MAM
Deep Focus wins award for ‘Kill Bill’ campaign
MUMBAI: A few days ago at the DoubleClick Insight Awards in the US, entertainment marketing and promotions firm Deep Focus took home a first-place award in the Best Rich Media Campaign. Its campaign for Miramax’s film Kill Bill Volume 1 was cited for the honours.
Open to all agencies, direct marketers, and publishers in the US, this year’s edition of the Insight Awards received over 100 campaign entries. The Deep Focus campaign was designed to build anticipation and awareness for Quentin Tarantino’s kung fu film. This was done before the television advertising. The goal was to introduce the film’s potential audience to its marketing assets — trailers and TV commercials. As a direct result, there were more than three million unique audience interactions with the film’s content and five per cent of all opening-week impressions resulted in local show-time lookups. This helped put people in seats.
Deep Focus’ creative director Robert Knuell was quoted in an official release saying, “When we develop an online campaign, we implement unique and original creative executions which make the content entertaining and fresh.” Deep Focus’ president Ian Schafer added, “The campaign fortified the effects of massive amounts of television advertising by using high-impact online creative. The aim was not only to prepare audiences for the enormous shock they were about to get in theaters, but to also compel them to show up there and experience it in the key first weekend of release.”
“Kill Bill was a groundbreaking creative opportunity for Deep Focus immersing us in the surreal universe that Quentin had created for the film. The iconic imagery, the unforgettable characters, and the addictive soundtrack inspired our collective imagination, while removing all traditional advertising boundaries. This unique film deserved a unique advertising campaign, and we wanted to be the ones to deliver it.”
The Brooklyn-based firm has been creating original online advertising and media campaigns since their inception in 2002. In addition to Kill Bill Deep Focus has created creative and media campaigns for films such as the Oscar nominated documentary Spellbound, Old School (DreamWorks), Barbershop 2 (MGM), and Scary Movie 3 (Dimension).
Deep Focus was founded on the understanding of how fusing interactive and traditional marketing tactics can be leveraged to exponentially increase entertainment brand exposure. Doubleclick provides tools for advertisers, direct marketers and web publishers to plan, execute and analyse their marketing programmes.
Brands
Dabur buys minority stake in Ras Beauty for Rs 60 crore
Dabur Ventures deal backs fast-growing luxury skincare brand
MUMBAI: Dabur India Limited has dipped into the world of luxury skincare, signing a definitive agreement to acquire a minority stake in Ras Beauty Private Limited for Rs 60 crore. The investment marks the first bet from Dabur Ventures, the FMCG major’s Rs 500 crore platform set up in October 2025 to back high-potential, new-age direct-to-consumer brands.
Founded in Raipur by Shubhika Jain, her sister Suramya Jain and their mother Sangeeta Jain, Ras Beauty has grown from a family-led passion project into a fast-scaling “Farm-to-Face” skincare label. Its range of face elixirs, serums and moisturisers blends essential oils with nature-derived actives, striking a balance between botanical purity and laboratory precision.
The numbers tell their own story. Ras has clocked a three-year Cagr of around 75 per cent and an annual run rate of approximately Rs 100 crore, all while maintaining strong gross margins. That growth has been fuelled by a digital-first approach, in-house R&D and manufacturing, and a sharp focus on clean, sustainable sourcing.
Dabur India executive director and group head corporate strategy Abhinav Dhall, said the company was drawn to Ras’s distinct positioning at the intersection of nature, science and luxury. He added that the premium beauty segment is poised for robust expansion over the coming decade, and that Ras is well placed to capture that opportunity.
For Ras, the partnership is as much about scale as it is about shared philosophy. Co-founder and CEO Shubhika Jain said Dabur’s 141-year legacy of building trusted, purpose-led brands makes it a natural ally. The capital infusion, she noted, will help accelerate the brand’s omnichannel footprint, deepen research capabilities and invest in team and brand building, with an eye on establishing Ras as a leading Indian luxury skincare name both domestically and overseas.
With this move, Dabur is not just investing in a skincare label. It is placing an early wager on India’s growing appetite for premium, conscious beauty, and signalling that heritage FMCG players are ready to play in the new-age D2C arena.
