AD Agencies
GroupM’s introduces Live Panel to transform media planning
MUMBAI: GroupM has recently introduced Live Panel, a new consumer and media insight solution enabling its agencies to more efficiently develop precise and targeted media plans so advertisers can more effectively reach their audiences, measure outcomes and seize competitive advantage. Essentially the new too will help GroupM make better use of its own data.
With seamless access to a global panel of more than 5.5 million consumers in 30 markets, Live Panel delivers the actionable insights needed to inform media decisions for both global and local campaigns. The new platform connects with multiple data sources across Kantar’s market leading data and research assets and integrates with the bespoke planning tools of GroupM’s media agencies to accelerate the time from insight to planning to implementation.
“In an era of continually evolving consumer behaviours and media preferences across a wider array of channels, marketers who have the most intelligence are at a distinct advantage, and our unique knowledge of audiences worldwide sets us apart in the industry,” said GroupM Global chairman Irwin Gotlieb. “Leveraging WPP’s data and analytics investments, we know more about media use and consumption behaviours than anyone else. Live Panel operationalizes this knowledge to turn consumers into audiences and audiences into customers more nimbly and efficiently for our clients’ advantage.”
“GroupM’s use of our global Lightspeed consumer panels and the integration of a number of our unique data sources – BrandZ, TGI, Connected Life and Kantar Worldpanel ComTech – into Live Panel fully realizes the power of Kantar’s insights capabilities by embedding them into agencies’ media investment management tools,” said Kantar CEO Eric Salama. “This continues Kantar’s strategy of combining survey, panel and census data for the benefit of marketers by connecting us to the client rosters of the world’s largest media investment group.”
Live Panel is the latest tool in a growing portfolio of consumer and media insight planning tools that help GroupM’s media agencies, including Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom, Maxus and Motivator to build distinct marketplace offerings that leverage the best data available in regions worldwide.
GroupM says that Live Panel will also provide clients of its agencies connectivity and benefits such as understanding consumers and trends, evaluation of consumer purchase and retail behaviours, integration of brand equity data, development of unique audience insights and programmatic audience segments on the basis of consumer attitudes, product purchase and usage behaviour, balancing of plans with understanding of consumer media usage, creation of device-optimal strategies and tactics with understanding of mobile phone, tablet and quad-play ownership, usage and purchasing trends.
AD Agencies
The smell that told Mumbaikars which station was next
Tata AIA turns Mumbai’s Parle-G memory into a sharp, city-wise outdoor play
MUMBAI: When a biscuit factory became Mumbai’s unofficial station announcement. Long before smartphone maps and automated announcements, commuters on Mumbai’s Western line relied on their noses. As trains rolled into Vile Parle, compartments filled with the warm, sweet smell of baking biscuits from the Parle-G factory. It was a cue to gather bags, wake dozing children and shuffle towards the door.
Now that memory has been pressed into service by Tata AIA Life Insurance as part of its 25-year anniversary outdoor campaign — a city-by-city salute to the lived moments that shape urban life.
One hoarding, mounted close to the old factory site, reads: “We have been protecting Mumbaikars since Vile Parle smelled of freshly made biscuits.” Spare. Local. Loaded.
The broader campaign, rolled out across major metros, leans hard into contextual storytelling. In Kolkata, it nods to trams. In Pune, to Magarpatta’s transformation. In Bengaluru, to a time before IT parks. In Chennai, to OMR before it led to tech corridors. Each line anchors the brand’s longevity to a shared civic memory.
The Mumbai execution is the most evocative. For decades, the Parle-G factory was more than a production unit. It was a sensory landmark. Residents nearby set their clocks by the factory horn. Office-goers marked their commute by the waft of glucose and flour. When the plant shut, the city lost more than jobs. It lost a rhythm.
By placing the hoarding beside the former factory, the insurer collapses distance between copy and context. The site does half the storytelling. The rest comes from commuters who remember opening steel tiffins packed with Parle-G, or jolting awake as the train slowed.
It is a neat piece of brand positioning. Rather than trumpet balance sheets or policy counts, Tata AIA borrows emotional equity from the city itself. Twenty-five years becomes less a milestone and more a presence — steady, local, embedded.
Outdoor advertising is often a blunt instrument. This one is anything but. It whispers. It remembers. And in doing so, it sells trust without sounding like it is selling at all.
The scent may have faded. The memory has not.
