MAM
Kareena Kapoor endorses Alpenliebe 2 Choco Eclairs
MUMBAI: Perfetti Van Melle India (PVMI), the Confectionary company, has roped in Bollywood actor Kareena Kapoor to endorse its Alpenliebe 2 Choco Eclairs brand.
This is the first instance of a celebrity endorsement in the Eclairs category and also Kapoor‘s first brand endorsement in the confectionary category, the company said.
PVMI director-marketing Nikhil Sharma said, “Today‘s youth immediately identify Kareena Kapoor as a style icon who has established herself through her work in Bollywood. When it came to selecting the right brand ambassador for Alpenlibe 2 Choco Eclairs, Kareena was a unanimous choice. She is a mix of beauty, elegance and style. She fits perfectly with our product which promises consumers a great indulgent experience.”
Kapoor will feature in the TVC, mobile and internet campaigns of the brand. The campaigns for the brand have been conceptualised by McCann Erickson.
The new TVC was made with an objective of introducing viewers to a magical world where a princess gets swept off her feet by the most unlikely of characters.
McCann Erickson Worldwide India chairman and CEO Prasoon Joshi said, “We wanted to use Kareena in a unique way and happy to stumble upon an idea which has immense charm and am sure will be loved by the consumers.”
The TVC is shot by ad film maker Ravi Udyawar, while the music is composed by Mikey McCleary.
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.
