MAM
Nokia, Castrol in pact with ESS for interactive on-air promos
SINGAPORE: Nokia and Castrol have teamed up with ESPN Star Sports (ESS) on the sports broadcaster’s live coverage of the new English Premier League (EPL) season. This will involve an interactive and integrated on air and online promotion.
An official release informs that the partnerships aims at making the most of the EPL broadcast on ESS. In addition it extends to the sports news programming ESS produces around EPL matches as well as online on www.espnstar.com and ESS’ China site www.espnstar.com.cn.
Nokia Man of the Match: Each week the Nokia Man of the Match SMS contest invites football fans to vote for the Man of the Match for Saturday and Sunday matches. Those who voted for the player who is also chosen by the commentators as the Man of the Match can win a Nokia 3650 mobile phone. The entries are tallied and the winner is chosen on Premiership Saturday for the Saturday match and Super Sunday for the Sunday match. The contest is open to cell phone users in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Thailand and Brunei adds the release.
Two other upcoming promos from the world’s leading mobile phone supplier include the Nokia Spot the Ball SMS and and online contest on Super Sunday and the Nokia EPL Fantasy League online contest on the programmes Football Focus and Here We Go. These will start in a few days time.
Nokia Mobile Phones Asia Pacific director marketing services Pasi Jarvenpaa added, “This sponsorship gives us a great opportunity to communicate the benefits of new technologies such as Java and XHTML to consumers and provides a fun and interactive platform for us to bring the exciting world of techno-tainment to diverse audiences in the region who enjoy watching EPL.”
Castrol Goal of the Week: The Castrol Goal of the Week runs across numerous EPL matches and invites sports fans to vote for their goal of the week on espnstar.com. The promo runs through some EPL-related programmes produced by ESS. They are the news bulletin Football Focus on Tuesday,Goals on Wednesday, Here We Go on Friday. Entries with the same choice as those of the panel can win goodies from Castrol. In addition a framed Castrol football jersey personally signed by Real Madrid icon David Beckham is also up for grabs.
Castrol Asia Pacific’s marketing director A.S. Ramchander said, “The Castrol brand is all about winning, passion and excitement, and the team was searching for a media opportunity to help us drive these values with our core target audience.”
According to peoplemeter data, a single EPL match delivers 25 per cent more viewers than all Singapore cable news channels combined. In a week, ESPN (including the EPL matches) delivers 167 per cent more viewers than all three cable news channels combined in the same week. While Asia’s sizeable out of home audience remains unmeasured by in-home peoplemeter measurements, research indicates that 64 per cent watch the EPL outside their homes every week.
Over the next ten years, EPL’s potential Asian audience among males 15+ with access to cable and satellite, is expected to grow by 63 per cent from the current 249 million to 407 million. The broadcast of EPL on ESS is sponsored by Tiger Beer and Toshiba.
MAM
Collective Artists Network reshuffles talent leadership
Fiona D’Souza, Jinal Jhaveri and Arjun Banerjee take expanded roles in core division.
MUMBAI: Collective Artists Network just handed the talent baton to its homegrown stars because when your agents have been building careers this long, it’s time to let them run the show. Collective Artists Network has announced the next phase of leadership for its talent management business, elevating senior agents Fiona D’Souza, Jinal Jhaveri and Arjun Banerjee to expanded roles within the division. The move strengthens the company’s foundational talent arm while it continues to grow into content creation and production-led ventures.
Each of the three has played a significant part in shaping artist careers across films, digital platforms and brand partnerships. Together they now represent the next generation of leadership for Collective’s talent operations, with a continued focus on long-term career building, strong partnerships and adapting representation to a fast-changing media landscape.
Collective Artists Network founder and Group CEO Vijay Subramaniam remains actively involved in guiding artist strategy and key relationships. He said, “Talent management has been the foundation on which Collective was built, and that philosophy continues to guide how we grow the company. As we enter this next phase, it’s important that the people leading this business have both deep context and long-term convictions.”
Collective Artists Network partner and head of talent Janahavi Rawal added, “Collective’s talent business has always been built on trust, long-term thinking, and a deep understanding of where artists want to go next. Fiona, Jinal, and Arjun have each played an important role in shaping the careers of the artists we represent, and this phase is about empowering our senior agents further while building the right support systems around them.”
The leadership evolution reflects Collective’s belief in promoting from within and creating clear ownership across verticals. In a talent world where yesterday’s agent is tomorrow’s partner, Collective isn’t just reshuffling chairs, it’s handing the spotlight to the people who’ve been quietly directing the show all along.
