Brands
World Media Awards: Maxus India recognised for Tata campaign, wins gold in ‘automotive’
MUMBAI: Maxus, a part of GroupM, has bagged Grand Prix at the World Media Awards 2017 for their campaign “From Zica to Tiago” for Tata Motors. The campaign also won the Gold in Automotive category for the campaign.
The campaign was created when Tata’s new car Zica was just 3 weeks away from the launch and the World Health Organization declared Zika, the virus as a global emergency. Consumers started associating Zica, the car with Zika, the virus and it was becoming a great threat to the brand image.
Maxus conceptualized, created and implemented a three-stage approach to overcome the challenge and thus launched the ‘Fantastico Name Hunt’. In just three days, the campaign reached 48 million people across 22 target markets. 640,000 engaged and 37,000 names were submitted – garnering $410,000 of earned media coverage along the way. Google searches for ‘Zica’ totally dropped and ‘Tiago’ surged, showing that consumers were on board with the change.
An elated Maxus South Asia managing director Kartik Sharma said, “This is one of the best examples where a crisis situation is turned into a great opportunity for a brand.”
Within four months of the launch, Tiago received more than 1,20,000 test drive requests which is three times more than any Tata car launch in the last decade. The World Media Awards are designed to benchmark the best in international advertising and communication strategies.
Brands
UK’s OnlyFans seeks US investor at $3bn valuation after owner’s death
The adult video platform is seeking stability after the death of its billionaire owner
LONDON: OnlyFans is looking for a new partner. The London-based adult video platform is in advanced talks to sell a minority stake of less than 20 per cent to Architect Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm, in a deal that would value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).
The move is driven by an urgent need for stability. Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American billionaire who owned OnlyFans, died of cancer last month at the age of 43, leaving the future of one of Britain’s most profitable privately held businesses suddenly uncertain.
The choice of Architect Capital is not arbitrary. The firm has deep expertise in financial services, which aligns neatly with OnlyFans’ ambitions to offer banking products to its creators, many of whom have long struggled to access basic financial services because of the nature of their work.
The numbers behind OnlyFans are, by any measure, staggering. The platform posted revenues of $1.4bn in the year to 30th November 2024, with a pre-tax profit of $684m, up four per cent on the prior year. Payments to creators totalled $7.2bn over the same period, a rise of nearly ten per cent. Radvinsky personally collected $701m in dividends from the business in 2024 alone, on top of more than $1bn in such payments he had already received. The platform, run through its parent company Felix International, hosts 4.6m creator accounts, with performers keeping 80 per cent of subscription proceeds and the platform pocketing the remaining 20 per cent. It has 377m fan accounts in total.
The current minority stake talks represent a notable scaling back of ambitions. In January, OnlyFans was reported to be in discussions with Architect about selling a majority stake of 60 per cent. Before that, the company had explored a sale to a consortium led by Forest Road Company, a Los Angeles-based investment firm. Neither deal materialised.
OnlyFans has built an enormously lucrative business on content that mainstream finance has long refused to touch. Now, with its owner gone and a $3bn valuation on the table, it is looking for the kind of respectable institutional backing that might finally persuade the banks to take its calls.
