AD Agencies
HT Media hires Dentsu Impact
MUMBAI: Dentsu Impact has won the creative duties for all brands from HT Media – including Hindustan Times, Hindustan (Hindi), Mint, Shine.com, HT Campus, Career Plus, Study Mate, English Mate and Bridge School of Management. With this move, Dentsu Impact becomes the prime strategic and communication partner for HT Media handling communication for all brands from the group, barring its radio brands Fever FM & Nasha FM, which are handled by Ogilvy & Mather.
The HT Group, which has so far worked with multiple agencies for different brands, initiated a process of consolidating all the brands with one single agency sometime in November 2016. Post an exhaustive pitch process, in which some of the country’s top agencies participated, HT finally decided to award the duties to Dentsu Impact.
HT Media groum CMO Rajan Bhalla said, “We wanted to move to a single partner for our diverse brand portfolio. Dentsu was already handling Hindustan, Mint and Shine.com and their team has done excellent work for the last few years, hence the decision to go with them.”
Dentsu Impact presiden Amit Wadhwa said, “This is a big win for us and an important one. When a group like Hindustan Times decides to award its entire portfolio of brands to one agency, it shows the level of trust as well as spirit of partnership from both ends. We are extremely excited and are rearing to create some interesting work.”
Dentsu Impact national creative director Soumitra Karnik added, “It’s a fabulous start to this year for us. Winning all the brands of HT group is something any creative agency would kill for. Along with this great news also comes great responsibility. We are quite committed to doing some great work on each brand.”
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.
