Author: Kashmeera Sambamurthy

Global ad spend to hit $772.4 billion in 2024: Dentsu

For global advertising to thrive in the 21st century, it must do more than acknowledge Indian talent — it must actively integrate it into decision-making processes. The industry cannot afford to treat India as an afterthought.

Dentsu Global Ad Spend Forecasts report also states that digital is expected to remain the fastest-growing channel, with a projected increase of 9.2 percent in 2025 to reach $513.0 billion and capture 62.7 percent of global ad spend.

Unilever’s global chief of transformation Nicky Sparshott quits

Nicky Sparshott began her career at HP as sales and marketing coordinator, and then joined Procter & Gamble as brand manager. Then, she joined Unilever as assistant brand manager and then moved to The Coca Cola Company as senior marketing manager.

During her tenure, Nicky Sparshott led the Unilever Global Transformation Office to design and land complex organizational change initiatives, at scale, enhancing efficiency, innovation, competitive advantage and value creation.

OpenAI gets its first-ever CMO; Coinbase’s Kate Rouch joins Sam Altman’s AI firm as CMO

Kate Rouch began her career as a consultant at The Bridgespan Group, and then worked at Meta. During her stint at Meta as vice president, global head of brand and product marketing, Rouch spent over a decade at Meta. She led brand and product marketing for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook. (Image source: Kate Rouch and Sam Altman (Chan Zuckerberg Biohub))

Kate Rouch previously led Coinbase as chief marketing officer.

Amagi acquires Argoid AI to accelerate AI-driven innovation in the M&E industry

Argoid’s founders, Gokul Muralidharan, Soundararajan Velu, and Chackaravarthy E, will join the Amagi team.

By integrating Argoid AI’s algorithms into Amagi’s existing platform, this acquisition will boost the functionality of Amagi’s product suite, Amagi NOW and CLOUDPORT offerings, enabling media companies to make faster, smarter, and personalized content scheduling decisions at scale.

Bumble restructures senior leadership team

Bumble Inc announced key updates to the company’s senior leadership team and reaffirmed the company’s outlook for fiscal year 2024. (From left to right: Anu Subramanian, Neil Shah and Selby Drummond)

Neil Shah has been appointed as chief business officer. Anu Subramanian and Selby Drummond announced plans to depart from their roles as chief financial officer and chief marketing officer to pursue opportunities outside the company.

Adobe Appoints Lara Balazs as Chief Marketing Officer

Lara Balazs previously served as CMO and General Manager, Strategic Partner Group at financial software and services leader Intuit, where she reimagined the company’s brand and go-to-market activities to support its AI-driven financial technology platform and elevated its brand awareness and reputation to new heights.

Lara Balazs will lead the Global Marketing Organization responsible for Adobe’s brand, Adobe.com, the company’s industry-leading events, campaigns, communications, social media and its media operations and marketing insights.

Intel Corporation’s CEO Patrick Gelsinger steps down

Patrick P. Gelsinger has more than four decades of technology leadership and experience driving innovation, with 30 of those years serving in Intel engineering and executive roles.

Intel Corporation has named named chief financial officer David Zinsner and senior executive Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim co-chief executive officers.

InspiRAYtion 15 – All criticism must be preceded by possession. The Jaguar canard

But to say you can’t criticise something because you will never be an owner is a canard that needs a wee bit of interrogation, writes adman Rayomand J Patell. (Image Source: Simon Furlonger)

Brands are our collective aspirations; our hopes and dreams, our line in the sand about quality and choice meaning something to us at a deep level. To attempt to negate that, is to reveal a shocking lack of understanding on what brands mean to people, writes ad man Rayomand J Patell.