Mediaedge: cia (MEC), one of the media arms of the WPP group has a reason to cheer this new year. The account is estimated to be worth approx. Rs. 50 crore.

The decision was taken after a multi-agency pitch conducted by ZEEL. The agency has been given media duties by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. Earlier, the account was handled by Madison Media. Though, it will handle media duties for Essel Group.

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, a subsidiary of Essel Group currently operates over 15 different television channels including Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee Premier, Zee Action, Zee Classic, Ten Sports, Zee Sports, Zee Cafe, Zee Studio, Zee Trendz, Zee Jagran, Zing, ETC Music and ETC Punjabi.

The Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) has announced a national campaign against dishonest, misleading and indecent advertisements. Through the campaign, ASCI aims to encourage the youth, public as well as the advertising fraternity to act against unethical advertising.

ASCI will promote the campaign through print, television (10 second commercials), hoardings, banners and posters. Lectures and presentations will be given by ASCI officials at schools and colleges to gain support from the youth.

Speaking more about the campaign Prof. Dhananjay Keskar, chairman of the board of ASCI said, “ASCI firmly believes in the power of the common man, especially women, in India. We believe that to effectively regulate advertisements across India, masses will have to come forward and report misleading and indecent advertisements they come across. So much so that they can even verbally report on advertisement. This is a strong call of appeal to viewers, consumers and masses to become active agents in keeping the advertisements clean and honest.”

The campaign will give people access to reach ASCI through phone, sms, email id or simply writing a letter to them.

Solutions Digitas has appointed Nandu Narsimhan as National Creative Director. Narsimhan was earlier working with Saatchi & Saatchi as executive creative director for its Delhi and Bengaluru branches.

Confirming the news, Narasimhan said, “I am very excited with this new role as I would be shifting to new age and digital media. This is the kind of role that has been on the top of my mind for quite some time now, and there is a lot of scope of learning in this new role as well.”

Kanika Mathur, co-founder and CEO, Solutions Digitas, also added, “Nandu is extremely talented, versatile and seasoned advertising professional. And, we are proud to have him as a part of our team.”

Narsimhan started his career with Tara Sinha Associates in 1989 as a copywriter. He later worked with Vyas Giannetti Creative (VGC), Everest Integrated Communications, Delhi, Lowe (then Lintas), TBWA/India, Contract and then moved on to Saatchi & Saatchi Delhi.

In his decade long career, Narsimhan has worked for accounts like Maruti, Xerox, Dabur, Domino’s Pizza, Sony Ericson and Mother Dairy and many more.

Entertainment today is not restricted to television; at least this is what the young generation thinks. MTV Insight Studio (the research arm of MTV India) conducted a study named ‘Recreation Redefined’, where it surveyed 3000 youngsters (15-24 yr olds, SEC A & B) in 16 Indian cities. The study revealed facts regarding the redefined entertainment by the youth.

Aditya Swamy, senior vice president, sales and marketing, MTV India says, “The speed and comfort with which young people are adopting and adapting, makes this a very exciting time for youth marketers. We at MTV enjoy the sheer challenge of trying to stay ahead of this formula 1 generation. Our approach with this study has been to understand what entertainment means to young people by immersing ourselves in their world, talking their language and understanding their symbols and I hope this serves a useful tool to all of us who are looking to get a greater return on our marketing investments.”

He further added, “One is that recreation has transformed from being a single activity, to that involving many activities. People want to play and play equally, whether it comes to experimentation, enjoyment, work, relationships,” he says. “Secondly, the adoption is trends is much faster in small towns. Youngsters in such towns are more experimentative with the choices for recreation as well. Thirdly, categories such as telecom are seen as more fun because there is so much you can do with the cell phone – chat, download, call, play games and more.”

The study also revealed that youngsters prefer role models like Dhoni over Rahul Dravid. The reason being the attitudes they exhibit under pressure. For Instance, Dravid looks soaked up but Dhoni appears to be having fun and under control.

Facts revealed from the study:

25,800 minutes are spent by young India on entertainment every month, that’s 60% of their time.

Chatting, and not social networking is the most popular entertainment activity on the internet with 82% people on chat versus 40% who are into social networking.

Youth in small and emerging towns are more avid gamers as compared to those in bigger cities.

After a multi-agency pitch initiated by SBI Mutual Fund, the media duties of SBI MF have been given over to Allied Media. Allied Media is the media planning, evaluation and buying agency of Percept Limited (which handles the creative duties of SBI MF). The account is estimated to be worth Rs. 30 crores.

The media duties for SBI have already commenced from January 1, 2010 and has been confirmed as Agency On Record across print, TV and radio.

Commenting on the win, PM Balakrishna, Vice President, Allied Media, said, “SBI Mutual Fund is a brand leader and clearly the largest mutual fund house in the country. They are veterans at consistently delivering value to their customers, and our objective is to add value by creating and delivering a wholesome 360-degree media solution to reach their wide base of customers. Our past experience, innovative media marketing proprietary tools and the support of the Percept Media’s inherent capabilities and strengths will enable us to provide a holistic media strategy for the brand, which will be effective and efficient.”

Allied Media won the account over other contenders which included Lintas, GroupM, Motivator and Lodestar.

22 Feet, a specialized digital agency which had come into existence last year has added another creative brain on board. The agency has appointed Vineet Gupta as managing partner. This makes him the fourth managing partner along with Brijesh Jacob, Deepak Nair and Vinod Moolacherry. Prior to this, Gupta was working at Microsoft Advertising as head of trade marketing initiative.

Confirming the news, Gupta added, “We haven’t seen the use of digital creativity in India to its full potential yet.” He adds that the digital medium is much more than a response or lead generation mechanism.

Gupta has spent three and a half years with Star Network’s English channels i.e. Star Movies and Star World, and four years at Microsoft Advertising. Gupta’s experience and background at Microsoft will add on to the power house at 22 Feet.

“Vineet and his thoughts match a lot with what we have in mind for 22 Feet,” concluded Jacob.

Yahoo! has tied up with travel portal Yatra.com to promote the latter. According to the deal, Yahoo! will feature Yatra.com as the recommended travel website on Yahoo! India homepage.

Display advertisements of Yatra.com will also feature on the homepage, finance and news sections of Yahoo! Yatra.com will advertise on Yahoo! through display ads, search and a recommended partner.

Bharat Malik, Head (Online Marketing), Yatra.com confirmed and said, “It is a long-term partnership, whereby we will harness the strengths of Yahoo!, the preferred destination of Indian internet users. It will enable us to increase the brand awareness and have a positive impact on our advertising in other online mediums as well.”

Commenting on the strategic alliance, Yahoo! India, Managing Director, Arun Tadanki, said, “Our advertising partnership with Yatra.Com leverages various properties of Yahoo! India to provide strong visibility to this travel portal.”

Network 18 has appointed Lakshmi Narasimhan as CEO, Web 18 (web and mobile arm of Network 18). Narasimhan was earlier the CEO of Infomedia18, the group’s special interest publishing and printing operations business.

Haresh Chawla, Group CEO, Network18, has said, “With this re-alignment, Network18 aims to establish independent focus on its fast-expanding web and mobile business and at the same time ensure that all its offline media assets are leveraged digitally. Web18 is a high-thrust business for the Group and we are delighted that Lakshmi will now drive this business.”

The senior management re-alignment move is to focus on its web and mobile businesses and digital convergence at the group.