MAM
Max ups the ante; marketing campaign to roll in September
MUMBAI: Now it is Set Max’s turn to turn on the heat!
Responding to the 2005 plans unveiled by competitor channels, Zee Cinema and Star Gold, Sony Entertainment Television’s events and movie channel is all set for some action.
The Max task force: Sehwag with Prahlad Kakkar, Albert Almeida and Samir Khan
As far as marketing activities are concerned, Set Max is putting its money in its newly-launched Sunday vertical band Sunday Houseful, the upcoming cricket ICC Super Series and the festive season that will follow.
The property-based campaigns will unfold gradually and key features will be the 2005 version of its popular brand campaign Deewana Bana De featuring star cricketer Virendra Sehwag.
“We will open our marketing initiatives with a campaign for Sunday Houseful early September. Then we will be using the ICC Super Series as a platform to launch the new edition of the Deewana Bana De campaign in the third week of September. The cricket platform will be exploited to establish and promote the big titles we are featuring on Max in the upcoming festive season of October – December,” Set Max business head Albert Almeida told indiantelevision.com.
Almeida said the marketing stress for the next couple of months would be on Sunday Houseful, which is showcasing popular titles from 9 am to 9 pm.
The channel has lined up the blockbuster movie Dhoom for August-end and the promotions have already begun. “We are planning an aggressive campaign for Sunday Houseful and the plan is to drive viewers on Sunday by an image spot and off-air marketing activities,” Almeida explains.
Max will also be stressing on innovation and interactivity for all its on and off air campaigns. The big budget multi-media campaigns, targeting the whole nation, will even explore unconventional media, including the Net.
The cricket campaign will also have a contest component, wherein the channel will reward viewers by sending them to watch the ICC series.
On a different wicket: Sehwag shoots for the ‘Deewana Bana De’ film
“Our target is to widen the audience base for a property like cricket. We want our campaigns to be constructive in such a way that it will appeal not only to the pure cricket fans, but also the other family members too in a household,” says Almedia.
However, Almeida refused to divulge the marketing plans for the festive season. “We will be using the big platform of ICC Super Series to come back very strongly with our movie properties. We will have a combination of blockbusters and world television premieres for the festive season,” he offered as an explanation.
When his attention was brought to the fact that even competitors are getting bullish with large scale acquisitions and star-specific strategies, Almeida expressed confidence that those initiatives wouldn’t distract Max from carrying out its proven success formula.
“We have a line up of blockbusters. We will continue to aggressively innovate on and off- air and with other marketing campaigns to promote our properties. We are not unduly concerned about their (competition’s) strategies,” he says.
Sehwag to do two brand films for Set Max
Max is planning two brand promotional films featuring star cricketer Virendra Sehwag this year for its Deewana Bana De campaign.
Directed by ace ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, the movies are conceptualised by Euro RSCG India. The films will be of 45 seconds each. The first of the series, featuring Sehwag and Sameer Khan, was canned on 11 September.
Speaking about the latest edition of the now famous campaign, Euro RSCG India VP Ashok Karnik says, “There is not much difference as far as the theme is concerned. The brand is the same and so is the positioning.”
However, the challenge was to use a star cricketer like Sehwag to promote a movie channel. “But we have a solution and that is a suspense. The brand film starts with cricket and then there is a twist,” Karnik added to the suspense.
Mein ye wicket ka bheek mangta hum: Sehwag learning his dialogues in the company of Kakkar
According to Kakkar, it is Sehwag’s cricketing manners, which he carries even in real life that makes him a powerful brand.
“You can’t separate the real life Sehwag from the cricketer Sehwag. He
is explosive, unpredictable, action-oriented, straight, simple, home-grown, sans intellectual pretensions or any airs and fancies,” the ad man gushed.
Brands
Estée Lauder to shed 10,000 jobs as new boss bets on digital shift
The cosmetics giant raises its profit outlook but stays silent on a possible merger with Spain’s Puig, as job cuts deepen and a three-year sales slump weighs on the turnaround
NEW YORK: Stéphane de La Faverie is not done cutting. Estée Lauder announced on Friday that it plans to eliminate as many as 3,000 additional jobs, taking its total redundancy programme to as many as 10,000 roles, up from a previous target of 7,000 announced a year ago. The company, which owns La Mer, The Ordinary, Tom Ford, and Aveda, employs roughly 57,000 people worldwide. The mathematics of what is now being contemplated is stark.
The fresh round of cuts is expected to generate a further $200 million in savings, bringing the total annual savings from the programme to as much as $1.2 billion before taxes. That money, De La Faverie has made clear, will be ploughed back into the turnaround.
A CEO in a hurry
De La Faverie, who took the helm in January 2025, inherited a company that had endured three consecutive years of annual sales declines. His response has been to move fast and cut deep. A significant portion of the latest redundancies reflects his push to reduce headcount at US department stores, long a cornerstone of Estée Lauder’s distribution model but now a channel in structural decline. In their place, he is accelerating the shift toward faster-growing online platforms, including Amazon.com and TikTok Shop, a pivot that is reshaping not just where Estée Lauder sells but how it thinks about its customers.
The numbers are moving in the right direction
Despite the pain, there are signs the medicine is working. Estée Lauder raised its profit outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, guiding for adjusted earnings per share in the range of $2.35 to $2.45, above analyst estimates and a notable step up from the $2.05 to $2.25 range it had guided for in February. Organic net sales growth is expected to come in at 3 per cent, the company said, at the high end of the range it set out in February.
The share price tells a mixed story. After De La Faverie took charge, the stock surged nearly 60 per cent, buoyed by investor optimism that a longtime company insider could finally arrest the decline. But 2026 has been rougher: the shares have fallen 27 per cent this year, weighed down by disappointing February results and the overhang of unresolved merger talks with Spanish beauty giant Puig Brands SA. The company gave no additional details about those discussions on Friday, leaving the market to guess.
Silence on Puig
The proposed tie-up with Puig remains the most consequential unknown hanging over Estée Lauder. A deal with the Barcelona-based group, which owns brands including Carolina Herrera and Rabanne, would reshape the global luxury beauty landscape. But with nothing new to say and a turnaround still very much in progress, De La Faverie is asking investors to trust the process.
Three years of sales declines, 10,000 job cuts, and a merger that may or may not happen. At Estée Lauder, the overhaul has barely started.
