Brands
DHL shows how football and business are alike
MUMBAI: International express services provider, DHL Express, has launched its 360-degree interactive brand campaign with a TVC that draws parallels between the game of football and the business landscape. The campaign was released during the Indian Super League (ISL) 2017 season for which DHL is an associate sponsor.
Anchored by three TVCs, the overall brand campaign is expected to engage over 500 million people across the country during five months of the ISL season. The campaign will leverage print, radio, OOH, in-Stadium and digital activation initiatives to amplify the messaging and reach its consumer base beyond the 10 ISL cities and across the country.
The TV commercial is the first in a series of three that highlight DHL’s core proposition of ‘Excellence. Simply Delivered.’ through rich visuals and use of light-hearted humour. Each TVC showcases a different scenario in a football match and is a metaphor for describing the challenges faced by businesses and how DHL as an expert enables them to overcome these hurdles. The use of humour is intended to provide a mood break to the viewers in between tense football matches and, at the same time, convey DHL’s brand message.
DHL express India country manager RS Subramanian says, “The single line brief for the campaign was to position DHL as an enabler that helps businesses overcome challenges in the marketplace and win. The creative treatment given to the campaign highlights our brand promise of Excellence, Simply Delivered.”
Williams Lea Tag India managing director Amit Chandra adds, “We have designed the campaign to create brand resonance for DHL by communicating its message linked to football, which the ISL’s target audience will relate to. We are confident that the use of humour and exaggeration through the match scenarios showcased in the TVCs will strike a chord with the audience.”
This year’s campaign is set to be bigger in scale and aims to reach an even larger audience through sustained outreach over the extended ISL season.
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.
