MAM
UTV Bindass to roll out its first brand campaign
MUMBAI: After strengthening its content by launching differentiated reality shows, youth entertainment channel UTV Bindass will roll out its first brand campaign ‘What I Am‘ across India later this month.
The channel is investing approximately Rs 30 million in the initiative that will run for a year.
“After building content for the channel with shows like Emotional Atyachaar, Big Switch and Dadagiri, it‘s time for the channel to launch a focused campaign to reinstate our endeavour,” says UTV Bindass channel head Heather Gupta.
UTV Bindass has roped in Motivator as its media agency and Taproot has conceptualized the campaign. Throwing light on the career-oriented and focused youth through the campaign, it reiterates today‘s young minds as someone who “wear their attitude on their sleeves and are equally responsible towards the nation.”
While television remains the preferred medium to build the channel‘s brand positioning, Bindass will also exploit other media platforms like outdoor, print, radio and digital to support the brand-building process.
“We will be using only our network channels and so the campaign will be promoted heavily on UTV Bindass, UTV Movies, UTV Action, World Movies and UTV Bloomberg,” says Gupta.
The channel will be spending around 50 per cent of its ad spends on outdoor, 20 per cent on print and remaining on other mediums.
As part of its outdoor initiative, the channel has booked around 100 sites in Mumbai. The other sites include Delhi and parts of Pune and Bangalore. As part of its print initiative, the channel will roll out full page advertisements on the Times of India (ToI) supplement. The print ad will roll out in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Bangalore.
The channel has also entered into a deal with Fun Cinemas in all metropolitan cities, where it will host the campaign.
“Our target audiences don‘t consume print as primary medium. So, we have chosen one big newspaper, Times of India, where we will be unveiling the campaign,” says Gupta.
Additionally, the channel has tied up with 80 outlets of Baskin Robbins in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Pune. The ice-cream parlor will put posters of the Bindass and will offer a customized flavor- the Bindass ‘What I Am‘ sundae.
As part of the college initiative the channel will distribute branded notebooks and also be involved in bike tagging in colleges in Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad and Delhi.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
