AD Agencies
WAT’s Your Big Idea 2.0 gets bigger
MUMBAI: After the success of its inaugural edition last year, digital and social media agency WATConsult has launched WAT’s Your Big Idea (WYBI) 2.0. It is the second season of WYBI, a digital ideation competition for colleges across India that provides a unique platform and opportunities to the next generation in the field of digital advertising and marketing.
This year, besides the cash prize, endorsed certificate, and an assured job offer, the winning team will also get an opportunity to visit Cannes Lions in 2018.
During WYBI,students get an opportunity to work on live projects, understand the nuances of creating digital campaigns for notable brands, and showcase their creative skills to the best brand marketers in the country.
The agency has partnered institutes such as MICA, SIMC, IIM Bangalore, IIM Indore, SP Jain, Jamnalal Bajaj, NMIMS, and Jai Hind along with brands like Swarovski, Madame Tussauds, HE face wash, Savlon (ITC Group), Jack and Jones, and Naturolax (Piramal Healthcare).
WATConsult founder and CEO Rajiv Dingra said, “Considering the overwhelming responses from students last year, we decided to offer them an international platform to meet, be inspired, and interact with the advertising stalwarts of the world. The winning team will have the opportunity to win an all-expenses trip to Cannes Lions 2018.”
Dentsu Aegis Network chairman and CEO South Asia Ashish Bhasin added, “Last year was a benchmark setter. The students came up with some exciting and innovative ideas and I am looking forward to the entries this year. WATConsult’s initiative has helped us find some really good talent and we will continue supporting their efforts.”
AD Agencies
The smell that told Mumbaikars which station was next
Tata AIA turns Mumbai’s Parle-G memory into a sharp, city-wise outdoor play
MUMBAI: When a biscuit factory became Mumbai’s unofficial station announcement. Long before smartphone maps and automated announcements, commuters on Mumbai’s Western line relied on their noses. As trains rolled into Vile Parle, compartments filled with the warm, sweet smell of baking biscuits from the Parle-G factory. It was a cue to gather bags, wake dozing children and shuffle towards the door.
Now that memory has been pressed into service by Tata AIA Life Insurance as part of its 25-year anniversary outdoor campaign — a city-by-city salute to the lived moments that shape urban life.
One hoarding, mounted close to the old factory site, reads: “We have been protecting Mumbaikars since Vile Parle smelled of freshly made biscuits.” Spare. Local. Loaded.
The broader campaign, rolled out across major metros, leans hard into contextual storytelling. In Kolkata, it nods to trams. In Pune, to Magarpatta’s transformation. In Bengaluru, to a time before IT parks. In Chennai, to OMR before it led to tech corridors. Each line anchors the brand’s longevity to a shared civic memory.
The Mumbai execution is the most evocative. For decades, the Parle-G factory was more than a production unit. It was a sensory landmark. Residents nearby set their clocks by the factory horn. Office-goers marked their commute by the waft of glucose and flour. When the plant shut, the city lost more than jobs. It lost a rhythm.
By placing the hoarding beside the former factory, the insurer collapses distance between copy and context. The site does half the storytelling. The rest comes from commuters who remember opening steel tiffins packed with Parle-G, or jolting awake as the train slowed.
It is a neat piece of brand positioning. Rather than trumpet balance sheets or policy counts, Tata AIA borrows emotional equity from the city itself. Twenty-five years becomes less a milestone and more a presence — steady, local, embedded.
Outdoor advertising is often a blunt instrument. This one is anything but. It whispers. It remembers. And in doing so, it sells trust without sounding like it is selling at all.
The scent may have faded. The memory has not.
