MAM
Orchard Advertising appoints Sameera Dowerah as creative director
MUMBAI: Orchard Advertising has appointed Sameera Dowerah as creative director.
She will partner Sagar Prajapati, also a creative director, in leading the creative function in Bangalore.
Orchard Bangalore vice president and branch head Anish Daryani said, “Sameera brings in the solidity we needed to strengthen our creative firepower. As a great thinker, expressive writer and exemplary leader, she‘s everything one would expect from a creative head. This is also in line with our strategic call to provide better creative output for our brands. I‘m confident our clients will be benefactors of her creative abilities.”
Dowerah said, “Orchard over the years has created a niche for itself. That smart, sensible, quiet yet witty kid in class? That‘s Orchard for me. Their work reflects this too. It‘s always been simple, yet smart and witty. Perhaps the reason why the communication they created is still remembered.”
Dowerah comes with 12 years of experience in the business and has worked on brands like Arrow, Reliance Jewels, the USL portfolio, Amante and Mantri Square. She spent her last seven years at Rediffusion-Y&R. Prior to Rediffusion-Y&R, she was with McCann Erickson, Bangalore where she worked on TVS Scooty, Scooty Pep, Kwality Walls and JTI.
Orchard Advertising is part of The Leo Group, which also includes Leo Burnett and Black Pencil. Some of the agency‘s clients include Wipro, SAB Miller, Essilor, Decathlon, Godrej, BlackBerry, WaterHealth India and Piramal Healthcare.
MAM
JioStar unveils ‘The Winning Edge’ playbook for live cricket advertisers
Data-led guide shows multi-screen, sponsorship strategies drive higher impact
MUMBAI: JioStar has launched ‘The Winning Edge’, a data-backed advertising playbook aimed at helping brands maximise impact on live cricket, positioning the sport as one of the most powerful marketing platforms in India.
Built using billions of impression-level data points across marquee cricket properties and validated through studies by Kantar, the playbook offers practical insights into how brands can drive measurable outcomes such as awareness, recall and purchase intent.
The findings make a strong case for live cricket as a growth engine for both new and established brands. According to the report, new advertisers on live cricket campaigns saw up to 6.9 times higher brand awareness and up to 10.8 times higher purchase intent compared to industry benchmarks. Established brands also recorded gains, with up to four times higher awareness and nearly five times higher purchase intent.
Speaking about the initiative, JioStar head of sales sports Anup Govindan said, “The Winning Edge, developed in partnership with Kantar, is built on rigorous, data-backed analysis of how real brands have performed on our platform across categories, objectives, budgets, formats and tournament phases. The study reaffirms that when it comes to driving real outcomes such as awareness, consideration and purchase intent, nothing matches the intensity, scale and impact of live cricket. The depth of attention and emotional engagement during live moments creates a multiplier effect that non-live environments simply cannot replicate.”
One of the standout insights is the advantage of multi-screen strategies. Campaigns that ran simultaneously across linear TV, connected TV and mobile delivered up to seven times higher purchase intent than single-platform campaigns, with minimal audience overlap ensuring incremental reach.
The playbook also highlights the impact of combining formats. Brands using both video and display formats saw up to 7.4 times higher brand awareness compared to those relying on video alone.
Sponsorships emerged as another key lever. Brands with formal sponsorship deals recorded up to nine times higher purchase intent and up to eight times higher ad awareness than those opting only for standard inventory buys. Adding pre and post live studio programming further boosted aided awareness by up to 2.1 times.
Crucially, the report identifies high-impact in-match moments such as Super 4s, Super 6s, DRS and fall of wickets as prime opportunities for brands. Campaigns aligned with these moments delivered uplifts of up to 10 times in awareness and up to seven times in recall, reinforcing the value of contextual advertising.
Echoing these findings, Kantar managing director and chief client & solutions officer Soumya Mohanty said, “Numerous Kantar Brand Lift Studies have demonstrated the incremental impact of live cricket advertising, with results consistently ranking at the top end of Kantar’s Brand Lift database. This playbook distils those insights into actionable media planning and creative recommendations to help advertisers drive stronger outcomes in live cricket environments.”
With live cricket continuing to draw massive, highly engaged audiences, JioStar is positioning ‘The Winning Edge’ as a blueprint for brands looking to move beyond visibility and towards measurable impact.
As the competition for consumer attention intensifies, the message is clear. In the world of sports marketing, playing smart may matter just as much as showing up.
