Marketers are increasingly using the festive season to connect with consumers with clever marketing and promotional tactics.

Divine opportunity for brand connect

Business Standard

Companies merge for many reasons: Economies of scale, access to new markets, diversification, and so forth. However, few mergers actually achieve synergy because too often mergers are motivated not by synergy but by hubris. Mergers truly succeed only when they produce synergy, and synergy can&rsquo;t happen when employees from two different cultures are demoralised and their jobs are threatened. Ultimately, they are the ones who must create the 3rd Alternative business that arises out of two businesses, says this extract from the book The 3rd Alternative.

Merging into a 3rd Alternative

ITC Food&rsquo;s salted snack brand Bingo continues to tickle consumer taste buds with new variants. The latest to hit the shelves is Tangles, the fourth in its portfolio, after Bingo potato chips, Bingo Tedhe Medhe and Bingo Mad Angles. The product, which took two years to develop, will be launched in select markets in north and south India, before being scaled up nationally.

ITC Foods: Not so straight

Competition is hotting up in the &lsquo;infotainment&rsquo; genre on television. HISTORY, the first channel by the joint venture between A+E Networks (A+E) and TV 18, has got off to a high-profile launch. The channel will reach 50 million households across digital, analogue and DTH (Tata Sky and DISH) networks. The channel will focus on action and adventure.

History: Beyond the past

The top 10 business bestsellers

India spends around 5 per cent of its GDP on healthcare. The health insurance cover is still limited to only 15 per cent of the total population of India.

KIT: Health insurance market in India

    &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this internet thing? I don&rsquo;t get it.

The Strategist Quiz (#224)

    Name this company and its two founders. One of them used to run a chain of speech therapy schools in the US because of his own speech problems and the other was a hotel operator who wanted to feature oysters in his menu. Their company was founded in the 1800s.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#223)

The Raymond Apparel brand is trying hard, but creating a strong brand perception won&rsquo;t be easy.

Parx in search of makeover

After a year of dimness due to the economic slowdown that resulted in business uncertainty, Diwali seems to have lifted the spirits of the branded products distribution industry to some extent.

Branded products score high on Diwali gifts

Big names in Kollywood and Tollywood account for a quarter of the Rs 1,100-cr brand endorsement market.

South stars shining bright

If only wearing the right kind of clothes helped us have less stressful days at work. At least it&rsquo;s true in the latest commercial by Allen Solly where donning attire from the &lsquo;work casual&rsquo; collection of the brand livens the atmosphere and helps keep stress at bay.

Allen Solly goes for Friday dressing

Despite online video and commercial-skipping DVRs, companies still spend 38 per cent of their advertising budgets on television ads and just 1 per cent on online video. YouTube is trying to change that.

YouTube makes the case that it helps build brands

Racing lines

Once upon a time, people following the books trade in India didn&rsquo;t have to pay very much attention to what the books trade in the West was doing. If in New York one big publisher gobbled up two small ones, what did it matter to us? If the head of one big company quit and joined another, who here bothered? If a media conglomerate offered a retired politician (is there such a thing?) or current football star millions of dollars as a book advance, well, amusing, but so what? The West was a different world.

Cash and mouse

I am planning to upgrade from my current car, a Maruti Suzuki Alto. My budget can stretch up to Rs 8.5 lakh. Given the fact that I commute about 40 kilometres a day and on alternate weekends a family trip, accounting for about 1,000 km a month, a diesel vehicle is what I require.

Sensible choice

The Rann of Kachchh is fast becoming the favourite destination for Indian bikers. Avantika Bhuyan finds out what makes the Rann an attractive proposition.

The new Ladakh

Software giant Microsoft has&nbsp;eight research &ldquo;labs&rdquo; around the world. One is in Bangalore. Indulekha Aravind visits to find out what it does and why Microsoft Research has deliberately delinked R (research) and D (development).

Research for research's sake

The rules of adultery keep on changing and yet somehow remain the same.

Don't ask or tell

Traditional Indian sports like mallkhamb, kabaddi and kho-kho are doing their best to be recognised and gain wider appeal.

Survival instincts

Rajat Gupta, a former McKinsey director, is the latest high profile casualty after being arrested on insider trading charges in the Galleon hedge fund fraud earlier this week. The clampdown has lessons for India&rsquo;s market regulator, Securities and Exchanges Board of India, which has hardly any notable victories when it comes to nailing insider trading. In a stock market where share prices demonstrate a high level of irregular trading, the biggest securities fraud investigation in US history offers simple lessons.

It's never too late

- Find Specials News, Features, Analysis and more at Business Standard. Full coverage of Goafest 2014

Page 1039 - Supplements