MAM
SMG Delhi reshuffles senior management team
MUMBAI: Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) has reshuffled its senior management team.
As a part of the restructuring, Starcom North executive director (ED) Tarun Nigam is moving to a role with VivaKi Exchange by January 2013. He is currently in the process of transitioning from the SMG role to a full time role with the group outfit VivaKi. In his new role, Tarun will report to VivaKi Exchange CEO Mona Jain.
Sulina Menon who is ED and head of team Samsung and Dabur will be taking charge of Nigam’s client portfolio in Delhi, in addition to overseeing the Dabur account.
Meanwhile, Starcom South VP Sriram Sharma is moving to Delhi to head team Samsung.
There would be a three-month overlap between Menon and Sharma on Samsung before they take independent charge of their roles in January 2013.
In their new roles, both Menon and Sharma will report to SMG India CEO Mallikarjunadas CR.
Mallikarjunadas CR said, “After a good run in the past 2 years, we are gearing up for an even more action packed future. Tarun, Sulina and Sriram have done exceedingly well in their respective assignments and have been great ambassadors of SMG. Their new roles with enlarged responsibilities are a testament to their performance. We wish them the very best in their new assignments”.
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.
