Amer Jaleel and Arun Iyer named Chief Creative Officers

After the recent news of the global union of IPG agencies Mullen, and Lowe and Partners (to form Mullen Lowe Group), the India operation of the network, Lowe Lintas + Partners is now rebranded as Mullen Lowe Lintas Group. As part of this move, the Group also announces their plans for a two-creative-agency structure. In addition to Lowe Lintas, the group will be soon launching an independent new creative agency, Mullen Lintas.

Amer Jaleel and Arun Iyer, currently joint National Creative Directors at Lowe Lintas have been promoted to Chief Creative Officers.  Arun Iyer takes on the role of CCO at Lowe Lintas, and Amer Jaleel takes on the role of Chairman and CCO of the newly created agency, Mullen Lintas.

R.Balakrishnan ( Balki ) and Joseph George ( Joe ) continue as Group Chairman and Group CEO respectively, of Mullen Lowe Lintas Group.

Arun Iyer joined Lowe Lintas in 2003 and became National Creative Director in 2010, along with Amer. Over the years, he has been the force behind some of India’s most celebrated campaigns for brands including Tanishq, Fastrack, Idea Cellular, Surf Excel, Kissan, Flipkart, Britannia, Axis Bank, Freecharge and many more. Arun firmly believes in work that makes brands a part of popular culture. His campaigns have consistently swept effectiveness awards around the world including Kissanpur, which won India’s first ever Silver at 4A’s Jay Chiat Awards in 2014.

On being appointed CCO for Lowe Lintas, Arun says, “I’ve spent most of my career at Lowe Lintas and have thoroughly enjoyed the journey so far. Right now, we’ve got great momentum on all fronts and we’re committed to making it better. I am delighted at the opportunity to run the creative function at the agency in the rapidly evolving marketing landscape, and confident that we will keep Lowe Lintas ahead of that curve.”

Amer Jaleel has been with Lowe Lintas since 2002 and has been National Creative Director for the last 5 years. He has led the creative on some of the most iconic brands managed by the agency. As global creative lead on Unilever’s Lifebuoy business, he has contributed disproportionately to the brand’s success over the past decade in India and across the world; built brands like Micromax and Havells from scratch into billion dollar plus businesses; and conceived and led the journey for Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re’ movement. Amer’s portfolio over the years has also

included some great work on Google, OLX, Maruti Suzuki, Hindustan Times and Bajaj. More recently, the Lifebuoy initiative ‘Help a Child Reach 5’ was named among the most effective campaigns in the world (WARC 100, 2015).

Speaking of his new role at Mullen Lintas, Amer says, “I’ve always worked in large and established setups. To be entrusted with building a new agency from scratch is both humbling and exciting at the same time. I am looking forward to the journey of growing and nurturing Mullen Lintas to fulfill the group’s ‘large agency’ ambition for this independent venture."

Mullen Lintas will start operations on August 1st, 2015.

The Social Media story that created a first of its kind crowd-sourced story co-authored by storytellers from across the Twitter-verse

Star India’s latest offering – Star Movies Select HD – has been a delight for all English movie lovers as they are showcasing the best stories from all the genres. The promise of 365 days, 365 stories is exciting, fresh and for the first time gives all the viewers an opportunity to revel amidst fascinating stories.

Now, for a channel that’s custom-made for the discerning audience, who cherish wonderful stories – Star Movies Select HD scripted its social media launch journey with a distinct insight.

Star Movies Select HD wants to bring back the joy of storytelling to social media.

Stories – one word that’s powerful enough to hold an entire world in it. We all have a point of view on every story we come across. But, what about those stories? Has anyone ever wondered what it feels like to be a story? The launch campaign of the channel introduced the point of view of stories to the world – one tweet at a time – with #IfIWereAStory

The audience gave the conversation a resounding response - millions of impressions and 1000’s of authors took twitter by storm making #IfIWereAStory trend No. 1 nationally. The campaign even saw international brands participate in response to the hashtag #IfIWereAStory”.

The day ended with a promise – #IfIWereAStory I would be on #StarMoviesSelect

The audience made it loud and clear that they know stories and would love to create them. Star Movies Select HD then set out on spectacular task – to create a crowd-sourced Tweet-Story, like never before.

They started the story with a situation. How the story went, its twists and turns – its climax everything was then shared by their followers who naturally became the co-authors of this first-of-its-kind Tweet-Story. This truly engaging social media campaign saw over 14,000 mentions and over 49 Million impressions.

It is time to add pages to the brand new story of Star Movies Select HD, together.

The latest report released by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council centers on how marketing can more effectively generate qualified sales leads through compelling thought leadership content—a task that has proven to be a struggle for marketers today.

In fact, only 12 percent of marketers believe they have high-performance content marketing engines that are strategically programmed to target the right audiences with relevant and persuasive content.

The CMO Council partnered with NetLine Corporation for a Content ROI Center study—entitled “Lead Flow That Helps You Grow”— that finds most companies lack unanimity on what constitutes an actual sales lead. They are also not teaming effectively with sales and business development groups to create alignment on demand generation strategies, themes and advocacy agendas.

The report features findings from a survey of more than 200 senior-level marketers across a broad range of industries, in addition to interviews with marketing executives at IBM, SAP, Thermo Fisher Scientific, OpenText, CA Technologies and Informatica. The research provides an in-depth, well-rounded view on how content marketing strategies are being managed, how content performance is being measured, and to what degree content is packaged, promoted and syndicated to generate optimal lead flow.

They drive sales, grow market share and build shareholder value

Brand is among the most valuable financial assets of modern corporations. Brand contributes more to shareholder value creation than any other asset – tangible or intangible. Strong brands help drive sales, grow market share and build shareholder value. They’re a key to the success of many of today’s leading stock market winners.

Valuable brands deliver superior return to their shareholders. We matched a portfolio of brands from our BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands against the performance of the S&P 500 over the past 10 years. The BrandZ™ portfolio grew by 102.6 percent, substantially outperforming the S&P 500 Index, which grew only 63 percent.

As revealed in this 10th Anniversary of our BrandZ™ Top 100 Global ranking, market disruptions and changing consumer attitudes about consumption and corporate responsibility will make building and sustaining strong brands vital over the next decade. In this new normal, measuring Brand Value and mining the rich insights embedded in those valuations also are becoming even more important. We see examples every day.

An IPO raises record funding based on past performance and future promise. But soon after the IPO, the stock weakens. How does an entrepreneur restore the brand to its upward trajectory?

A company makes a substantial investment to expand its brand. But brand isn’t a static mission statement. Brand becomes fully formed only when it’s activated. How does a company motivate the entire organization to align behind the brand?

It’s time to pursue a merger or acquisition. How does a company assess the value of the potential purchase? And after the purchase, how does the company quickly understand how the brand is perceived in the minds of consumers worldwide, country-by-country?

Impact on sales, bottom line, shareholder value

The answers to these questions affect sales, the bottom line and shareholder value. Consider Alibaba. The Chinese e-commerce giant achieved a record IPO and entered the BrandZ™ Global Top 100 for the first time this year, rising immediately to number 13 and passing Walmart and Amazon to reach the top of the retail category. But soon after its IPO, Alibaba’s share price weakened.

Consumer insights based on BrandZ™ data could help reverse this trend, as indicated by the example of another Chinese Internet company. Autohome is the leading online automobile news, social media and purchase site in China, providing independent and interactive content to automobile buyers and owners. Its IPO raised $120 million. After the IPO, the CEO decided he wanted to focus on shaping the business to meet the future needs of existing and new customers.

Based on BrandZ™ research and findings, the Autohome board decided to expand into e-commerce and the used car business with an aligned brand vision, summarized as “Lead everything auto.” Revenue year-on-year increased by 82.1 percent to $100.5 million for the first quarter of 2015, and Autohome’s share price increased 72 percent.

Now that Autohome has expanded its brand, how can it align the brand through the organization? First inspire people with the brand and its purpose. Then, incentivize people to enthusiastically and consistently implement the brand. Several of the BrandZ™ Top 100 Global brands, in North America, China, and India, already use BrandZ™ metrics as an objective bonus KPI to systematically measure and reward brand implementation.

Unparalleled view of consumers

BrandZ™ data also helps companies assess potential mergers and acquisitions. The BrandZ™ valuation authoritatively quantifies the financial value of the target company’s most important intangible asset, its brand. In addition, BrandZ™ data provides an unparalleled view of consumer attitudes about the brand, which is priceless knowledge to have both before and after a merger or acquisition.

The importance of understanding, and strengthening, consumer perception can’t be overstated, as the Apple experience suggests. Consumer belief in the brand sustained Apple as its share price weakened after the death of its founder Steve Jobs. Brand strength provided the space for the company to recover and return with a burst of creativity in the form of iPhone 6, Apple Watch and Apple Pay, which drove a 67 percent gain in brand value and propelled Apple to number one in the BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2015.

The key to achieving and sustaining brand strength at the level that’s required to compete successfully today requires access to the best big data, to insightful analysis that flows from that data, and to the creative talent that can transform the insights into communicating big ideas. And that is ultimately the power of BrandZ™.

Voice of the consumer

The valuations in this BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands report are based on the BrandZ™ methodology, which is explained in detail in the resources section at the end of the report. To understand why BrandZ™ can most accurately measure brand value and provide rich customer insights it’s important to understand these two points:

Big data. BrandZ™ has over 4.5 billion data points. On an ongoing basis we look at 10,000 brands across over 30 country markets. Our data includes over three million in-market quantitative consumer interviews.

Consumer view. Like any brand valuation methodology, BrandZ™ begins with financial information. But we uniquely combine the financial data and our consumer research to calculate the final brand value.

The rich data that provides the basis for brand valuations also forms a uniquely deep and broad reservoir of consumer attitudes at any given time, in just about any place in the world. This is the kind of knowledge and insight that can help guide performance of an IPO, activate brand throughout an organization and evaluate a potential merger or acquisition.

This data can be mined and analyzed for insights about categories, competition, generational values changes - just about any information necessary for brand building. And all of this proprietary knowledge is available to WPP companies and their clients to craft winning brand propositions, create and implement impactful communications, and build strong and valuable brands.

Written by Doreen Wang,Global Director BrandZ™ Millward Brown

Source:Millward Brown

Ketchum Sampark, one of the India’s leading Public Relations & Communications Consultancy firm today announced the appointment of Mr. Surajeet Das Gupta as the Chief Operating Officer.

Mr. Das Gupta brings a rich experience of over 30 years as a journalist, having worked with the country’s reputed media houses including India Today, Business Today and Business Standard.

In his new role, Surajeet will be responsible for building firm’s franchise  in India along with fostering key client relationships. His appointment is a part of a broader strategy to build on the agency’s best-in-class India team. Surajeet will be based out of Delhi and will offer strategic counselling to clients and further expand the firm’s creative offering, with his expertise and knowledge.

Commenting on his appointment, Mr. N S Rajan, Global Partner & Managing Director, Ketchum Sampark said, “I am excited to have an experienced professional like Surajeet join our leadership team that will build on the momentum the firm has created with strong franchise and a robust  past performance. Surajeet’s extensive value-added experience and  deep relationships will help  us build new areas of expertise and offerings.”

Mr. Surajeet Das Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, Ketchum Sampark added, “I am looking forward to work with the expert team of Ketchum Sampark. I am particularly excited to channel my expertise and knowledge in a way that brings innovation and new direction, contributing to the growth of the organization. “

Prior to joining Ketchum Sampark, Surajeet has been the National Corporate Editor with Business Standard, responsible for the newspapers pan India operations, covering corporate news and policy matters for more than two decades. During his stint as a journalist with varied media houses, Surajeet has extensively covered the country’s top brass corporates, specializing in key business areas including telecom, consumer durables and electronics, IT, media and entertainment, FMCG, aviation, automobiles, foreign investment policies, etc.

Surajeet comes with a strong hold and understanding of the crises and has covered all the crisis and key battles in India INC over the last two decades