AD Agencies
Sweet sour news for ad industry – say ad men
MUMBAI: The advertising industry hasn’t reacted well to the fact that the service tax has been increased from 5 per cent to 8 per cent. However, there is hope that the benefits given to consumers demand might prop up sales and in turn increase ad spends.
Madison Communications India CMD Sam Balsara:
“The need of the hour is to stimulate consumption. The cost of television advertising is already very high because of fragmentation and will now further go up by 3 per cent because of the increase in service tax. This is going to be a dampener for the industry. The government is consistently failing to exploit the potential of advertising as a fuel to drive growth in the economy.”
Ulka client services director MG Parameswaran, who is also Ad Club Bombay chairperson – programmes committee:
Parmeswaran says the increase in service tax is a dampener for the advertising industry. The money otherwise spent on media by clients is not going to increase, he notes as ad budgets are not likely to see an increase in the coming year.
On the other hand, the reduction of excise duties on items like motorcycles, soft drinks and biscuits will translate into an increase in consumer demand, which could have an indirect but positive effect on advertising around these products.
Reduction of duties in sectors like health care, pharmaceuticals and information technology will mean that these sectors which have just discovered the power of advertising will be spurred to spend more on advertising across different media, says Parmeswaran.
Initiative Media president and Lowe group India director Ashish Bhasin:
Bhasin says: “It is a good budget from the common man but there could have been some more benefits and relief. For the entertainment industry, there could have been more sops. The budget has attempted to make improvements in the procedural areas – for instance the VAT related reforms and other simplication. The service tax levels increasing to 8 per cent will definitely affect the advertising industry.”
Optimum Media Solutions executive vice president Amit Ray:
Ray says: “As far as I am concerned, the service tax didn’t exist some time back and now it has become eight per cent – for me the increase has been from zero to eight.
“However, generally speaking, consumers will benefit from the budget and this will encourage spending and benefit marketers of products and services.”
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.
