Publicis Communications has announced the launch of Publicis Entertainment. The unit was formally set up in June 2018 and is headed by Pranay Anthwal, executive director.
Anthwal was principal consultant, content and entertainment at BBH India prior. He had joined Publicis in April 2018. Anthwal will report to Saurabh Varma, CEO, Publicis Communications, India.
Publicis Entertainment will help all Publicis Communications’ agencies collaborate with players in the content and entertainment space by leveraging social and digital marketing. It will also look into brand integrations for film and TV series, IP creations, partnerships between brands and clients, and celebrity management.
Varma said, “Great storytelling is happening around us, even in an attention-deficit economy. We believe this is the biggest opportunity for our brands. We want the stories of our brands to intersect organically with the beautiful human stories already being told in popular culture. And we want to go beyond. Our unique model will unfold over the next 18 months. Pranay brings an incredible amount of expertise and passion to make our ambition a reality.”
Anthwal has also worked with Starcom Worldwide, The Times of India, Star TV and ZEE.
Anthwal said, “I am happy to be back to the Publicis family. For far too long, branded entertainment and entertainment marketing have been in the cost-per-deal space. This is because not many creative and strategy ad agency majors were involved in this process. So far it has been, and still is, a supply side market model. We hope to play a role where we curate and recommend entertainment industry partnerships from a brand lens, in addition to focusing on brand objectives instead of deal objectives. Our focus products for the first few years will be entertainment marketing, branded entertainment and co-creation of branded entertainment IPs for our big brands. We hope to move some big investments from the expenditure column to the assets column for some of our key clients."
