MAM
Sri Lanka Tourism appoints Sanath Jayasuria as brand ambassador
BENGALURU: Buoyed by the results of its 2011 campaign ‘Refreshingly Sir Lanka – Wonder of Asia‘, the Sri Lankan Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) announced a new campaign for 2013 ‘Get Sri Lankaned‘ in five emergent markets, including India.
Sri Lankan Cricket Board Secretary Nishantha Ranatunga announced that former Sri Lankan cricket team captain Sanath Jayasuriya will be the brand ambassador for Sri Lankan tourism.
Key stakeholders for the initiative include a number of entities from the Sri Lankan Government like Sri Lanka Cricket, travel and tour operators associations and bodies and private players, all contributing to and participating in the campaign
Spends of around Rs 675 million have been planned for the ‘Get Sri Lankaned campaign‘ across the five countries that include India, China, the Middle East, Japan, and Korea. The largest chunk of the budget has been earmarked for China followed by India where the SLTPB has allocated about Rs 200 million.
Though television spends will be included later in India, the bureau plans to focus initially on outdoor, print, radio and road shows.
At more than 17 per cent, Indians formed the largest chunk of the one million tourists that visited Sri Lanka in 2012. The Sri Lankan Tourism department is hopeful of attracting 230000 Indian tourists in 2013 and 400000 by 2016. It hopes to grow the tourist traffic to the island nation from across the globe to 2.5 million by 2016.
Multiple creative, media buying, public relations and events management identities will be involved in the ‘Get Sri Lankaned‘ campaign.
SLTPB, with the guidance of Ministry of Economic Development, will be organising three day joint promotions in the six major cities in India, with the ‘Get Sri Lankaned campaign kicking off in Bengaluru on 15 February. The other cities in India include New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Cochin and Ahmedabad.
MAM
Smytten appoints Shishir Varma as CEO of Pulseai Research
Rebranded AI platform scales with 150 plus clients and 30 million users.
MUMBAI: In a world obsessed with what consumers say, Smytten is betting on what they actually do. The company has appointed Shishir Varma as chief executive officer of Pulseai Research, signalling a sharper push into AI-led, behaviour-driven consumer insights. The move comes as Smytten rebrands its insights vertical from Smytten PulseAI to Pulseai Research, marking a shift away from traditional, project-based research towards a more continuous, intelligence-led model.
Varma brings over 30 years of global experience across APAC markets, including India, China and Japan. Most recently managing director, Insights at Kantar Japan, he has built and scaled consumer insight businesses across geographies, including playing a key role in establishing Millward Brown in India. His mandate now: turn Pulseai into a category-defining platform in a space still dominated by surveys and static reports.
The pitch is straightforward but ambitious. Instead of relying on claimed responses, Pulseai Research taps into observed behaviour leveraging Smytten’s ecosystem of 30 million users built over a decade of product discovery, trials and purchases. The idea is to close the long-standing gap between what consumers claim and how they actually behave.
The numbers suggest early traction. In under 18 months, the platform has onboarded over 150 enterprise clients across sectors, pointing to growing demand for faster, more reliable alternatives to legacy research models.
Under the hood, the platform blends behavioural data with AI and large language model-led analysis to deliver real-time sentiment tracking, scalable qualitative insights, faster quantitative studies and always-on brand intelligence. In practical terms, that means compressing research timelines from weeks to days without sacrificing depth.
The ambition extends beyond FMCG. Pulseai Research is positioning itself as a cross-category intelligence layer, spanning auto, education, gadgets and emerging consumer segments anywhere behaviour-rich data can sharpen decision-making.
For Smytten, the leadership hire is less about optics and more about direction. With Varma at the helm, the company is leaning into a simple but powerful premise: in the age of AI, insight isn’t just about asking better questions, it’s about watching more closely.
