With an ambition to build a strong brand and marketing integrated ecosystem, Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) has consolidated the creative duties for the bouquet of brands in the broadcast business, the ZEEL corporate brand, as well as some of the new business verticals it is building and announced the appointment of Publicis India and Lowe Lintas as its creative partners in this endeavor.
Lowe Lintas will be responsible for planning and executing 360-degree creative mandate for the ‘ZEE’ Corporate Brand, the bouquet of Cinema Channels- Including Zee Cinema, Zee Classic and Zee Action, the ‘&’ brand - &TV and &Pictures, and ZEE’s South Cluster regional channels.
Publicis India is coming on board to plan and manage creative services for the flagship brand Zee TV, Zee Anmol, premium channels - Zee Café and Zee Studio, youth and music channels - Zing and ZETC and the regional channels in Marathi, Bengali and Oriya – Zee Marathi, Zee Yuva, Zee Talkies, Zee Bangla, Zee Bangla Cinema and Sarthak.
Punit Goenka, MD and CEO, ZEEL, said, “As we embark on this journey, we would like to thank FCB Ulka for the long and fruitful association in building some of the most loved channels that have become a part of our viewers’ lives. To build our equity further on this solid foundation, we welcome Lowe Lintas and Publicis on-board as partners who will help establish the organization’s presence across all the entertainment verticals. By consolidating the entire business with two strong agency partners, the organization is committed to building significantly higher capability in brand building, consumer centricity and strategic marketing thinking. Both agencies bring with them a strong consumer centric DNA and a deep knowledge of brands and business, which is core to our philosophy of driving future growth for the organization. We look forward to Publicis and Lowe partnering with us to grow and develop our strong and evolving portfolio of brands.”
Punit Misra, CEO – Domestic Broadcast, ZEEL, said, “The appointment follows an extensive pitch process which was evaluated by the key leadership team involving an in-depth assessment of creative, planning and servicing capabilities of the agencies, to cater to a large and diverse bouquet of channels and business needs. The move is to ensure that the channels build stronger consumer preference and loyalty for each of the individual brands and businesses. Together, we aspire to create the best in class brand and marketing ecosystem for every channel and the overall organisation.”
Wishing ZEEL for the journey ahead, Nitin Karkare, CEO, FCB Ulka, said, “We are proud of our partnership with the Zee Group. It’s been a wonderful relationship and we have together had many successes across channels and programs. We wish them the best and many more successes in the years to come.”
Highlighting his agency’s mandate on the new business win, Raj Gupta, CEO, Lowe Lintas, said, “We’re absolutely thrilled to partner ZEEL, who pioneered a series of revolutionary television watching experiences and much more for India in the last 25 years. At a time where content networks are competing to get attention with serials/shows, multi-crore blockbuster movies, digital content and millions of shares on digital - we’re excited about the possibilities of imagining and reimagining purpose-led strategic and creative ideas for all the ZEEL offerings, that will inspire Indians to dream more, do more and become more.”
Elaborating further on the partnership, Srija Chatterjee, Managing Director, Publicis Worldwide India, said “ZEE is an iconic brand that has been in the minds and hearts of millions of Indians over almost 25 years. We are delighted that we were able to demonstrate our strong strategic approach through the use of proprietary tools that enable brands to grow at the speed of culture and creative capabilities across the different consumer segments that the brand appeals to, that enabled the ZEEL team to choose us for this very exciting challenge. We are truly excited and looking forward to this partnership to create iconic work that takes the brand and its offerings forward in the minds of the consumers.”