Brands
Aamir Khan becomes Vivo Pakistan’s official brand ambassador
MUMBAI: Chinese handset manufacturer Vivo Mobiles recently ended its contract with Bollywoood actor Ranveer Singh and appointed Aamir Khan as its new India brand ambassador.
Interestingly Khan has also been named as Vivo Pakistan’s brand ambassador, becoming the company’s first to hold the title in India’s neighbouring country. Although the company did leverage Singh for promotions and TVCs in Pakistan, he was never the official brand ambassador there.
The association is in line with Vivo’s recent launch of its new handset model, V9. The product has already launched in Thailand, Malaysia and India and is scheduled to go live in Pakistan sometime in April.
The company is likely to use the same campaigns in Pakistan as in India but will have a stronger digital and television push for marketing the new product.
Khan’s popularity in the Pakistani market could help the brand in creating a deeper personal connect with consumers in the country as he is widely acclaimed and followed. His recent movies like Daangal, 3 Idiots and Secret Superstar worked magic which even Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan or Ranveer Singh could not manage. Surprisingly he is also a name to reckon with in Vivo’s home country of China where Dangal was a hit and helped the movie hit a collection of Rs 300 crore worldwide.
Vivo has always maintained that after China and Thailand, India is where it sees green.
In 2017, Vivo officially entered the Pakistani mobile phone market with its model Vivo V7 Plus and currently it is one of the fastest growing smartphone brands in the country. The company invested a start-up capital of $30 million in 2017 to boost the distribution and marketing and today competes directly with other Chinese mobile brands including Oppo, Xiaomi, and Huawei in the Pakistani market.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
