MAM
Chatterbox launches marketing platform with influencers
MUMBAI: Today, brands are shooting in the dark when it comes to knowing which influencers to tap. Influencer marketing is the fastest growing marketing approach being favoured by brands, but a majority of brand budgets for it is not spent efficiently. There is a rising class of new influencers, from which there is very little past performance-data.
Indian influencer marketing company, Chatterbox, has launched a technology-backed solution with Chtrbox.com. With advanced ML (machine learning), smart-data driven influencer-search, proprietary matching algorithms, gamified mission modules, real-time performance tracking and more, chtrbox.com offers complete end-to-end solutions that make influencer marketing more automated, intelligent and cost effective for brands and agencies.
While the Chatterbox team helps brands craft their influencer strategy, the Chtrbox.com platform offers brands over 150K mega to micro influencers with deep data to make the right selection, enables push-campaigns and missions to relevant influencers to get their word out and get the biggest bang for their buck.
Chatterbox co-founder and CEO Pranay Swarup says, “While brands leverage the human intelligence and authentic chatter of social media influencers, Chtrbox.com leverages artificial intelligence at its very best to ensure brands find the right influencers first. With the rise of social media content consumption in India, Chtrbox.com’s access to 150,000+ influencers with a cumulative followers of 3.5 billion is all set to further elevate the emerging industry.”
Influencer marketing is nothing but word of mouth 2.0 in our digitally advanced and ever-so-connected world. Today it’s not just a celebrity, but a social media star, your college mates, colleagues and family members that you listen to the most. Chtrbox.com helps brands and agencies construct and optimise this very piece, and lets data validate gut-calls.
Chatterbox CTO Akhil Mordia notes that Chtrbox.com’s engine has analysed more than 24 million content pieces by top and emerging influencers, across categories and geographies. “For each content piece, our proprietary technology allocates a unique score basis its context and performance, generating every influencer’s social media value. This helps identify the relevant influencers with the best ROI,” he adds.
Chatterbox has been set up by Roshan Abbas (MD Encompass), Gaurav Kapur (media personality), Rohit Raj and Varun Duggirala (founders of the Glitch, now part of WPP) and Pranay Swarup (previously, cofounder of Letsintern.com), with this aim to combine the power of people and technology to build a data-led storytelling solution for brands. Chatterbox has already managed successful campaigns for 52 of India’s top brands, such as P&G, Flipkart, Hike, Nokia, Godrej, OnePlus, Puma, and Reliance.
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.
