AD Agencies
Dentsu Aegis Network to acquire majority stakes in Merkle
MUMBAI: Continuing its buying spree, Dentsu Inc.’s Dentsu Aegis Network is eyeing to acquire a majority stake in Baltimore based data marketing firm Merkle that specializes in ‘customer relationship marketing.’
It includes crafting loyalty programs for marketers and managing their vast customer databases that hold reams of consumer information. It also offers a host of other digital marketing and technology services including search advertising and data-driven ad buying and analytics.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed but The Wallstreet Journal’s insights the c’ash deal has an enterprise value of roughly USD 1.5 billion when including Merkle’s debt.’
“Their ability to develop people-based-marketing highlights where this business is going,” Dentsu Aegis Network CEO Jerry Buhlmann told WSJ. . “Convergence is driving our business towards a much greater level of addressability.”
As part of the agreement, Dentsu buy out private equity firm technology Crossover Venture’s stakes in he company along with other shares held by other shareholders. Merkle’s management and employees expect to retain a “significant” minority stake in the firm.
“Closely-held Merkle had $436 million in revenue in 2015 and works on behalf of companies such as MetLife Inc., Geico Corp., and Dell Inc. In recent years, it has invested in ad and marketing technologies to help power its clients’ campaigns. Its systems are closely integrated with Facebook, for example, so Merkle could help target ads for a retailer using the data the retailer collects from its customers such as email addresses,” stated the The Wall Street Journal report.
(Source: The Wall Street Journal)
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
