MAM
Sony earmarks Rs 120 mn for marketing KBC4
MUMBAI: This year, 11 October shall not just be a day to celebrate the birthday of Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan but will also witness the legend himself taking charge as host of the fourth edition of Kaun Banega Crorepati.
Betting big on this new flagship property, Sony is pumping in Rs 120 million to market the game-based reality show as it eyes to earn revenues worth Rs 1 billion from the property.
The channel has already roped in seven sponsors and is looking at adding one more. Indiantelevision.com had earlier reported that Cadbury and Idea had been roped in as presenting sponsors of KBC 4.
Meanwhile, the rest of the five sponsors have come on board as associate partners and are namely Axis Bank, LG, Tata Motors, Sony Bravia and Videocon. “Almost 80-90 per cent of our ad inventory is already locked and we are now close to sealing a deal with the eighth sponsor,” informs Multi Screen Media president network sales, licensing and telephony Rohit Gupta.
As far as the marketing of the show is concerned, the activity has been divided into four phases and remains high across the Hindi speaking markets (HSM).
While the first phase has been about establishing Sony‘s association with KBC and Amitabh Bachchan, the second deals with the “India Plays KBC” thought. This phase was aggressively promoted across print and witnessed approximately 5 million people registering for the show.
Says SET marketing head Danish Khan, “Playing on the insight ‘pursuit of knowledge is rewarding‘, the third phase took up 3000 spots across 39 TV channels and 7000 spots on cable across India. Also, we partnered with the film Dabangg wherein wherever the movie was played, two promos of KBC were tagged into it.”
And now, as KBC enters the launch phase, Sony has designed a 15-day countdown campaign for the show that will be carried out extensively across TV, print and out-of-home.
“We have booked 10,000 spots across 39 channels, of which 3500 spots are on Sony network. The other channels include the news, kids, youth, Bollywood, regional, movie and music genre channels,” Khan says.
The channel has also booked 20,000 spots across 35 cities on radio while the OOH campaign will see a 15 city plan (HSM and metros). Overall, there will be over 500 hoardings put up nationwide of which 100 plus hoardings will be placed in Mumbai.
“The launch day, that is 11 October, will also see a big print campaign in approximately 35 top newspapers including English, Hindi and regional,” says Khan.
Meanwhile, in order to ensure strong consumer connect, Sony will use digital to create muscular presence. “However, it‘s TV, print and out-of-home in the ratio of 20:25:25 that form the major chunk of our marketing mix. The rest will be digital and BTL. Also, BTL activities will show up only after the launch,” Khan explains.
Brands
LINC Limited appoints Hitesh Singla as head of marketing
The writing instruments giant has hired Hitesh Singla as head of marketing, betting on his two decades of brand-building firepower to ink a bolder consumer story
KOLKATA: LINC Limited, the Kolkata-based writing instruments manufacturer with a footprint spanning more than 50 countries, has appointed Hitesh Singla as its head of marketing, a hire that signals the company’s intent to fight harder for consumer attention in one of India’s most fiercely contested stationery categories.
Singla arrives with over two decades of marketing muscle behind him, having built, revived and scaled brands across consumer durables, personal care, healthcare, retail and houseware. His CV reads like a tour of Indian and global brand management: he introduced and grew Stabilo, UHU and Rapid in the Indian market, helped revive product categories for Revlon, and most recently served as head of marketing at KAI India, where he sharpened the brand’s presence in personal grooming and houseware.
Before KAI, Singla held leadership roles at Godrej & Boyce and the Avantha Group, among others, organisations where scale, complexity and consumer diversity are non-negotiable realities.
At LINC, he will own the company’s end-to-end marketing strategy: brand equity, integrated campaigns and consumer engagement, all calibrated to a market that is shifting fast. His approach blends data-driven insight with what he calls creative storytelling, precisely the kind of bilingual fluency that legacy brands need when nostalgia alone will no longer do the heavy lifting.
“LINC Limited holds a strong legacy in the writing instruments category,” said Singla, “and I look forward to building on this foundation to further strengthen its brand relevance in a rapidly evolving market. The focus will be on driving sharper consumer insights, innovation-led marketing, and creating deeper engagement across touchpoints.”
An alumnus of Punjab University with a master’s degree in international business, Singla is said to be as comfortable with cultures, languages and history as he is with a campaign brief, a disposition that may serve him well as LINC pushes deeper into global markets.
For a company that already sells pens across five continents, the real challenge now is making consumers care which pen they pick up. Singla’s job is to make sure it is a LINC.
