Exclusive: Meesho mounts first massive celebrity-led festive campaign

Meesho's celebrity-led campaign features nine celebrities including Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Rohit Sharma, Rashmika Mandana, Kapil Sharma, Trisha Krishnan, Karthi Sivakumar, Ram Charan and Sourav Ganguly.

The ecommerce company has brought nine celebrities to target both national and regional markets

Making of a smear campaign and the dark side of digital marketing

Advertising tactics similar to this incident have been implemented by various Bollywood stars and big brands, often causing consumer backlash and disillusionment. (Representational Image via Unsplash)

Smear campaigns are designed differently than regular campaigns and can run from one or two days to several weeks.

Rise of vernacular advertising on digital in India

The click-through rate of regional creatives is higher: a joint study conducted by Google and KPMG found that 70 percent of Indians find vernacular digital content more reliable than English. (Representational image: Visuals via Unsplash)

As more Indians log on to the internet, the demand for local language content is steadily growing, followed by the need for advertisers to consider creating regional advertising which has gone beyond dubbed ads.

Ad spends dip as startups slash marketing budgets

Unlike established brands and industries, startups cannot afford to stop investing in brand building and sales either. (Representational image via Unsplash)

Winter in the startup category is also freezing advertising expenditure (AdEx) and marketing budgets. This is in sharp contrast to 2021, when startups contributed around 11 percent to the overall AdEx of around Rs74,000 crore as per industry estimates.