Started in 1998, HCL Concert Series provides a platform to upcoming young Indian classical artists to showcase their talent. The intellectual property is an initiative by HCL to nurture Indian Classical Music and Performing Arts Also, as patrons of Indian culture and heritage. The platform is a humble effort in rekindling the interest of today’s generation in classical music and rare art forms, which are slowly fading away into oblivion. HCL recently through a press note revealed the lineup of performers for this year’s edition of the concert series. 4TH September Shiv Kumar Sharma and Rahul Sharma Santoor Takahiro Arai-Tanpura Location- Stein Audi (India Habitat Center) Lodhi Road. 5th September Shiv Kumar Sharma-Santoor Hari Prasad Chaurasia-Bansuri Bhawani Shankar=Pakhwaj Takahiro Arai-Tanpura Location- Shiv Nadar School, Gurgaon. 6th September Shiv Kumar Sharma-Santoor Bhawani Shankar=Pakhwaj Takahiro Arai-Tanpura Location-Shiv Nadar School, Noida
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With an expected 30 million visitors, the Kumbh Mela 2015 at Nashik is a massive congregation of people, which is held after a twelve year gap. Vodafone India, recently announced announced a slew of special initiatives for the benefit of pilgrims visiting the Maha Kumbh. These initiatives are being carried out to help enhance the spiritual experience of pilgrims and also establish a deeper connect with the visitors to one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, beginning with first ‘Shravan Snan’ on 29th August. To ensure seamless connectivity for pilgrims, Vodafone has ramped up network coverage with an additional 65 sites. Vodafone has also deployed 4 branded mobile buses that will offer free calling and charging facility to help devotees stay in touch with their family and friends. Each bus is equipped with 8 phones and over 100 charging points for the convenience of devotees. Vodafone has also partnered with Nashik Police by setting up 50 multi service canopies at prominent locations and several ghats, besides providing 2000 raincoats to policemen. To support the civic administration, Vodafone has also put up prominent signages at multiple locations displaying various helpline numbers. Visitors to the Maha Kumbh can also utilize Vodafone M-Pesa to transfer hard cash on their mobile and conduct safe and secure monetary transactions. Customers can avail this service by reaching out to the nearest Vodafone store or an authorized Vodafone M-Pesa agent in Nashik. Furthermore, for customers visiting from other circles, Vodafone has introduced special pre-paid roaming pack for just Rs 5, which facilitates free incoming calls for one day while roaming. To activate free roaming calls, customer can dial*444*500# and follow the procedure. Conveying his greetings to all the residents of Nashik and visitors to the Maha Kumbh, Ashish Chandra, Business Head- Maharashtra and Goa, Vodafone India said, “Pilgrims from across India and even beyond, are congregating at Nashik to offer prayers and take a holy dip in the Godavari river on the auspicious occasion of Maha Kumbh. Vodafone is delighted to enhance the spirit of this festival by keeping all pilgrims continuously connected with their loved ones through an enhanced network, free incoming calls, facilities for free calling and mobile charging. Given the scale and grandeur of the event, we feel the Maha Kumbh at Nashik is a perfect platform to be out there with the pilgrims and demonstrate we care. Through our multiple assistance, safety and engagement initiatives, Vodafone’s endeavour is to instill a sense of security and help make the Maha Kumbh bathing experience as comfortable as possible, even while we help enhance the spiritual experience for visitors and pilgrims.
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The Indian event industry’s apex body, the Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA), has unveiled a list of dignitaries from across the globe to grace the International Jury of Experts panel of the first edition of EEMAX GLOBAL Awards 2015. Established to recognize excellence and honor the best events and experiential marketing projects from India and around the world, the conclave and awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on the 19th and 20th September, 2015 at the Taj Lands End, Mumbai. The International Jury has been carefully curated by EEMA, bringing on board leaders from around the globe from the world of brands, media, cinema, advertising, marketing and events. Crossing boundaries, the carefully chosen jury members will adjudicate on a unified platform and choose the best and most deserved talent and performances in the event industry. Speaking about the prestigious global event, Sabbas Joseph, President, EEMA said, “This is the inaugural edition of EEMAX GLOBAL and we are delighted with the high level of participation from event companies in the competitive section of the EEMAX GLOBAL Awards. The jury that has been assembled is a testimony to the support and respect that is being accorded to the events and experiential industry by Indian and global experts”. Comprising influential personalities from the international events and experiential marketing scene, jury members at EEMAX GLOBAL include the likes of Adam Proto (Principal & Course Director, Terbell Event Management Training), Alan Ridgeway (President International & Emerging Markets, Live Nation Entertainment), Chris Purnell (Director, Edinburgh Mela), David Zolkwer (SVP & Director Public Events, Jack Morton Worldwide), Keith O'Loughlin (Founder & Group CEO, TRO), Min Chang (President Asia Pacific, President Asia Pacific, Diversified Agency Services), Patrick Roubroeks (Creative Director, Xsaga), Rogier Van Der Heide (Artistic Director - Amsterdam Light Festival), William Burdett-Coutts (Artistic Director, Riverside Studio). Key players from the Indian events, marketing and brands industry namely Prasoon Joshi (Chairman, McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific), Arvind Vohra (Country CEO & Managing Director, Gionee India), Gurdeep Singh (President, President & CEO, Consumer Business, Reliance Communications Ltd), Josy Paul (Chairman, BBDO),Kaushik Roy (President Brand Communications - Reliance Industries), Madhukar Kamath (Chairman, Mudra Foundation), Monica Tata (Media Professional and till recently CEO of HBO), NP Singh (CEO, Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd), Raj Nayak (CEO, Colors TV 18), Sunil Tandon (CMO, Videocon), Sam Balsara (CMD, Madison World), Venky Mysore (CEO, Red Chillies) and Vijay Subramaniam (MD India & South East Asia, Bacardi India) would be gracing the International Jury panel at EEMAX Global. Along with young politicians Poonam Mahajan, MP and Milind Deora, eminent Indian celebrities from the film and fashion industry joining the jury are Dia Mirza (Film Actor), Masaba Gupta (Fashion Designer), Neha Dhupia (Film Actor), Ramesh Sippy (Film Director), Vikas Bahl (Film Maker), Vivek Oberoi (Film Actor) are slated to join the International jury at EEMAX GLOBAL. The EEMAX GLOBAL Awards will have a three-level selection process that involves taking the award entries through a screening jury and an international jury followed by peer voting to choose the winners in 30 categories that span entertainment events, social events, sporting events, weddings, exhibitions, digital activation, government events, CSR and education. Entries for the EEMAX GLOBAL Awards would continue to be accepted till 30th August and entries can be submitted online at www.eemaxglobal.com
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Ogle, an on-demand streaming platform has recently partnered with Lakmé Fashion Week Winter/Festive 2015 to live-stream this fashion event. Keeping in sync with their proposition of bringing to their subscribers exclusive, elusive and cult programming, Ogle will stream and package content that will only amplify and elevate Lakmé Fashion Week’s reach. The partnership gives Ogle access to never-before seen content like celebrity rooms, backstage access, red carpets, runway reports which can be viewed across any device of their choice via subscription. This association will be exclusive to Ogle for a period of 4 seasons thereafter from March 2016. As Lakmé Fashion Week celebrates its 15th year, Ogle will live stream the entire event from 25th August 2015 to 30th August 2015, and provide video-on-demand of every show, 6 days of live content, exclusive back-stage and designer interviews viewable online for the first time ever! Pritish Nandy- Chairperson, Ogle Technologies Group “This association for us re-defines the way fashion will be viewed or perceived. This will help the fashion week to be now accessible to an entirely new set of audiences and also see from every point of view – from the model on the runway or celebs on the front row or artists backstage! Ogle is a brand that has been the fastest growing premium on-demand platform focused on great and cult content and through Lakmé Fashion Week we hope to maximize our proposition” Saket Dhankar, Vice-President & Head- Fashion at IMG-Reliance, said, “Lakme Fashion Week has the aim of democratizing India fashion which is in line with Ogle’s vision. Our fashion week has one of the largest digital footprints with an active social media community of more than 2 million followers. Furthering our vision to provide real time showcase and updates, this partnership of five seasons is another step in extending and enhancing front row experience live for all our patrons.”
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Designing an engaging experiential campaign is never an easy job. However, this task is much more complex if the target audience to be catered is that of kids. For an activation specifically targeted at kids not only do brands and curators have to create a campaign which is easy to understand but they also have to fabricate it in a fashion that sustains their interests. A few brands and event agencies have however cracked the code and have come out with thoroughly engaging and effective experiential campaigns focused at kids. Below mentioned are our top 5 picks for the same. 1-Emirates Air Line and K’Nex challenge This campaign had Airliner Emirates joining hands with K’Nex, a construction toy company. As part of the activity families were taken to a 20 minute round-trip cable car ride from Emirates Greenwich Peninsula terminal and during the trip time the families were asked to build a construction inspired from the view and the building material for the construction was provided by K’Nex. Kids participated enthusiastically in this challenge and the winners of the challenge got free airline tickets and other prizes. 2-Dalda Meri Mom Sabki Mom Through this campaign Dalda brought the joy of motherhood and the happiness of home cooked meals into the lives of unprivileged kids. As part of the campaign activity 100 mothers cooked meals for unprivileged kids to celebrate the fact that one kids mother is also the mother figure to all kids. Interesting contests and mother and kids activities kept the children engaged throughout the activation. 3- Kidzania London. Kidzania London is a cityscape for children at Westfield and the space the technique of role-play exploration to facilitate kids trying their hands at over 60 professions over a four hour experience. A highlight of the space is that parents too can engage with their child’s experience by taking a seat in the audience. 4-ZeeQ Kahani Express ZeeQ, a popular entertainment channel through Kahaani Express aimed at honing the story telling skills of children. The pan-India inter-school initiative provided children an opportunity to use their imagination and bring out their creativity. A total of over 90,000 kids were touched through the campaign wherein an expert story teller would conduct the storytelling session which included specially designed picture panels, story development techniques with props along with workshops under the guidance of facilitators. The initiative by the channel was a much needed step for the society and was met with tremendous appreciation by kids and parents alike. 5-Pogo makes science Fun-tastic Popular Kid’s channel POGO too launched an initiative through which they made the boring laws of science 'fun-tastic' for kids. The channel organized, "Bheem Aur Mighty Raju Ka Fun-tastic lab", a two-day event where kids were engaged and entertained with multiple scientific experiments, workshops and games that helped simplify interesting theories of science. The event touched over 8000 kids and parents through optical illusions, levitation, dry ice and other fun activities and managed to create tremendous word of mouth for the channel.
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The American lighter brand, Zippo is all set to engage its fans in an exciting campaign to celebrate the essence of ‘The Real Man’. In a quest to find the attributes that make “The Real Man”, Zippo has partnered with men’s magazine, Maxim India. Spanning across three phases, the campaign aims to establish Zippo’s characteristics as moving beyond iconic lighters. The campaign integrates the belief that having a story makes a man unique; having a Zippo lighter makes him a man. Starting with a six-day Twitter contest on August 30, 2015, fans will be encouraged to share traits they think make “The Real Man” at Maxim India. Best entries will be integrated into a photo feature in Maxim India’s October issue and rewarded with a Zippo Gentlemen’s lighter. Zippo lovers will also have a chance to own exclusive and funky branded phone covers with purchase of a Zippo Windproof Lighter in the month of October at select retail outlets in Delhi. In the third phase of the campaign, Zippo and Maxim India will host a party to celebrate the spirit of ‘The Real Man’ with attendees including socialites and like-minded celebrities from fashion and Bollywood.
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Vh1, the channel for international music and entertainment is all set to air two highly anticipated shows ‘Video Music Awards 2015’ on Monday, 31st August at 6:30 am. Touted to be the one of the biggest nights in music history, the Video Music Awards 2015 will be bought LIVE to Indian viewers from the capital of the entertainment universe, Los Angeles, on Monday, August 31st, 2015 at 6:30 am with a prime repeat at9pm. This year will witness pop Queen Miley Cyrus take the stage at the awards function as the show’s host. Miley was just 15 when she attended her first VMAs in 2008. Since then, she's made headlines at the show time and again, thanks to the memorable moments like her epic twerk-filled performance in 2013 and 2014's gracious Video of The Year acceptance speech to benefit homeless youth. With Miley as the host the awards will also see the nominee frontrunners like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran and many more. This is one show in music history worth tuning in for.
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After establishing its presence in 18 countries around the world, BlaBlaCar, an online marketplace that facilitates ride sharing, entered India in January 2015. However, despite being so new the brand has still managed to expand its presence in more than 700 cities in the country and has served over 3,00,000 fleets. In an exclusive conversation with EE, Raghav Gupta, India Country Manager at BlaBlaCar reveals the marketing strategy of the brand, its experiential initiatives and plans down the road for the brand. Q- What is the brand psychology behind Blablacar? A-Blablacar enables travel for 2-3-4 people, who might be looking to reach Jaipur from Delhi or some other short or long distance in an arrangement, where one of them is a car owner and the others can’t get train or flight tickets at the last moment. Usually likeminded people find each other through Blablacar and there are a lot of conversations that happen over the journey so the psychology of the brand is to provide care pooling services with the generation of strong social experiences. Q- The BlaBla Tour is an on ground initiative by Blablacar. Tell us more about it. A- The BlaBlaTour is an activity where the BlaBlaCar Team takes a BlaBlaCar and drives across cities to interact and meet with its members at parties in each city known as 'BlaBlaTimes'. The idea behind the on ground campaigns of Blablacar is to play on the social experience that a user gets through the application use. At BlaBlaTimes we invite our members to come and meet our team, other members who ride and share BlaBlaCar and to get to know each other in a social gathering. To break the ice we have a lot of games and engaging activities. Social media platforms are giving only digital experiences to customers today but as we operate through digital we at Blablacar also want to enhance the physical experience for our service users. The Blablabla times has already happened in Mexico, Europe, Turkey and was executed in six cities in India in July. Q-What are some of the other experiential initiatives by BlaBlaCar? A-Our target audience is young business professionals, students, business owners who travel a lot and hence use the services of BlaBlaCar. To cater to them we also partner with a lot of music festivals, especially with those where travel is involved. From coming October we will associate with a lot of such festivals and we also look forward to associating with college festivals that are majorly popular amongst the youth. Q- What will be the marketing strategy of BlaBlaCar as far as ATL mediums are concerned? A-. In terms of ATL, we have launched radio campaign recently in southern states and we have also launched a TV campaign in the same demographics as of now as these states are very important markets to us. Once we know the results of these campaigns then we shall scale up the same throughout the country. We also have an advertising tie-up with IRCTC currently, so if anyone goes to book a ticket online they can see a contextual banner of Blablacars and use our services too if they are unable to get the ticket. Q- Today there are multiple brands like Blablacar, who offer the services of ridesharing. So how is Blablacar different from them? A-Blablacar is the largest ridesharing platform in the world and much like other large companies we know that there will be companies who will get inspired from us and sell services like us. But I think that at Blablacar our intention is to create strong social experiences for our customers, many of who end up as friends after the ride. And that for me is the difference between Blablacar and others.
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The definition of a conventional wedding celebration has witnessed a drastic transformation in the last two decades. With no restrictions in terms of the budget for their wedding, people today are willing to spend enormously to create random, out of the blue experiences on their special day. These experiences range from having nude weddings to getting married inside a zoo with animals to curating other experiences that are plain strange. In this list we at EE, share with you 5 strange experiences at weddings from across the globe. 1-Bungee-jumping wedding Though a lot of lovers harp about wishing if they could profess their love from the sky tops, none of them have actually made it true. However, Jeroen and Sandra Kippers of Brussels, Belgium, made the impossible possible as they were had their wedding wows 160 feet in the air in front of 20 guests. For those of you, who think the experience was strange enough, please wait. The real experience of the wedding was that after the vows, the couple made the wedding official by bungee-jumping over the side.Another highlight of this wedding was the floating reception that was executed in the skies again. Now, that is some strange wedding experience to have I must say. 2-Marriage at T.J. Maxx shopping center Venues are very crucial for a wedding and hence sometimes people take months to finalize a venue that can host their dream wedding. But, just imagine if someone decides to have a wedding at a shopping center surrounded by racks of shoes? Well, this strange experience is not hypothetical. Lisa Satayut (bride) decided to combine the excitement over bargaining at shopping centre with that of bagging her beau. Explaining that T.J. Maxx is her “happy place,” Satayut married Drew Ellis in the size 8 shoe aisle of a T.J. Maxx store in Mt. Pleasant, Mich. The highlight of this wedding was curious shoppers who waited long enough to watch the ceremony. 3-Nuptials inside a shark tank Yes, you read that right there is a wedding that actually took place inside a shark tank in reality. The happy couple April Pignataro and Michael Curry proclaimed their love to each other as they climbed inside a 120,000 gallon shark tank at Atlantis Marine World in Riverhead, New York. The ceremony took place as sand sharks, nurse sharks, eels and a giant grouper circled around. The couple wore scuba gear and mikes that broadcasted their words to each other, as well as to friends and family. 4-Marriage while bicycling Talk about getting in shape for your own marriage? Well this couple took the initiative of being healthy a little too seriously as they had their wedding wows while cycling around in a beautiful city in Russia. The wows were taken as the couple was joined by 150 guests who also rode the cycle to watch the commitment ceremony live. 5-Chinese bride with 200 m-long dresses All the brides in the world want to look special on their wedding day but if there was an award for the most effort put in look so special then it would certainly go to this bride from Guangzhou, China as she accented her gown with a train that was over 600 ft long and weighed over 220 lbs. This was till early 2007, world's longest bridal train record which stood at 219 yards.
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Taking technology a notch higher to further enhance customer experience, Flipkart, announced the launch of ‘Ping’- a brand new ‘social shopping’ experience on the Flipkart app in a media launch event yesterday, organised by CRI events. The press conference held at F Bar & Lounge, Delhi was followed by a Bloggers meet in the evening. Amit Tandon, standup comedian and Astitva band performed in the evening during the Bloggers meet, adding entertainment quotient to the entire event. Using Ping, Flipkart users will get to chat with friends while shopping, and share experience using text, photos & emoticons in real time. Shopping is way more than the act of viewing a catalogue, selecting a product and buying it at the click of a button and thus, with Ping, Flipkart aims to fundamentally redefine the shopping experience and make it near ‘real-life’ in ‘real –time’. “Shopping is primarily a social activity and going for it with friends and family has been the norm since time immemorial. Online shopping, on the other hand, has largely remained a solo experience. ‘Ping’ aims to transform online shopping by allowing users to talk to each other real time in order to make decisions and decide on what to buy!” said Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer, Punit Soni. Punit further added, “The unique blend of messaging and shopping is a unique and first ever experience that one can now enjoy online at Flipkart! Commenting on this breakthrough innovation, Peeyush Ranjan, CTO and Head of Engineering, Flipkart, said, “A research conducted by our team revealed that the inability to shop collaboratively is the number one barrier for online shoppers these days. Flipkart Ping, conceived and built completely by Flipkart's in-house technology team, aims to resolve this very challenge and provide a one-of-its-kind unique shopping experience to our customers." “Ping has been built keeping in perspective the user experience journey of Flipkart customers. Highly advanced architecture was employed to ensure dynamic traffic surges are handled well. It has also been optimized for efficient results even on slow 2G networks. Ping will also support android wearables where user can read and reply to messages from their android watches.” said Peeyush. Currently in its beta stage of development, Ping will be available to customers through an invite only model in the first phase. Talking about the app launch, Anand Bhaskar, Head - Concepts & Communication, CRI events, said, “This is a great initiative by Flipkart and we are proud to have partnered with them on the launch of this app. We truly believe that this will go very far in terms of changing customer’s online shopping experience.”
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