MAM
Aegis to launch iProspect in India
MUMBAI:Aegis Media will bring into India the world‘s leading search engine marketing company, iProspect.
iProspect will start operations in Mumbai and Delhi on 27 October and will add on Bangalore and other cities from the first quarter of 2011.
iProspect has been instrumental in helping many of the world‘s most successful brands maximize their online marketing ROI through natural search engine optimization, paid inclusion management, pay per click advertising management, shopping feed management and numerous other related services.
Announcing the launch, Aegis Media chairman India and CEO South East Asia Ashish Bhasin said, “I believe that search marketing, both SEM and SEO, will be the key drivers of communications in the years to come, in India.
“We are lucky to have iProspect as a part of our Aegis Media family. iProspect as a world leader in search, will give Indian clients an opportunity for the first time to get a world class search marketing product in India. iProspect will be a part of our Power Brands in India and Shamsuddin Jasani will oversee it at the India Executive Council level.”
Already, through the rapid success of Isobar India, an impressive roster of iProspect‘s clients like Adidas, Reebok, Tourism Australia, UTI Mutual Fund, Rayban, Philips, Perfetti and others, have search as an integral part of their digital campaigns. iProspect will now further embellish that as well as target ‘Search Only‘ clients.
With the strengths that India has in the IT and knowledge sector, iProspect India will soon start doing off shoring work from USA, Europe and Asia Pacific.
iProspect, founded in 1996 and acquired by Aegis in 2004, is considered a thought leader on the world stage of search. It has 28 offices in 22 global markets.
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.
