AD Agencies
DAN launches data-driven celebrity endorsement and sports marketing agency ‘CLab’
MUMBAI: With the launch of CLab, the media and advertising conglomerate Dentsu Aegis Network, which operates 25 businesses in India, has expanded its footprint into celebrity endorsement and sports marketing.
CLab will deliver solutions that range from brand endorsements, brand integrations, property and content creation to digital associations and sports marketing offerings including in-stadia branding, image rights, associations, activations, live events and appearances.
CLab aims to introduce actionable insights with informed decision-making into the process of celebrity endorsement. Therefore, to address the existing gaps and evolving nuances of the industry, the unit has developed, The Star Matrix, a unique celebrity insights tool. The tool enables both, qualitative and quantitative learning, of the celebrity’s social sphere, giving a deeper understanding of their multifarious influence vis-à-vis their social interactions.
Dentsu Aegis Network – South Asia chairman and CEO Ashish Bhasin said, “We hope to bring a data-based, scientific approach in the area of establishing brand image with the help of celebrity endorsers under CLab.”
CLab ‘mentor’ Posterscope MD Haresh Nayak said, “Our vison with CLab is to bring accountability and informed decision-making in a discipline which functions on perception, probability and gut feeling of advertisers.
CLab aims to break the myth of notional acceptability that has its roots in experimentation rather than information. A team of experts is now in place at CLab to deliver it.”
CLab VP Deepak Kumar said, “If we look at celebrity and sports marketing separately, the two might differ in their operational mechanism but the driving force is common. People, popularity, occasions and influence share the common angle, governing the dynamics of the business. We took timely cognizance of the lacunae and (formed CLab).”
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
