Digital
Kantar Creative Effectiveness Awards: HUL dominates the digital category
Mumbai: Marketing data and analytics company, Kantar unveiled on Thursday the ads that were most effective and creative in 2021 across India. The firm tested more than 13,000 creatives for clients around the world throughout 2021. 10 percent (1300+) of those creatives were tested in India alone.The India report shortlisted over 350 ads, tested across categories, markets, target groups and media channels.
Some of the findings from Kantar’s Strategic Sparks for effective and creative digital advertising are:
- Customized and integrated content yields significantly higher ROI: Carrying forward creative stories and elements from other media amplifies the impact of digital assets.
- Shoot for instant meaning: Given the attention poor consumers and short window available, it pays to ensure that the consumers are not called to do any additional work for decoding what they are supposed to think and feel about the brand
- Ride the moment: Embrace the topical issues and trends, to engage and be relevant
- Strike an emotive chord: Well told stories open up consumers for longer format videos
- Hook them early: Promise of a fulfilling story arc, emotive journey and humour help in ensuring that consumers stay invested beyond 6 seconds.
Commenting on this year’s winners, Kantar Insights Division managing director & chief client officer Soumya Mohanty said, “The spread of ads that consumers have perceived to be both creative and effective is an affirmation of the fact that the space for creativity even in context of marketing ROI is infinite. While there is no magic formula for creating such ads, we can start with the right ingredients and refine them by testing them out with consumers. Kantar is pleased to share the learnings that we have had in the area while working with the leading marketeers in India.”
Key highlights from this year’s report identified for effective and creative TV advertising:
- Indians love to ride fulfilling story arcs: Stories create room for empathy, engagement, and vivid memories through which one could influence the way in which consumers think & feel about the brands.
- Touch of drama helps: Just the right kind and quantity of spice delivered through creative storytelling and filmmaking, elevates even the repetitive themes, to make them more personal, relevant and aspirational.
- License to be extravagant in visualization: Indians are open to suspending their disbelief for the well visualised film.
- Layer in emotional meaningfulness: Emotive contexts have the potential to make the consumers warm up to even the dry functional categories.
- Show, not tell: Integrating brand payoffs as an organic plot event in the script is a timeless approach toward creating vivid and persuasive memories.
Kantar’s collaboration with the Unstereotype Alliance has led to the development of the Unstereotype metric (UM) which Kantar now includes as a measure of gender portrayal in advertising as an integral part of its Link™ communication pretesting solution. Thus, setting a foundation for marketers to review the potential of their creative executions on this dimension to monitor progress over time.
Unstereotype metric* (UM) in the long term provides learning and context for gender progressive advertisements. UM is now measured for 14,000+ ads across 70 countries, 3,300+ brands and 251 categories.
⎯ Unstereotyping in advertisements is predicted to unlock higher marketing ROI. It signifies strong brand equity and is likely to impact short term sales as well. This impact is not only true for women, but progressive male role models also impact business outcomes across categories.
⎯ Progressive ads are more effective and trigger positive engagement. They are in general seen to be more enjoyable, relevant, different and even pleasantly surprising.
⎯ Unstereotyping affects various aspects of the brand- power, meaningfulness, difference and saliency especially seen in food & beverage, household and personal care categories.
⎯ There are clear and present rewards for brands that seek to be at the forefront of embedding progressive gender roles
Digital
Authbridge finds 5.61 per cent discrepancy rate in on-demand hiring
White-collar roles show 4.33 per cent overall as employment history leads at 11.15 per cent in H1 FY26.
MUMBAI: India’s hiring scene is pulling a classic bait-and-switch, candidates promise the world on paper, but the background check reveals the plot twist nobody saw coming. Authbridge, the country’s top trust and authentication tech firm, released its Workforce Fraud Files – H1 FY26 report (covering July–December 2025) around 16–17 February 2026, crunching data from millions of verifications across identity, address, employment history, education, criminal records, and CV validation.
The headline numbers paint a sobering picture: white-collar hires clocked an overall discrepancy rate of 4.33 per cent, while the on-demand ecosystem (gig and flexible roles) fared worse at 5.61 per cent showing that the faster, looser world of app-based work comes with extra red flags.
For white-collar folks, employment verification topped the trouble list at 11.15 per cent, followed by address checks at 7.68 per cent, education at 4.49 per cent, and references at 4.17 per cent. Drug screening (1.87 per cent) and criminal records (0.50 per cent) stayed relatively tame, but still popped up enough to matter.
The gig side showed even sharper vulnerabilities, address discrepancies hit 9.70 per cent, identity (NID) issues 2.53 per cent, and criminal record mismatches 2.23 per cent particularly worrying for roles with direct customer contact or field duties.
Industry breakdowns add colour, address problems plagued Telecom (15.42 per cent), IT (12.02 per cent), Pharma (11.21 per cent), Retail (10.64 per cent), and Banking & BFSI (10.23 per cent). Employment verification headaches were biggest in Retail (16.37 per cent), Telecom (14.32 per cent), Banking & BFSI (13.00 per cent), and Pharma (12.10 per cent). Education slips stood out in Retail (9.16 per cent) and Telecom (7.80 per cent), while CV validation mismatches appeared in IT (12.80 per cent) and Banking & BFSI (2.91 per cent).
Authbridge CEO and founder Ajay Trehan didn’t mince words, “The H1 FY26 Workforce Fraud Files clearly show that hiring-related discrepancies remain a persistent and structural challenge. Despite faster and more digitised hiring workflows, we continue to see gaps in fundamental checks such as employment history, address, and education. These are not minor inconsistencies; they have direct implications for organisational risk, compliance, and trust.”
The report stresses ditching one-and-done checks, start screening pre-offer to avoid nasty surprises post-joining, and layer in periodic reviews like drug tests, court records, and lifestyle assessments for ongoing risk management. Tools like Authbridge’s Authnumber (consent-based digital credentials) and Authlead (deep-dive leadership vetting) get a nod for cutting friction and blind spots.
Bottom line? In a job market racing for speed and scale, skimping on trust verification is like building a house on sand, one solid background check away from watching the whole thing crumble.
