marketing professionals believe Generative AI will enhance creativity: Adobe

Storyboard18's The Great Indian Ad Doodle is here!

Why are Indian brands advertising in NYC's Times Square?

What Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick teaches us about leadership

Advertising is in the position where tobacco was: IPG's Arun Kumar 

Biz Moves: Interactive Avenues, Verve Media, Foxymoron and Grapes

There is an opportunity for building a better agency, not just a different one: Manja's Prajato Guha

Beyond Rainbow: Navigating brands’ inclusive engagement with Pride

Mast & Meh: Britannia, Parachute, Hitachi, Adani Group, Airtel

Sugar Cosmetics targets breakeven this year: Kaushik Mukherjee

Shantanu Deshpande: Public memory is fickle. Public love is permanent

Nokia, back in the day was a brand synonymous with the mobile phone. Once a market leader, Nokia won the hearts of all its consumers and enjoyed a sort of monopoly in the market. Nokia rode the wave of success for many decades. However, once the smartphone was introduced, Nokia as a brand struggled to find itself a suitable position in the market. Innovation became the name of the game and consumers wanted the best smartphone available. Unfortunately for Nokia, many players had entered the smartphone market by then that posed to be more than competition. However, Nokia wasn't ready to give up. They launched the Nokia Lumia series. They're own version of the smartphone. Despite their efforts, the Lumia series failed to make the desired mark. Slowly Nokia faded from the Indian market. 

Recently however, Nokia has rebranded. They've changed their logo and have an all new strategy to disrupt the smartphone market in India. This news came as a surprise to all who remember and cherish in the nostalgia of having owned a pre-smartphone era Nokia mobile phone. The brand has big plans for the country and a refreshing take to appeal to consumers of all ages.

In an exclusive conversation with Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat, Nokia mobile phone's parent company HMD GLobal's Sanmeet Singh Kochhar, vice president - India & MENA and Adam Ferguson global head of proposition, partner and product marketing talk about the brands revival in India.

Watch here.

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HMD Global's Sanmeet Singh Kochhar and Adam Ferguson on reviving Nokia for the consumer of today

You can’t have a discussion about smartphones without mentioning Carl Pei. The Chinese-Swedish entrepreneur, who is the founder of OnePlus, started Nothing, a technology company in 2020. 


Storyboard18’s Shibani Gharat had a chance to catch up with Pei at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. She posed a question on what it takes to launch two smartphone brands in a span of a decade in a rapidly evolving tech space. Pei answered, “Naivety!” 


He adds, “Nothing is a lot harder because we are not a part of the bigger company. We have to think about everything, right from supply chain to human resources etc. ‘Don’t do it!’ is my advice to other people—who want to start a tech brand–because it is very complicated. In our business, you have to do supply chain, and engineering on the hardware as well as the software side.”


Nothing’s founder also mentioned that apart from supply chain and engineering, this also included looking into marketing, design, customer service, and sales etc.


“What it actually takes is not a great idea. Rather, all the functions I just talked about need to work together. It is their integration which takes to make a great idea work,” explains Pei. 


India is the largest smartphone market in the world. Speaking on his assessment of it, Pei is quick to add that he is very bullish on India and its economy. He says, “This year, it is going to grow by six percent. Large parts of the world are going to fall into recession. India’s population is very young. So, they can contribute to building the country and the economy.”


During his recent trip to India, Pei had an opportunity to meet the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. “In that meeting, we were the only startup company amongst a group of established companies. India is going to be an important market for us. A lot of our manufacturing is done in India.” Pei said.


Watch here.

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Nothing’s Carl Pei: India is an important market for Nothing

Lenskart’s co-founder <strong>Peyush Bansal</strong> is among the few new-generation business founders and CEOs who have appeared in their own brands' commercials as themselves. In a short series of ad films, Bansal, who is also chief executive and people officer at Lenskart, features with Bollywood producer and fashion icon Karan Johar. Casting Johar, who has an enviable collection of eye-wear and is known to even travel with a bag full of glasses, was a strategic decision, Bansal says in a conversation with Storyboard18’s editor <strong>Delshad Irani</strong>. In the exclusive interaction, the founder and Shark Tank India judge tells us more about the campaign's genesis, how and why he ended up featuring in it with Johar and why he doesn't consider himself a celebrity founder.

<a href="https://www.moneycontrol.com/storyboard18/brand-makers/lenskarts-peyush-bansal-im-not-a-celebrity-entrepreneur-and-i-dont-have-aspirations-to-be-one-6032.htm">Read here: Lenskart’s Peyush Bansal: I'm not a celebrity entrepreneur and I don't have aspirations to be one</a>

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Lenskart's Peyush Bansal on the campaign featuring Karan Johar & celebrity entrepreneurship

MAC Cosmetics, originally a Canadian company was founded in 1984 in Toronto. It was later bought by the iconic Estee Lauder Companies in 1988. MAC Cosmetics has been a market leader in global pockets for many years. However, in a country like India where many homegrown brands have really upped their game to capture the rising demand, the competition is tough for legacy brands. To break the clutter, brands are constantly innovating. Many brands are launching new and improved products, catering to specific needs rather than going with a mass strategy. MAC Cosmetics is one such brand.

 

Karen Thompson, brand general manager, MAC Cosmetics, recently spoke to Storyboard18’s Shibani Gharat about the company’s plans for India and about their new skincare brand Hyper Real. She also talked about MAC Cosmetics’ journey in India, building brand MAC and the new launches they have in store, along with the key trends in the beauty industry.  

 

MAC Cosmetics is also adopting technology to offer its consumers unique buying experiences. The service called ‘Skin Artistry’ will be provided in stores where people will be able to experience the products and physically see how their skin would look when the product is applied. 

 

Listen in. 


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MAC Cosmetics' Karen Thompson on the brand’s India plans

The wearables market in India has picked up significantly in the last few years with homegrown brands and international companies making smart entries. Indian smartwatch brand, Fire-Boltt has gone on to become a leading player in the smartwatch category. 

In an interview with Storyboard’s editor Delshad Irani, Arnav Kishore, co-founder and CEO, Fire-Boltt shares how the company plans to tap new segments and its international expansion game plan. Fire-Boltt started selling 100 watch units on Amazon. Today, they have a run rate of more than 30,000 units a day. 

The company started its operations in 2015 when Arnav and his elder sister Aayushi Kishore co-founded the brand. It was of the first wearable tech brands in India. In the first few years of operation, the brand gained a lot of experience in hardware and software development. They learnt the art of how to make the right wearables for the Indian audience. 

In 2019, the brand was rechristened as Fire-Boltt. Speaking on the turning point of the brand, Kishore shares,  “We were lucky to enter the market at the right time.  During the pandemic, the awareness and consciousness of people really went to another level. They started taking their health much more seriously. We were the first smartwatch to launch with built-in SPO2.” 

He further adds, “While the underline usage of a smartwatch will continue to have the health and fitness, and other tracking capabilities, Fire-Boltt is coming up with a dedicated line of smartwatches targeted at women."

Highlighting the company’s plan to launch a luxury offering, Kishore says, “Fire-Boltt aims to cater to the premium watch lovers and the company is set to launch watches with stainless steel straps and leather straps. Similarly, we are working on a special range of watches with parental tracking capabilities for school-going kids, and young teens.” 

Fire-Boltt feels there is a big gap in the market globally in the budget segment and therefore the brand is looking to expand in UAE. The company has recently started operations in Vietnam and Singapore. In the next two quarters, there are plans of adding 10-12 countries including parts of Europe and the USA. 

Watch the full interview here:

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In conversation with Fire-Boltt’s CEO Arnav Kishore

Italian motor vehicle manufacturer Piaggio Vehicles entered the Indian market in 1998. Today, the brand has a presence in both two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments in the country. Diego Graffi, CMD, Piaggio Vehicles, tells Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat that by now the company has understood the pulse of the Indian consumers. He also highlights that the two-wheeler segment will see new disruptions.  Davide Zanolini, executive vice president, marketing and communications at the Piaggio Group (also the chief marketing officer at Piaggio Fast Forward), discusses the company's outlook with Gharat. The duo also share at length about the company's new products in the pipeline, on the luxury scooter segment and more.

 

Piaggio also completed 10 years of having introduced Vespa (an Italian luxury brand scooter). Speaking on the key milestones the brand achieved in India, Graffi says, “When we entered 25 years ago in the 3-W segment in India, it was deemed unconventional, because this was the domain of the Indian automotive brands. We have been achieving and maintaining our leadership in the 3-W cargo space and in the 3-W diesel space. Further, we have been successful in introducing 3-W in the EV space in 2019. We are happy to have created a new market in the segment, where we were not existing.” 

 

He further highlights, “At the beginning, there was an intention to reintroduce the brand in India. Today, Vespa is a part of the global strategy in India, and is one of the brands, which we can say is iconic.”

 

According to Zanolini, the big challenge for the segment not only in India but also in other markets is not to look at Vespa as a heritage or a vintage brand, but as the brand of the present times which can add relevance to the needs of the present generation.

 

He concludes, “I want Vespa to be identified as a premium player, and expect people to identify themselves with it."

 

Watch the full interview here: 


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Piaggio Group speeds up its India growth plan

What does it take to be a modern marketer? Get a sharp and fast insight into the minds of marketers behind some of India’s buzziest brands in Marketing Recoded. In this episode, we have Mohua Das Gupta head – marketing, Tata CLiQ Luxury. She talks at length about how modern marketers are now empathetic, thoughtful, and mindful more than ever before. Gupta also talks about the power of the metaverse and the importance of adapting to changes.

Gupta is a marketing leader with over 15 years of experience in building solid brands across industries. She has extensive experience in leading strategic marketing including brand strategy, research, mining, consumer insights, working on new product launches, media planning, designing brand positioning and campaign development with RoI driven approach to deliver business impact. Gupta has led marketing for brands across luxury, premium and mass portfolios across varied industries namely, e-commerce and retail. Prior to Tata CLiQ Luxury, Gupta has worked with brands like Myntra, Arrow, and Amante. She also has worked with ad agencies like Ogilvy and McCann. 

Watch the full episode here. 

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Marketing Recoded – Season 2 ft. Tata CLiQ Luxury’s Mohua Das Gupta

Revenge travel was one of the key trends of the past year. This was good news for OTAs like the Flipkart group-owned Cleartrip. In an exclusive conversation with Delshad Irani, Cleartrip CEO Ayyappan R gives us a quick recap of the company's growth in 2022 and the growth strategy for 2023. He also sheds light on the key consumer trends and expectations in the travel industry, and what end users can look forward to this year. 

Ayyappan also shed light on the genesis of a new campaign - 'Invest in travel'. Targeted at different kinds of customer cohorts, the three ad films address different generations and what they seek when they travel. It is a quirky take on conventional investment campaigns and ends with the line ‘investing in travel is not subject to market risks’.

Watch the interview here. 

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Cleartrip CEO Ayyappan R: No one expected this kind of resurgence in travel demand

Kellogg India released a new master brand campaign, ‘Kuch Kar Dikhane Ki Bhook’ that highlights the importance of a wholesome nutritious breakfast for children. The brand has also announced the launch of a new campaign with actor and fitness enthusiast Milind Soman to showcase its Muesli's granola offerings. Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat spoke to Prashant Peres, Managing Director, South Asia, Kellogg, about the new campaigns and the trends in the evolution of muesli granola category in India, the scope of growth for the newly launched product portfolio and how Indians' breakfast tastes are changing.

Watch here. 

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Kellogg's Prashant Peres on evolving breakfast category in India

What does it take to be a modern marketer?  Get a sharp and fast insight into the minds of marketers behind some of India’s buzziest brands in Marketing Recoded.

In this episode, we have Rahul Gandhi, chief marketing officer, iD Fresh Food. He talks at length about the traits every modern marketer should possess; overrated things in marketing today; and how Siri saves his day. 

Talking about his job as a marketer, Gandhi says, “The first thing that we do is we understand what the consumer wants. We also understand the offerings of our competitors. Then we find out what is unique about our offering or our position in the category. Then, we communicate our positioning to the consumers.”

He adds, “Post that, we understand the media habits of the consumers. Then, we get on to developing new products which the consumers might latch on to in the future.”

He also shares important skills every modern marketer must possess. As per Gandhi, the first skill is to be assembling a lot of information, which includes internal as well as external, and then arrive at a decision. The second skill is to deal with ambiguity. He explains, “Once you assimilate a lot of information, you realize that a lot of information is incomplete or inaccurate which gives rise to ambiguity. Dealing with ambiguity and still making decisions is one skill or trait.”

The third skill according to him is to prioritise. "Because, there is so much happening in the field of marketing, and everything done involves time, effort, and money. If things are not properly prioritised, time, effort and money would be spent on something that would not work."

Gandhi was previously head of marketing for the snacks, noodles, and pasta businesses at ITC Foods.  

Watch the full video here.

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Marketing Recoded – Season 2 ft.  iD Fresh Food's  Rahul Gandhi

There was a time when Snap was the app young people used to send each other explicit images and for sexting. The platform’s disappearing messages feature being its greatest draw.

Today it seems to be used for a lot more. From gen-zers chatting about schoolwork to older millennials Snapstreaking.

Now Snap is scripting an aggressive growth strategy for India to build a business and generate ad revenues leveraging the community its built.

Storyboard18's Delshad Irani spoke to Ajit Mohan, president - APAC, Snap Inc about the new Snap story.

<strong>Highlights and headlines:</strong>

<strong>Belief in</strong> internationalisation/energy for next phase of growth: Future of Snapchat will be drawn in markets such as Japan, India & Australia

<strong>India</strong> a significant market, with the platform boasting 200 million monthly users.

<strong>Not late</strong> to the India party; but haven’t paid a lot of attention to building the business and not invested enough in building deep relationships with the business community.

<strong>Snap</strong> is Localising the product more.

<strong>Building</strong> a new ad platform around DR; shoring up ad revenue

<strong>Focus on AR</strong>: India could be the AR factory of the world.

<strong>Focus on AI</strong>: “Framework the govt in India is looking at is the right one”

<strong>Will see</strong> aggressive hiring by Snap in next few weeks and months to build the business teams in India.

Watch here. 

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Snap Inc's Ajit Mohan on the company's next phase of growth in India

Priyanka Gill , group co-founder, Good Glamm Group and CEO, Good Media Co., spoke to Storyboard18 on how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to give access to new tools and technology that makes the process of producing entertaining, interactive content even easier.

“Just like Google searches made libraries of the world redundant when journalists and writers are doing the research, and to really basically do a Google search to get the kind of facts or data that you're looking for. Similarly, I think AI is a tool that we'll all be using to produce even better content,” she explained.

Gill recalled how her venture POPxo (now a part of Good Glam Group) executed one of the first-big influencer marketing campaigns with Puma back in 2016. Under the sports brand’s DO YOU movement, POPxo brought together over 200 of our POPxo bloggers and campus ambassadors along with PUMA to break the Guinness World Record of the most people to hold the abdominal plank position for 60 seconds.

“…and that is almost like the beginning of the marketing kind of in the country in many different ways. I remember going to all kinds of different brands and agencies and single influencer marketing is going to be the next big thing and there was a lot of skepticism about this new thing that was becoming influencer marketing. Cut to today and it has become an important mix of every single brand campaign. There is a wide acceptance of how influencers are able to drive positive outcomes for brands and campaigns,” she added.

Gill thinks that brands, agencies and marketing companies are going to find new and innovative use cases for influencers as well as really make it performance and results driven.

With influencer marketing becoming a massive marketing tool, the industry also needs organisation and regulation. Gill believes that accountability and regulation is a part and parcel of any industry growing up.

“We are seeing some government kind of white papers that are kind of coming out about what should be marked as sponsored content, etc. I think it's this part and parcel of any industry growing up that ratifies the good,” she added.

Talking about the need of authenticity when it comes to creating content, Gill said that authenticity is the lifeblood of influencer marketing.

 “…and it is also almost the touchstone that decides what makes for a better influencer than the others.  Influencers who hold on to the authenticity while still growing and scaling are the influencers who would win. So, there is no substitute for authenticity, because that's the way of finding that emotional and human connection with your audience,” she noted.

Watch here. 

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“Authenticity is the lifeblood of influencer marketing,” Good Glamm Group’s Priyanka Gill

On the sidelines of Goafest 2023, Anupriya Acharya, CEO, Publicis Groupe, South Asia spoke to Storyboard18 about the advertising growth highlighting that India continues to be a bright spot amidst the global economic gloom.

“However, it's not like that India will never ever at all get impacted by the global headwinds. So, definitely we are maintaining some caution here as well. But if we were to look at how things are moving on the ground in the media market, so far, everything has been fine,” she said.

In terms of well-performing categories, Acharya said that all categories related to domestic consumption is doing well. This includes F&B and consumer packaged goods (CPG) while there has seen some cooling off in the tech sector.

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“..and that of course, has an impact on advertising as a market as well. So that is there but many other categories have made up for it. It would be good for everyone to maintain some caution,” she noted.

Talking about the recently concluded IPL 2023 edition, Acharya stressed that IPL has definitely become bigger as a property.

“The whole split with digital being sold separately and the availability (of the tournament) as free on digital has only increased the market. It has increased  the overall market pie rather than a market share shift from one to the other. There could be a little cannibalisation, but that's a lesser challenge as compared to the opportunity that advertisers and the marketers have had on the back of the really expanded universe,” she noted.

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Acharya also spoke about the growth at Publicis Groupe and the variety of clients that the advertising company handles.

“We have a strong presence on classic categories such as  lCPG and the food and beverage as well as BFSI.  Automobile is also a big one for us. And then of course the app economy clients also we have more than our fair share of clients there,” she said.

Acharya is looking to tap into new emerging and growing sectors such as EVs and health.

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Publicis Groupe’s Anupriya Acharya on India business, IPL, and more

Most of today's generation below the age of 30 using dating apps to find partners for themselves. Gen Z holds the biggest half of the pie with maximum reliance and use of dating apps. In this hyper-social world, where most activities can take place on the phone, dating too has become, easy, quick and mostly stress-free. Melissa Hobley, Global CMO, Tinder talks to Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat about the new-age dating trends in 2023 and Tinder's plans for the future. 

Watch now. 

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Tinder's Melissa Hobley on Gen Z and new-age dating trends

Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) recently acquired the assets of Raymond Consumer Care which includes the brand KamaSutra. Raymond Consumer Care CMO Pooja Sahgal spoke to Storyboard18's editor Delshad Irani about the KamaSutra brand, one of the top Indian players in the sexual wellness category. Sahgal shed light on how the legacy brand has evolved, adopting new media and a tech-first mindset to appeal to newer generations of consumers. She also spoke about how to use technology to create safe spaces to talk about sex, category expansion and how women are leading the conversations and innovations in India's booming sexual wellness category in India. She said brands like KamaSutra are targeting both men and women today and media plans reflect this shift from male to female category spheres. Sahgal also believes e-commerce and q-commerce are revolutionizing the category: E-commerce will do to the sexual wellness category what it did to the beauty industry in India. 

#Highlights 

Women today express need-states which is leading to innovation in the condom category. 

Flavours, for instance, are big in India. Women are asking for more exotic flavour options. Strawberry and chocolate are passé. Lubes and massagers are the next-big-thing. 

Quick commerce is helping break-in new segments and e-commerce is unlocking new growth markets in tier 2 and 3

Conversations around sex and sexual wellness being normalised through tech and marketing initiatives including influencer marketing programs with sexperts. 

KS is getting into gifting such as creating honeymoon kits and travel kits, again these initiatives also allow brands normalise conversations around sexual wellness.

Tech avenues like Metaverse are helping create open and safe spaces to talk about sex. A space where KS facilitates conversations around pleasure, sexual well-being and health.

Sahgal believes, E-commerce will do to the sexual wellness category what it did to the beauty industry in India. 

Watch. 

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E-comm will do to the sexual wellness category what it did to the beauty industry: Pooja Sahgal, RCC

PepsiCo India has recently reported double digit growth in the beverage segment in the Indian market. This success can be attributed to their new campaign, which was launched to celebrate Pepsi's 125th year. In an interview with Storyboard18's Shibani Gharat, Saumya Rathor, the category lead for Pepsi Cola, shared her thoughts on this campaign and its impact on consumers.

According to Rathor, the 125th year of Pepsi was a significant landmark year for the company. In recent years, Pepsi has achieved great success in the form of ‘swag’, but this year it was important for the brand to take it to the next level.

“Our philosophy of 'Rise Up, Baby’ really talks to this universal human truth that consumers feel. The truth is all about the fact that consumers feel judged. I think this is a generation that is constantly being judged and there is also the generation that judges a lot. Pepsi as a brand, stands for or represents the spirit of youth in a bottle. So our philosophy for young youngsters across India is that rise up against the judgment, the world is going to say everything and the world will say a lot to you about you, but you just have to rise up,” she said.

Watch here.  

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PepsiCo's Saumya Rathor on the brand's new campaign and its impact on consumers

Mercedes-Benz India had a stellar 2022 and started this year with a bang. In fact, the company reported record sales in India during the first quarter of 2023, with its top end cars priced above one crore seeing accelerated growth. It was also around this time that Lance Bennett took over as sales and marketing chief of the German auto maker here in India. In an interview with Storyboard18’s editor Delshad Irani, Bennett spoke about the brand’s marketing strategies and where he sees consumers of luxury vehicles going. 

Watch. 

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India recorded highest growth globally for Mercedes: Lance Bennett

Pernod Ricard India is planning to continue its premiumisation drive. The company will also focus on innovation in the existing portfolio of brands, introduce premium global innovations to India and drive consumer experiences. Kartik Mohindra, Chief Marketing Officer, Pernod Ricard India, shared his plans for 2023. “We, as a company, are doing exceptionally well. The year has been good. We are looking at closing on a high. When it comes to the future, India remains one of the biggest and the fastest growing markets in the world for Pernod Ricard,” he said. 

Watch.

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Kartik Mohindra, CMO, Pernod Ricard India on innovation of the existing portfolio of brands

Benetton's come a long way from being a pioneer and provocative brand. After 30 years in India, the iconic global fashion brand is on a mission to bring back its cool quotient and chart a new growth trajectory. During a visit to India, <strong>Massimo Renon</strong>, chief executive officer of Benetton Group, got into an exclusive conversation with Storyboard18's editor <strong>Delshad Irani</strong> to explain the new vision and creative direction for Benetton and the transformation of the legendary brand. Watch to find out how Benetton is planning to become bold and cool again. 

<div data-youtube="true" data-youtube-id="VL-knvGlOWA" data-youtube-title="Benetton Group's Massimo Renon On Revamping The Iconic Brand & Plans And Potential For India" class="youTubeVideoPlayer" data-youtube-category="News & Politics"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VL-knvGlOWA" width="100%" height="360"></iframe></div>

<strong><em>The interview first aired on CNBC-TV18.</em></strong>

Benetton CEO Massimo Renon: Indian consumers will be profiled as future consumers for Benetton

Women's cricket has come a long way in the past 2 years. There is more and more interest from audiences to watch the sport with interest. Fans of men's cricket are keen on watching women's cricket as well. On the other hand, a new audience too is developing solely devoted to women's cricket. Naturally, with the increase in demand and viewership, brands too are eager to hop on board and bask in the spotlight. The future of women's cricket is bright and the audience is only going to grow. 

Storyboard18's <strong>Shibani Gharat</strong> recently had the chance to catch up with Indian Women's Cricket team captain, <strong>Harmanpreet Kaur</strong> to discuss the future of the sport, brand interest and more. 

Listen in.

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Indian Women's Cricket team captain Harmanpreet Kaur on increased viewership and brand interest in women's cricket

Mastercard has been focusing a lot on sports marketing recently. People from India, more than any other country, are incredibly passionate about cricket. Mastercard’s brand positioning is about “connecting everyone through priceless possibilities”. It’s not for the rich and famous or the well-to-do, it's for everybody even those who do not have access to the financial system today. Therefore, cricket provides the company with deep penetration across all the segments. Mastercard signed a sponsorship deal with the BCCI recently. 

Other than cricket, the company is also associated with the Australian and French Open tennis tournaments. In India, Mastercard signed the former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni as its endorser four years ago.

Mastercard has launched an initiative called the ‘Priceless Planet Coalition.’ Through this initiative, the company plans to plant 100 million trees worldwide within the next 4 years. They have partnered with various organisations and signed sponsorship deals with many franchises to create awareness regarding this initiative. <strong>Manasi Narasimhan</strong>, VP and head, marketing and communications, Mastercard talks about the company's Priceless Planet Coalition (PPC) and sports marketing with Storyboard18’s <strong>Shibani Gharat</strong>. 

Listen in.

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Mastercard's Manasi Narasimhan on how the payments major is leveraging sports sponsorships in India

FMCG major ITC’s brand Savlon has a new ambassador. But the new face of the brand is actually a hand. Yes, you read that right. Savlon’s new hand ambassador is none other than Sachin Tendulkar. In a conversation with Storyboard18’s editor Delshad Irani, Sameer Satpathy who is ITC’s personal care division CEO, tells us more about the new hand ambassador and campaign and ITC's focus on the triple bottom line, business, brand and societal impact of higher-order purpose driven initiatives and how the measure of their success has evolved. Satpathy says, “For a believer no proof is necessary and for a non-believer no proof is enough,”

<em>The interview first aired on CNBC-TV18. Watch it here.</em>

<div data-youtube="true" data-youtube-id="sRR_n4YrQQ4" data-youtube-title="ITC's Sameer Satpathy Exclusive On Appointing Sachin Tendulkar As World's First 'Hand Ambassador'" class="youTubeVideoPlayer" data-youtube-category="News & Politics"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sRR_n4YrQQ4" width="100%" height="360"></iframe></div>

ITC's Sameer Satpathy on Savlon's 'hand ambassador' Sachin Tendulkar, and Purpose & proof

Tata Motors is shattering all category codes of marketing in commercial vehicles segment.

But how do you make marketing commercial vehicles exciting and transformational?

How do you bring a B2C approach to B2B marketing and disrupt codes?

Storyboard18's <strong>Delshad Irani</strong> spoke to <strong>Shubhranshu Singh</strong>, vice president - marketing - domestic & IB, Tata Motors, about the key points in Tata Motors' strategy to overhaul and transform how Commercial Vehicles are marketed in India.

Singh also spotlighted how the auto major is driving change, digital transformation and creativity in the category.

Tata Motors launched a much appreciated ‘Desh ke Trucks’ campaign which created an overarching brand positioning for India’s best-selling truck platforms – Prima, Signa and Ultra. The campaign was intended to showcase its state-of-the-art trucks, innovations, enhanced facets and features, digitalisation, profitability, fuel efficiency, safety, superior technology, connectivity, driver productivity and cabin comfort via entertaining, slice of life commercials.

Watch here. 

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