MAM
Emotions rule the roost in top international ads
MUMBAI: With temperatures dipping and holiday season around the corner, brands overseas are churning out more dollars to advertise and communicate with viewers. This is the foreign version of India’s Diwali time when ad slots are exorbitantly priced. Using the Christmas holidays, every brand tries to be cheeky in the ads. An increase in ad inventory also aids them.
Continuing with our weekly series to present most loved international ads of the week, we bring to you our second edition. This week saw Serena Williams, who recently delivered a baby girl, sharing a heartfelt message to her daughter. We also see Samsung’s make fun of people who waste time in watching the washing machine tumbling clothes while Smirnoff takes a stand for the LGBT community.
If you are looking for some inspiration to power you through this week, the new video from Gatorade will likely do the trick for you. 23-time grand slam champion Serena Williams is seen narrating a message to her newborn baby girl in the commercial to play sports for the lessons they can teach and the impact they can have. She says in the ad, “Sports will teach you the strength of your allies. Whether your bond is by blood or by ball, whether she shares the colour of your skin or the colour of your jersey, you’ll find sisters in sweat.”
Samsung created a three-minute long film about a washing machine. That’s right, it is a whole film about clothes tumbling round and round while you watch it. According to Samsung’s research, British adults on an average spend 88,904 minutes of their lives watching the washing machine go around. The whole point of the ad was to tell viewers that you shouldn’t be spending much time watching the washing machine and that there is a faster washing machine available with Samsung. Sounds boring? But it surely has connected with an unnoticed habit!
Toyota has created its new holiday ad that features a real family of actors — grandparents, their daughter and her husband, and their children. The ad features a powerful, multigenerational story about a family and the tree they have loved for years. Conceptualised by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, the campaign was aired between The Voice and This is Us as the only ad in the break. It was purposely filmed in the This Is Us show by taking nostalgic cues from it with a tale of two generations.
Vodka brand Smirnoff has launched its new campaign to help inspire Britain’s nightlife to become more open-minded about gender and is partnering with the LGBT Foundation to enforce real change. The commercial features people from the LGBT community and asks people to be more inclusive and accepting of gay people. The film ends with a message, “Labels are for bottles, not people”. Now that’s powerful!
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
