IPL's big digital surge; Alert! Agencies caught in job-offer scam; Goafest 2023, AI & creativity; Meta's exodus; Indian Ocean speaks, & more

IPL has witnessed a disruptive digital leap in 2023 that has democratised the experience for consumers and advertisers, and taken the league to stratospheric heights. But what are the implications of this for marketers and media planners?

Storyboard18's editor Delshad Irani spoke to a stellar panel of guests on Media Dialogues With Storyboard18 about how they are using the cricket juggernaut to reach and engage with audiences far and wide? And what are the winning strategies of the brands leveraging the big surge?

"Digital advertising will only grow and languages play an integral part. We in Mumbai or Delhi sometimes tend to underestimate the power of languages, it is identity for people in India. So when IPL is televised in Oriya, the joy that it brings to somebody in Orissa; you will have to talk to them to understand."

Watch at the link here or tonight on CNBC-TV18 at 10 PM.

Sudhir Shukla, Jaya Jamrani, Amardeep Singh, Vishal Chinchankar, Naveen Gupta

Goafest 2023: The Future of Creativity

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) recently kickstarted the countdown to Goafest 2023 that is scheduled to be held between 24 and 26 May. Catch up on all that's happening before and during Goafest on Storyboard18 across our platforms.

➡️ AAAI vows to make Goafest, Abby’s relevant for younger adlanders: AAAI is looking to engage the new gen and younger advertising executives by hosting discussions on the future of creativity. Read Saumya Tewari's piece here.

(Anupriya Acharya, Prasanth Kumar, Mohit Joshi -- MoJo, Rana Barua, Ajay Kakar, Jaideep Gandhi)

➡️ Is AI friend or foe? Microsoft's Amrita Thapar and Agnello Dias dispel myths: Artificial Intelligence takes centre stage during a discussion at the curtain raiser of Goafest 2023. Here are the key takeaways.

➡️ What made the cut at ABBY One Show Awards this year?: Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, Ashwini Deshpande, Pallavi Chakravarti, P.G. Aditiya and Sabyasachi Mitter on judging ABBY One Show Awards. More here. By Priyanka Nair

➡️ GOZOOP’s Ahmed Aftab Naqvi calls ABBYs the Indian Premier Advertising Fest. Here’s why.

➡️ The evolution of ABBYs in the past couple of years is quite remarkable: Elephant Design’s Ashwini Deshpande was the jury chair of the Design category of the ABBY One Show Awards. Read.

➡️ Jitender Dabas ( Jeetu ) Dabas on making Goafest great again: Senior advertising executive and McCann WorldGroup India’s COO Jitender Dabas opines on key steps that could steer Goafest to glory again. Find out how.

➡️ ABBY One Show Awards releases Creative ABBY shortlists: 181 companies entered the Creative ABBY 2023 out of which a total of 110 companies were shortlisted after the first two rounds. Catch them here.

Band & Brand Makers

Indian Ocean on making and releasing music in the streaming era, reels, creators and more: Popular Indian folk fusion band Indian Ocean is adapting to new platforms and exploring new ways to distribute and market music, from collaborations with creators and animated music videos to making reels. Read Tasmayee Laha Roy' interview here.

CXO Moves

Keep up with all the key executive moves in the world of brands and agencies in CXO Moves. Click here.

Mondelez International appoints Samir Jain as president, India: Samir Jain joins Mondelez International from Bunge India, where he led the business as managing director for the last 10 years.

Meta India's head of partnerships, Manish Chopra resigns: The growing number of departures raises questions about the ongoing changes and strategic direction within Meta's operations in India.

Dentsu appoints Prerna Singh Mehrotra as chief client officer: She has over two decades of experience, holding senior client-facing and management roles across APAC.

Gurvinder Singh S. joins Persistent as chief marketing officer: Gurvinder, whose previous role was at Wipro, will lead and set the strategic team for the company’s global marketing team.

Plus big moves in and out in the last two weeks - Ashish Lingamneni, Aparna Giridhar, Sunil Gadgil, Ashish Joshi, Karthik Balagopalan, Vignesh Narayanan, Nishit B Vora, Rahool Talukdar, Abhishek Ganguly, Anuja Trivedi, Anand Lakshmanan

Read here.

#ICYMI: Why one ad agency just doesn't cut it anymore.

Why are brands getting together with multiple agency partners? Why are they moving away from the AoR model? The trend of multiple agencies being hired by marketers can be attributed to multiple factors including customer segmentation, younger cohorts and legacy agencies falling short on the promise of integration.

Read. Or get the snapshot here.

(Amit Doshi, Prateek Malpani, Saurabh Varma, Sameer Satpathy)

Share the Spotlight

Dipali Goenka, Rubeena Singh, Preeti.S Nayyar, Disha Singh, Lulu Raghavan, Unmisha Asher, Ayushi Gudwani, Mausumi Kar, Swati Bhargava, Ragini Das, Ghazal Alagh and many more have joined Storyboard18's Share The Spotlight initiative which aims to highlight inspirational stories of women who continue breaking barriers and set the precedent for other women.

The initiative aims to kick off a movement where people from across these communities step up and share their spotlight with other women.

Read on to find out how people across industries have come out to share words of praise and encouragement for each other, appreciating and acknowledging the contributions of so many people who make businesses, brands and workplaces better.

Learn and understand how to face challenges and seize opportunities while bringing along others on the path to progress.

All about #ShareTheSpotlight here and here.

Join the movement!

(Write to Indrani B. if you'd like to share someone's story or just give a shout-out.)

More from Storyboard18

⚠️ Scam messages in the name of well-known agencies: Scammers posing as advertising or digital marketing agency representatives are offering jobs with WFH opportunities. Sudden spike in messages makes more company chiefs go public about the menace. Storyboard18 was the first to report the problem and publish the story to raise awareness. More here. Read Kashmeera Sambamurthy's reports.

(Amaresh Godbole, Unny Radhakrishnan, Lloyd Mathias)

🔥 JioCinema to grab two-thirds of total IPL AdEx this season: This season, the number of sponsors during IPL's digital streaming has reached 26, which is the highest ever for any sporting tournament. Full report.

💡 Simply Speaking: Velvet rope - the tightrope between longing and belonging: In his column, Shubhranshu Singh writes, broadly the quest for status via consumption is an intended outcome of prestige brand consumption. It signals that we have access, to something exciting, enriching and more fun.

❓ #TBH: Can advertising take the lead in bringing social change? Asks shuchi bansal. Gone are the days when brand advertising just meant highlighting the features or attributes of a product. Today, brands are strongly aligning their communication strategies with a cause. Here's the how, why and what happens after.

🥁 Krafton's BGMI makes a comeback in India 10 months after suspension: BGMI becomes the first app among the 300 plus previously banned apps to stage a comeback in the country.

⚡️ How IPL 2023 became a thriving democracy of brands: It wouldn’t be surprising if Digital becomes the mother play of it all, and television regresses into the status of a niche-play. In the bargain every brand can advertise, writes Harish Bijoor. Read his guest column.

☀️ Weekly Shorts: Granfluencers' experimentations with social media: 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. (affable.ai Influencer Marketing Platform, Pooja ParasuRaman)

🎯 IPL on digital ensures laser sharp targeting for brands, says DDB Mudra’s Chirag Bhatia: He talks about advertisers seeing good ROI and reduced ad spend waste in IPL 2023 on JioCinema. Read.

➡️ Online retail in Indian garners $60B GMV in FY23; Flipkart Group maintains market share: Ads monetisation contributed $1.2 billion in revenue for Indian e-tailers in FY23, according to Redseer's new report.

🚨 Sachin Tendulkar files FIR against misleading advertisement: A website named sachinhealth.in was promoting products by using Tendulkar’s image thus leading to his name and images being used illegally.

🏏 IPL will keep growing on digital medium with the shift happening from TV’s pie: Sangam Nayal of Dentsu. Nayal shares insights on the effectiveness of connected TV advertising during the IPL, the shift from linear TV to CTV, and the reduction in wastage of ad spend on digital platforms.

🎲 Brands in the news for their trade secrets: Whenever a big company’s trade secret is exposed, the company’s brand image is on the line. Critics feel trade secrets and conspiracies are nothing but marketing schemes by brands. Read Indrani B.'s piece here.

💡 Marketing Mocktail: Sight to Insight - consumer insights explained. If brand marketing is the business of ideas, then consumer insights are the illuminating force behind them. Unfortunately, marketers use the word ‘insight’ loosely. Anand Narasimha explains why.

📚 Bookstrapping: What I learned about investing from Darwin by Pulak Prasad: Pulak Prasad draws key lessons from core Darwinian concepts and has mixed it with vivid examples. Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta lists down the insights derived from the book. Rating: 4 Stars. Read.

That's it from us this week. Catch Storyboard18's top stories, features, videos and more here. And watch out for the next Insight Engine newsletter.