MAM
Mudra launches new agency to handle J&J business win
MUMBAI: The Mudra Group, which has won the creative duties for the Johnson & Johnson’s skincare brands, has launched a new agency Canvas Communications to handle the same.
Canvas Communications will be Mudra Group’s regional agency brand for the West. The J&J skincare brands that Canvas Communications is looking after are Neutrogena and Clean & Clear. Internationally, these brands are with the DDB Network.
Geeta Rao has been appointed creative advisor and head J&J, while, Kiran Dhameja is the business head on the J&J brands.
Rao said, “Neutrogena and Johnson and Johnson represent a terrific creative opportunity. This is a category that has tremendous potential for award winning work. I have seen that earlier on Ponds, Dove and Lakme.”
Rao has been regional creative director – Asia Pacific with Ogilvy in Thailand. She has handled all of Ogilvy’s personal care brands for Unilever – Dove, Lakme, Pears, Naturals and Aviance. She has also been creative advisor Saatchi & Saatchi on their Proctor and Gamble business that includes Olay and Ariel.
Dhameja has been part of Mudra earlier and has worked on the McDonald’s business for nearly four years. She brings to the table over a decade of experience in advertising and marketing communication, also covering retail branding and design. In the past she has been with agencies like Vyas Giannetti Creative, SSC&B Lintas and Grey Worldwide.
Team J&J will work closely with, and is linked into the DDB network. Mudra MD and CEO Madhukar Kamath said, “We wanted the J&J business to be managed by a dedicated team, which was housed separately, and operated as an independent unit, within the Mudra Group. Canvas is a good opportunity to do that. With growth and our eagerness to offer our expertise to clients, it makes sense for us to cater to client needs through dedicated teams. We have a senior team with fantastic credentials, and some really good talent driving Canvas.”
Canvas Communications manages a clutch of businesses including J&J and Orpat. The agency will tap into the immense growth opportunities the region has to offer. The agency will provide full-fledged integrated communications solutions to its clients, based on the integrated marketing communications competencies.
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
