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AD
Wise
2008: A year of highs and lows for the Indian advertising industry Tuhina Anand  For
the advertising industry, the year gone was a mixed package. What follows
is a quick look of the key things that had happened across agencies in
the year... The year put India and JWT on the global advertising map with the agency bagging India's first ever Grand Prix at the 55th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. The win came for JWT's work for 'Lead India' for The Times of India in the Direct Awards category. In fact, India pocketed 23 metals in total at Cannes in 2008. JWT was in news throughout the year with some big wins including that of ING Vysya Bank, Commonwealth games, MCorp Global's Hot Spot Retail, Kotak Credit Cards, Nutrine Confectionary and global creative business of Kingfisher among others. JWT's Agnello Dias was in news too -- first when he became the Chief Creative Officer of the agency and later in the year when he decided to end his dream run at the agency to start his own venture with Santosh Padhi of Leo Burnett. JWT appointed Jagdip Bakshi as Global Business Director on Unilever and he moved base to London. JWT's Mythili Chandrasekar was in news as she won the prestigious Mann Award. O&M made news early in the year, when it had bagged the creative mandate for Indian Premier League which saw various marketing initiatives including heavyweight star power. At the One Show 2008 awards, O&M was the only agency from India to have won a Pencil, which was for its work 'Stomach' for client GlaxoSmithKline. The agency was entrusted with the task of giving a makeover to the age-old Department of Posts. Termed as 'Project Arrow', the initiative involved branding, technology improvement, infrastructure development and human resource-related reforms. Ogilvy Delhi came up with a new campaign, logo and tagline: 'Giving wings to your dreams' for the new avatar of postal department. Lowe Lintas India saw too many changes in the year too. Veteran Pranesh Misra moved out to start his own venture; the agency did away with its IMAG structure and SSC&B brand was too folded. Lowe's True Show and R Balki's efforts created much news for the agency. Interpublic Group (IPG) also launched a second agency Pickle in India. IPG won the advertising duties of the Jet Airways business globally comprising Jet Airways and Jet Lite. IPG created a new entity 'Altitude' for the business. In India, 'Altitude' will operate as a special arm within McCann Worldgroup. At Contract, Ravi Deshpande was elevated as Chairman & CCO and Umesh Shrikhande took over as the CEO. The agency too had its share of big moment with Cannes wins. SpiceJet awarded its creative mandate of Rs 25-cr business to Contract India. Sonal Dabral generated buzz when he was appointed the judge for AdFest 2008. Bates 141 India restructured its top management with Sandeep Pathak as CEO, Manosh Mukherjee COO and Dheeraj Sinha as the Chief Strategy Officer. Dabral also appointed a new Executive Committee (EXCO) to manage the all-India operations of Bates 141. Mudra Group restructured - the media discipline was brought back in the agency making it a full service agency again, and was renamed and rebranded from OMS to Mudra Max. Mudra Max has two independent brands - Mudra Connext and Mudra Radar - under its aegis. Ogilvy's loss was Mudra's gain as Pratap Bose joined as the COO while Bobby Pawar took the grander title of Chief Creative Officer. The agency launched Terra (rural marketing unit), Water (brand strategy and design consultancy), Celsius (specialised unit for integrated event solutions) and 10 integrated (sports marketing unit) in the year. Rediffusion was appointed to handle the creative duties of Simplifly Deccan. The agency dropped Dentsu from its name, to be known as Rediffusion Y&R. After much speculation, it was confirmed that Saatchi & Saatchi had won the creative duties of Rs 100 plus crore Videocon. Shiv Sethuraman took charge as the CEO of TBWA\India operations. Later in the year, TBWA\Worldwide announced the completion of its acquisition of the 49 per cent shareholding in TBWA\India currently held by Indian shareholders. Following this acquisition, TBWA together with Omnicom, owned 100 per cent of TBWA\India. BBH officially launched in India with Subhash Kamath, Partha Sinha and Priti Nair at the helm. Nitish Mukherjee moved from sister agency Orchard to Leo Burnett as its Managing Director. The agency's Mumbai branch made it to the Ad Age's annual creativity list for the year 2008. With a tally of 180 metals collected over the year at the top 10 awards shows across the world, Leo Burnett Mumbai was ranked 19th in the list. Ashutosh Legend Multimedia Pvt Ltd (ALMPL) partnered with ad veteran Ashok Karnik to form a new agency, Bread Communication. Talking about international debuts, Naked Communications too unveiled its plans to launch in India. At a more industry level, Madhukar Kamath, Managing Director & CEO, Mudra Communications was re-elected President of the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) for the year 2008-09. AAAI also instituted Lifetime Achievement Award and WPP's Ranjan Kapur was the first recipient. By the end of 2008, the advertising industry too was taken by `recession' and there was enough talk on tackling the issue with innovative, cost-effective means of communications. Amen to that! |
