Author: Kashmeera Sambamurthy

FIFA World Cup 2022: How many Indians watched the football matches so far?

In a statement issued on 1 December, FIFA officially shares that World Cup Qatar 2022 is continuing to engage TV audiences around the world. In Japan, the group game between Japan and Costa Rica on 27 November drew an average audience of 36.37 million viewers. This surpassed the audience of their comeback against Germany in their tournament opener by over 10 million and was 74 percent higher than the average domestic group stage audience during the FIFA World Cup in 2018. (Image courtesy: JioCinema, Twitter, Network18)

The cumulative reach for the first 48 matches of the tournament has touched 42.2 million, as per BARC data for Cable & Satellite (CS) 2+ audience.

Biz Moves: Cake India, Team Pumpkin and Verve Media

Havas Group India’s creative agency, Cake India won the mandate of Hyderabad Black Hawks, one of the leading teams of Prime Volleyball League. Here, the agency is also working with the players to build their brands in the context of the Prime Volleyball League. (Representative image via Unsplash)

Keep up with all the key business wins and account movements.

Throwback: Tourism advertising and “MP Ajab Hai”, storytelling in silhouette

A lesser known performing art form called shadowgraphy or ‘ombromanie” was used for the execution of the television commercial. Having ancient roots, this art form uses hands, finger movements, and positions to depict various forms by way of shadows on a curtain. The black and white shadowgraphy showcased tigers in the wild as the jingle rang, “Ek nahi, do nahi, sekado yahain sher hai”. (Stills from the ad)

Tourism was sluggish in Madhya Pradesh till the mid 2000s. Ashwani Lohani was brought in to MP Tourism Development Corporation to build tourism to MP. He revived the Corporation and brought in Ogilvy India to promote MP tourism.

Weekly Shorts: Three most interesting things in influencer marketing this week

While personal care has always been among the top ten violating categories, in the past two years, it has risen to the top three on account of high volumes of ads violating ASCI’s guidelines. The launch of influencer guidelines in May 2021 along with ASCI’s proactive monitoring using AI-based tools has added to the increased number of ads under scrutiny. (Representative image via Unsplash)

What’s buzzing in influencer marketing and the creator ecosystem? What’s the next big thing coming down the line? Catch the big trends and hot topics in our weekly shorts.

Myntra ropes in Sunder Balasubramanian from Coupang as CMO

Sunder Balasubramanian, chief marketing officer, Myntra, says, "Social commerce started from what GenZ look for in terms of the kind of influencers that they trust and find authenticity in. What we've seen is the adoption of social commerce strongly over the last few months and quarters itself, over 20 percent of our users interact with our social commerce property. We have done more than 10,000 live shopping sessions. And over time as we build the property, we've seen a 3X increase in traffic for each of the live sessions."

In July this year, Achint Setia, who had served as head of marketing at Myntra, joined Zalora Group (Singapore) as chief revenue and marketing officer.

Machine-made biryani is here! How startup food brands are adding robotics to menus

In the next few years, these kinds of machines would possibly be seen in households as well. For instance, Up, stylised as Up⤴, a consumer hardware startup founded by Mahek Mody and Mohit Sharma, has piloted a machine that can help prepare food with minimal fuss and in double-quick time. The device, called delishUp and comes with an app, and it can chop, stir and generally prepare food faster.(Representative image via Unsplash)

Restaurants, cloud kitchens and corporate offices are increasingly relying on machines to prepare food so that it’s faster, cheaper and removes human dependency, among other benefits. A few Indian startups like Mukunda Foods, Xook and On2Cook are trying to build the so-called food-as-a-service (FaaS) business by adding robotics to the kitchen menu. These machines guarantee to prepare food faster with consistency without or minimal human labour.