News Broadcasting
Brands ready to outshine on Diwali
Inflation be damned! Diwali is here and consumers are more than willing to loosen their purse strings. Exactly, why a majority of brands go all out to woo them.
It is a critical period for most companies and hence, elaborate plans are made to reach out to consumers, says Llyod Mathias
In any case, most companies are known to allocate nearly 25 to 35 per cent of their marketing budget to the festive season. Not surprisingly, it’s that time of the year when newspaper supplements get to look fatter and fancier, and television ads and hoardings get a colourful new lease of life.
Says marketing veteran Lloyd Mathias: “It is a critical period for most companies – consumer durables, auto, paints etc. – and hence, elaborate plans are made to reach out to consumers, who are also not hesitant to shell out money.”
Apart from aggressively marketing existing products, many brands even launch new products.
Titan, for instance, has launched a new campaign featuring Katrina Kaif to promote its latest Raga collection – Raga Pearls. Says global marketing head Rajan Amba: “In addition to Raga, we also have outdoor campaigns for our premium brands – Nebula & Xylys.” In a first, Titan plans to offer a Tanishq gold pendant free with every purchase below Rs 70,000, and a Tanishq gold and diamond pendant free with every purchase about Rs 70,000. Titan also plans to launch 180 variants in keeping with the festive spirit.
At Raga we strive to create memorable stories every year, explains Rajan Amba, The World Gold Council, undeterred by soaring gold prices, has launched its new collection named Azva. “This season is the main spending time for us and will go all out with it. GECs, movies, music, regional channels as well as OOH and print will be utilized in the 360 degree marketing plan to optimize sales,” says WGC jewellery director Vipin Sharma.
There’s no undermining the importance of sweets during Diwali, and this year, Cadbury plans to leverage the entire Mondelez International Portfolio to create a cross-category gift pack containing Cadbury chocolates, Choclairs, Cadbury Bournvita and Oreo biscuits for customers. “As we get into the Diwali season, we will again look at getting consumers to celebrate the true spirit of the festival. The essence of the festival, of spending time together with your loved ones, seems to have been lost. Through, Cadbury Celebrations thus, we look forward to actually enabling people to come together and spend quality time this Diwali,” says Cadbury India chocolate – gifting & strategy AVP Amarpreet Anand. At Cadbury, gifting is all about re-establishing closeness with loved ones which seems to have been replaced in today’s age of technology, busy lives and consumerism; Anand points out.
In sharp contrast, PepsiCo India plans to capitalize on the ‘sweets overkill’ to promote their salty snack brand Kurkure.
Vipin Sharma says that the festive season is the main spending time and WGC will go all out with it
“Over the years, through its campaigns that encourage consumers to spend more time with family, Kurkure has constantly re-invented itself to remain relevant to the Indian ethos and culture.
Festivals hold special importance in our annual marketing calendar and offer an ideal platform to reach out to consumers. Kurkure, with its unique take on celebrations, seeks to cut down the excessive sweetness that accompanies celebrations. So every year around the festival season, we bring in new flavours and innovative gifting options that strengthen our much loved proposition of ‘Zyaada Meetha ho Gaya? Iss Diwali Muh Kurkure Karo’,” says PepsiCo India Indian snacks category director Nalin Sood. Indeed, Kurkure is launching a new range of ‘Raja Rani’ gift packs designed by Ray and Keshavan, a leading South Asian brand & design consulting firm.
The festive period also sees a lot of consumer spending in the FMCG and automobile categories. Says Godrej Appliances sales & marketing executive VP Kamal Nandi: “At Godrej, our attempt is to delight our consumers with Best in Class innovative products. Continuing this tradition, we are launching a breakthrough technology in washing machines, which will be a revolution in this category and most of our marketing activity will be focusing on this product this festive season The pre-launch phase of this special campaign has already been launched on digital media and which in itself is a first of its kind initiative in the industry.”
Godrej plans to focus on consumer engagement through facebook and YouTube apart from regular digital advertising, SEM, etc.
Godrej plans to focus on consumer engagement through facebook and YouTube apart from regular digital advertising, SEM etc, elaborates Kamal Nandi
Similarly, Fiat Group Automobiles India has come up with a new ad for its recently launched Linea Classic. The campaign showcases Fiat Linea Classic as an affordable car designed to make the sedan far more accessible to hatchback users, in turn making them ‘feel big’.
In the electronics segment, Dell India has kicked off its ‘Celebrate Dell Se’ campaign a few weeks ago, part of which is the ‘Hint a Gift’ TV commercial for its Inspiron notebooks. Says Dell India marketing director Ritu Gupta: “Building an emotional connection between our customers and technology is integral to Dell’s branding strategy. In line with our on-going achievement “I can do kuch bhi” campaign, we decided this festive season to inspire the youth with the idea that they have the power to get what they want by hinting to their loved ones about their preferred gift for Diwali, which in this case is the Dell Inspiron range of touch laptops.”
All said, brands may try to outdo and outshine one another but it is ultimately up to the customer to decide which one to give preference to…
News Broadcasting
Newsrooms rethink AI, trust and revenue models
Editors and tech leaders debate tools, deepfakes and viability.
MUMBAI: If yesterday’s newsroom ran on caffeine and chaos, tomorrow’s may well run on code but with a human still holding the pen. At the 22nd edition of the Video Broadcast and Broadband Tech Summit hosted by IndianTelevision.com, some of the sharpest minds in Indian media gathered to examine how artificial intelligence, automation and shifting audience behaviour are reshaping journalism. The session, titled The Newsroom of Tomorrow Tools, Trust, and Business Viability In Focus, did not descend into techno-utopian hype. Instead, it wrestled with a more uncomfortable question: how do you stay relevant, credible and profitable when the audience is changing faster than the headline cycle?
The panel featured Govindraj Ethiraj, Editor of The Core, Dr Nilesh Khare, COO of Sakal Media Group; Prakaran Tiwari, Chief Executive Producer at NDTV Profit; Manoj Padmanabhan, Head of Business Media and Entertainment at AWS; Neeraj Mishra, Key Account Manager at Vizrt and session chair; and Mayuresh Konnur, Bilingual Correspondent at Collective Newsroom, publisher for BBC in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj set the tone with a frank assessment. “The reason people do not consume as much news through us is because they are consuming news through other sources they trust more,” he said. In a fragmented ecosystem flooded with content, trust has become the real differentiator.
Yet AI is undeniably transforming workflows. Ethiraj admitted he now uses AI tools to proofread his own articles. “Sometimes it is scary how much it picks, but it helps,” he said. What once required layers of sub-editing can now be assisted by machines trained to flag errors, inconsistencies and structural weaknesses.
He pointed to how newsroom roles have evolved. The desk editor, widely advertised over the last 15 years, barely existed in its current form before the internet boom. As digital publishing accelerated, tasks such as curating listicles, ranking stories and optimising headlines became specialised functions. Now, many of those responsibilities can be performed or at least supported by AI systems. The disruption is not hypothetical; it is operational.
Dr Nilesh Khare approached the issue from both a business and technological standpoint. Sakal Media Group is developing its own large language model, built on 60 years of text and photo archives. The goal is independence. “We won’t need to depend on other platforms to develop ours,” he said, underscoring the strategic value of proprietary data.
For Khare, AI represents opportunity as much as anxiety. It can help expand content across geographies and languages, particularly in bridging North and South Indian markets. It can streamline production and reduce costs. He did not shy away from the implications. “As a journalist I feel bad but as a content producer I feel good that we will require less manpower,” he said, articulating a tension many in the room recognised but few openly admit.
He also highlighted how audience behaviour is evolving. Today, a retail investor can follow a stock using Gemini or GPT instead of toggling between multiple news channels. News is no longer consumed linearly; it is queried, personalised and synthesised. The newsroom must therefore produce content that survives not just on screens but within AI-generated summaries.
Prakaran Tiwari offered a more philosophical reflection. “AI has developed itself and adapted on the basis of how news is consumed. It’s all about giving a perspective,” he said. In his view, the competitive edge will not lie in speed alone but in interpretation. Facts are increasingly commoditised; context is not.
He also suggested that formats are fluid. While short-form video dominates social feeds, long-form audio is resurging. Govindraj Ethiraj noted that in the United States the 2024 election was described as the “podcast election”, reflecting how audiences are investing time in deeper, long-form discussions. The newsroom of tomorrow must cater to both scrolling and sustained listening.
Manoj Padmanabhan of AWS reframed the debate. Technology, he argued, is not an existential threat but an amplifier. “The power is given to the human journalist with all this technology in their hand, with it acting as a support or assistant to deliver the correct and relevant news to the people,” he said.
The traditional divide between a “normal” newsroom and a “digital” newsroom is fading. “It will not be two newsrooms,” he said. “It will be one newsroom.” In that integrated environment, the storyteller remains central. AI may assist with research, editing and distribution, but editorial judgement remains human.
Neeraj Mishra of Vizrt echoed the assistive narrative. India, he said, is a market of organised chaos, where news broadcasters are pushing ever-increasing volumes of content. AI will help manage scale. It is not here to replace people but to assist them.
Production barriers are already collapsing. “You don’t need a green screen to produce content now,” Mishra observed, hinting at virtual production tools and real-time rendering technologies. And this, he said, is only the beginning. In a cost-conscious market like India, AI adoption in both B to B and B to C segments is likely to rise sharply. The skills are available, he argued, the real question is whether organisations are willing to invest.
If opportunity was one half of the conversation, risk was the other. Mayuresh Konnur warned that fake news is now being peddled with alarming ease using AI tools. Deepfakes, synthetic audio and fabricated visuals can damage credibility overnight. Several journalists, he said, have already faced instances where manipulated content was circulated in their name.
“Eventually it becomes a question of how authentic you are in the market,” Konnur noted. In a crowded information economy, credibility is the ultimate moat. Regulations and clear guidelines, he argued, are necessary to curb misuse without stifling innovation.
Mishra added a note of caution against overuse. “AI should not be everywhere. It has to be used optimally,” he said. The value lies not in blanket automation but in strategic integration.
One of the most resonant metaphors came from Padmanabhan. AI, he suggested, is like a brush in a human hand. Powerful, versatile, transformative but inert without the artist. It cannot survive without the human touch.
Konnur distilled the session’s core takeaway, AI is inevitable, but the art of storytelling will never disappear.
In a media landscape defined by speed, shrinking attention spans and intense competition, the newsroom of tomorrow is not simply a technological upgrade. It is a recalibration. Between efficiency and ethics. Between automation and authenticity. Between reducing manpower and retaining meaning.
The algorithms may write cleaner copy and generate sharper graphics. They may even predict what audiences want before audiences know it themselves. But the enduring task remains unchanged to tell stories that inform, interrogate and inspire.
And for that, the human newsroom is still very much open for business.
