Monday, March 26, 2007

The 'Axe' Effect...

Sachin out of Sunfeast ad

We have had meetings whether to continue with the Sachin ad. We may now promote our product through the Shah Rukh Khan ad, as he also endorses the brand. The decision will be taken today- Manager, Sunfeast

Team gets the boot from Reebok

We had a campaign with cricketers like Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh and others. But now, we will drop them and launch a new campaign with basketball and soccer stars in a couple of days - Sajid Shamim from Reebok India

After Friday’s defeat against Sri Lanka, Team India not only lost its popularity among the masses but also suffered a blow in the ad world. Corporates, who had based their ad campaigns on cricket and cricketers, are now on back foot.Sunfeast biscuits’ ad featuring Sachin Tendulkar could soon be off air. The company will instead use the alternative ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan. Pepsi has now pulled out its commercial ‘Ladega to Jeetega’, which featured Virender Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni. Instead, the company has started running an ad shot, yet again, with Shah Rukh Khan, said Pepsi’s publicist.

Sourav Ganguly, who had made a singular comeback, is the brand ambassador for Puma Sports. The company, which was planning a huge campaign with Ganguly has now shelved the plan. “We had done a photo shoot with Ganguly with our products before the World Cup. We were going to follow it up with a huge campaign, but now we have decided to cut costs on the campaign and restrict it to a short one,” said Rajiv Mehta, managing director, Puma Sports. According to advertising agencies, the change of plans follows negative sentiments among Indians about cricketers. Said ad maker Prahlad Kakar, “Sony Entertainment Television and other companies will incur losses to the tune of Rs 150 crore because of the fall in the rate of advertisements as viewership will fall.” The matches were screened on Set Max and Sony Pix.

However, Kunal Das Gupta, CEO of Sony Entertainment Television isn’t worried, “The companies cannot remove any advertisements, as they have already entered into a contract with Sony. They can, however, change their ads.” Rahul Dravid is the brand ambassador of Hutch. According to Genesis, the PR agency for Hutch, the company will not face any problems as their ‘Chalo World Cup’ contest with Dravid was a pre-World Cup one. “Since it ended before the Cup started, we aren’t worried,” said a source.

Source: Mid Day

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