NEW DELHI: In an effort to leverage the strength of its expertise in providing integrated marketing solutions using opportunities in the entertainment sector, WPP Group’s Broadmind Entertainment is expanding its operations to include synergistic areas.
While speaking to indiantelevision.com, Broadmind Entertainment head Navin Shah said: “We are constantly evaluating the opportunities in our endeavour to provide clients with innovative and optimal marketing solutions in the entertainment space. We broadly categorise our operations into ten activities: marketing tie-ups, in-film product placement, consultancy, celebrity endorsements, acquisitions of movies for Doordarshan (DD) and private satellite channels, advertising sales, exports of filmed content, events, merchandising and marketing services (media planning/buying) to Bollywood”.
Shah added: “However, we are not an advertising agency to the film industry and we consciously stay out of the creative inputs area.”
With more brands seeking the entertainment marketing platform, Broadmind Entertainment is strategically placed and poised to capitalise on this strong trend. Already a dozen clients from WPP Marketing Communications’ large base of 250 plus clients have experimented successfully with the idea of leveraging entertainment assets to grow brands.
They include ICICI Bank, Kellogg’s, Pidilite Industries, UB/McDowells, Hindustan Lever, Onida, Castrol among others. Many new clients are expected to join the growing ranks of advertisers who are keen to harness the power of entertainment to grow brands.
Broadmind Entertainment is also re-entering the market to acquire films for DD and private satellite channels. Twelve films have already been bought and screened on DD National Network including ones from Jhamu Sughand library and Yash Johar library among the others.
“We had bought DD and satellite rights for this movie Filhaal where we tied-up with broadcasters for advertising time in return for allowing them to telecast the film. The advertising time was liquidated using the large base of WPP Marketing Communications clients. Broadcasters are relieved since it saves them some investments in programming which can be diverted to producing prime time programming. We are negotiating with producers for telecast rights of forthcoming films and hope to announce a deal or two shortly,” added Shah.
Broadmind Entertainment was recently associated on a multimedia project for Bagpiper for the recently released Hindi movie Andaaz. Broadmind had worked on similar assignments for two movies earlier this year - Dum and Hero with Bagpiper. BroadMind Entertainment was also instrumental in producing India’s first 3D commercial for Fevicol Acron Rangeela which was screened along with the 3D film Chotta Jaadugar.
BroadMind Entertainment is a specialist arm of the Rs 15-billion WPP Marketing Communications, India’s leading media specialist company. Other units of WPP MCI include Mindshare, Fulcrum, Maximize, ATG-MCI, mDigital and CIU.
