Close encounters with the big brands - The Noel D'Cunha Sunday Column

Insights and analysis of the creative and ad agencies. Things which every print person should know, plus inside info which you should have on your fingertip. This Sunday Column is in partnership with Campaign India. An evaluation of the ad agencies performance over the past 12 months

10 Aug 2018 | 12630 Views | By Noel D'Cunha

Campaign India, the magazine dedicated to marketing and advertising, recently published a series untitled ‘Agency Report Card’, where the magazine evaluated the performance of the ad agencies in the last one year.

Campaign India established a set of rules on how to go about it. First, only those agencies who responded to the questionnaire were eligible for the grades. Second, the evaluation depended on the quality of the response sent by the agency. Third, there were two external evaluators, Meenakshi Menon of Spatial Access and Sunil Gupta of Aprais. Finally, while giving out the grades, Campaign India decided that the highest rank, A+, would be as exclusive as the Michelin Stars. No agency made the cut this year. Also, only one agency got the second highest grade this year.

Agency Report Card 2017

McCann Worldgroup India

A-

Country head: Prasoon Joshi

Ownership: IPG
It has probably been among the best years that McCann Worldgroup has seen in India in recent times. The agency decided to pursue the credo of ‘Behaviour Change' as an axis for both brands as well as business growth. Second, it decided to work not for the output but the outcome.

Achievements
In 2017, the agency's campaigns powered the government’s social agenda on hygiene, cash, family planning and digital India. On the awards scene, the agency led by a distance, probably good enough to satisfy its stated ambition of chasing ‘creative excellence'. With over USD 5.2 million in new business revenue, McCann Worldgroup claims to have been one of the fastest growing Indian agencies in 2017 with total revenue growth in “impressive double digits” as the company puts it.

Housekeeping
On the people front, the agency beefed up its Bengaluru office by hiring key executives such as Sonal Devraj as vice-president and Vasantha Krishnamurthy as its planning head. In Mumbai, it hired Abhinav Tripathi as ECD.

MullenLowe Lintas Group

A-

Country head(s): Amer Jaleel (chairman and CCO – Mullen Lintas); Arun Iyer (chairman and CCO – Lowe Lintas); Raj Gupta (CEO – Lowe Lintas); Vikas Mehta (CEO – PointNine Lintas); Virat Tandon (CEO – Mullen Lintas); Vivek Kamath (group CFO and COO – MullenLowe Lintas Group)  

Ownership: Interpublic group of companies  
2017 was a busy year within the MullenLowe Lintas Group as it saw the exit of Joseph George, group chairman and CEO (India) and regional president for South and Southeast Asia after 26 years at the agency. Vincent Digonnet took over the South and Southeast Asia reigns from George. Arun Iyer (chairman and CCO, Lowe Lintas) and Raj Gupta (CEO, Lowe Lintas) earned elevations earlier in the year.  As a group, MullenLowe Lintas’ biggest objective was to mainline digital.   

Achievements
In July, the group announced the launch of PointNine Lintas, a merger of GolinOpinion, LinTeractive and LinEngage. This added to the agency’s existing entities – Lowe Lintas and Mullen Lintas. The idea was for the group to move from ‘Hyper Fragmented to Hyper Bundled’. Vikas Mehta was given the CEO role for PointNine Lintas. In December, Lintas Mediahub was launched as a ‘full-service media offering for a digitised world’. Lintas Mediahub operates as a division of PointNine Lintas and offers its services to clients across the three agencies in the group.    While Lowe Lintas lost Idea after a 15-year stint, account wins for the year included Xiaomi, Zee (split with Publicis), Fossil, Quikr, Too Yumm, Motilal Oswal Financial Services, Micromax and Cargill Foods. 

Housekeeping
The agency’s Mumbai office was ranked number one in the Asia Pacific and number two in the world according to the Global Effie Effective Index. It bagged a Silver in the Global Effies, and a Silver and Bronze in the Apac Effie. The agency also won a Gold in the WARC Price for Asian Strategy in the year.

L&K Saatchi & Saatchi

B

Country head(s): Anil S Nair, CEO and managing partner

Ownership: Publicis Groupe Holdings   
2017 was an eventful year for L&K Saatchi & Saatchi. Founder Praveen Kenneth announced his retirement. Anil S Nair was given charge of the agency. The agency also waved goodbye to its CCO for digital, Vinay Venkatesh. Among new hires was Tushar Pal who joined as ECD.

Achievements
The agency bagged Gold at the Cannes Lions for its ‘GiveMe5’ piece of work for The Ammada Trust. Other wins included four Abbys (three Silver and a Bronze). Account wins such as Future Retail (advertising and digital), Kalyan Jewellers (advertising), Amway India (advertising) and Bauli India among others lent to overall growth for the agency. The relationship with Renault continued as it worked on the launch campaign for the Captur.

Housekeeping
The agency also rolled out a ‘dedicated’ short film on behalf of the nation to the people of Kashmir.

Brave New World

B-

Country head: Joono Simon

Ownership: Independent    
As an agency located in Bangalore, the online start-up capital of India, Brave New World (BNW) like most other agencies in the city, was dependent largely on newer enterprises as a source of business. But there was a problem in this seemingly way-to-go strategy.

Achievement
Start-up clients are volatile at worst and uncertain at best. That's why in 2017, BNW decided to forego the easy way to acquire new businesses which they claim “we did just on the dint of our work, without pitching". Instead, the agency decided to go head-on into focusing more on established businesses with a solid marketing base. Finally, it won two businesses from Reliance Industries in 2017 — Reliance Trends and the newly launched Reliance women’s fashion brand, Project Eve.

Creativeland Asia

B+  

Country head/s: Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman

Ownership: Independent
If you had to single out one thing that made Creativeland Asia stand out in 2017, it was the agency spreading its wings, far and wide. Keeping in line with its objective of going “beyond traditional communication to newer forms of creative content” the agency ventured into setting up a content division, apart from having a city infrastructure design company or a venture fund to support entrepreneurs in creating brands and so on.  

Achievements
In a difficult year for the advertising business, CLA executives call it a period when they decided to invest for the future. That led to investing in people, it hired a group CEO (who has now moved on), a CEO for its divisions like Ventureland, apart from key executives to occupy positions across content, creative and design. On the content front, ‘The Legend of Jagannath’, a docu-drama it created for the National Geographic Channel, also debuted on Netflix.

Housekeeping
It focused on backward integration to business advisory and consultancy services in a world where marketing consultants are forward integrating to design. It also invested in Masala Baby, a New York-based children’s lifestyle start-up.

DDB Mudra Group

B+

Country head(s): Vineet Gupta (CEO)

Ownership: Omnicom    
For the DDB Mudra Group, 2017 was a year of changes. Chairman and chief creative officer, Sonal Dabral, announced his departure from the agency in July and a new leadership team consisting of Vineet Gupta (CEO), Aditya Kanthy (MD), Rahul Mathew (NCD) and Brijesh Jacob (chief technologist officer) was put in place. The leadership team bagged a total of 72 accounts during the year, and the new businesses contributed to a total of 10% of its business revenue for the year.

Achievements
The accounts it bagged included Royal Enfield, Hotstar, Puma and Big Bazaar’s fashion store (fbb) among others. The biggest stated objective for the year for the agency was the ‘intersection between offline and online’. It partnered with Hotify, an enterprise providing expertise in artificial intelligence to get better consumer targeting.

Housekeeping
To equip the team, 51 training programs were conducted during the year. These sessions saw external trainers and in-house subject experts discuss digital marketing, mobile marketing and Google certifications among others.

BBDO

B+

Country head(s): Ajai Jhala (moved on in 2018) and Josy Paul

Ownership: Omnicom  
The 2017 agenda for BBDO India was simple – the agency wanted growth on the back of creative and effective work for its clients. The growth included that of physical nature too, as it expanded to Bengaluru to launch its third office in India (after Delhi and Mumbai).

Achievements
The agency’s big account win for the year was Idea (which ended a long relationship with the Mullen Lowe Lintas Group) and it managed to double the size of its business. The agency attributes most of the great work in 2017 to a brainstorming technique it rolled out the year prior. In terms of awards, the agency’s ‘Dads Share The Load’ piece of work for Ariel was the top-ranked campaign according to WARC.

Housekeeping
The agency was the most awarded from India at the One Show, and also won at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Spikes, D&AD Awards, The Andy Awards and Effies among others. According to the agency, its successful campaign for Ariel helped it land other P&G projects from China.

Famous Innovations

A

Country head(s): Raj Kamble

Ownership: Independent    
Famous Innovations completed its fifth year in existence with a 105% growth and 103% net profit growth. The stellar year for the agency saw it bag 21 new business wins, a Lion at Cannes, and wins across the Abbys and Effies. The agency created several innovations for Project Nanhi Kali. Not only did the innovations go on to win at awards, in 2017 Project Nanhi Kali saw a 228% increase in donations and 76% increase in school enrollments.   

Achievements
New business wins included Nestle’s Polo, Livpure, Van Heusen and Times Television’s ET Now, Mirror Now and Times Now among others. The agency bagged 11 of the 12 pitches it participated in. 2017 also saw the implementation of a marketing intelligence tool, ‘the third eye’.

Housekeeping
New faces to the organisation included Siddhartha Singh. He joined as business head, Mumbai in 2017 and was earlier this year promoted to CEO. Namit Prasad joined as head of planning. An overall 42% increase in staff strength was witnessed at Famous last year. Industry contributions came in the form of support to Campaign’s 10/10 initiative.

Dentsu Webchutney

A-

Country head/s: Sidharth Rao, Sudesh Samaria

Ownership: 80% (Dentsu Aegis Network) 20% (Sidharth Rao and Sudesh Samaria)
As a senior member of Dentsu Aegis Network described it, 2017 was the year when Dentsu Webchutney, the digital agency from the network, was showing signs of a turnaround. The objective for Dentsu Webchutney was not to be just another agency offering digital capabilities but to be the lead creative agency for brands. The agency says that brands such as BSA Cycles, Nokia India, Melorra jewellery and Swiggy have the agency on board as their lead creative partner owing to which the agency is able to focus on the merits of powerful ideas which transcend physical or digital boundaries.  

Achievements
One of the focus areas of Dentsu Webchutney has been in the area of B2B marketing. Sensing a huge void in the space, the agency offers B2B players the same digital-native creative talent and media capabilities thus far enjoyed by B2Cs only. Within a few months of being set-up, it has already done campaigns for tech giants such as GE and Microsoft.  

FCB Interface

B-

Country head/s: Joemon Thaliath, CEO

Ownership: IPG  
FCB Interface claims to have a six-point scale for measuring creative impact. The first three points on the scale are reserved for work that ranges from the offensive to the innocuous. On the scale, four is reserved for work that is provocative- that makes one stop, think and react in some way. Five is awarded to work that creates behaviour of some sort- that invites people to participate and act. And six is the Holy Grail- reserved for work that the agency believes will create conversations in perpetuity.  

Achievements
To build a strong leadership pipeline, the agency has a leadership development intervention where key leaders work one-on-one with an executive coach. The agency also has a Young Leadership Council that gives developmental opportunities to youngsters to signal that they are on the fast track through prestigious projects, international assignments and high-investment training programs.

Housekeeping
The agency celebrates a ‘WOW Day’ every month. This day is dedicated to learning a new skill, brainstorming on new ideas or just inviting a celebrity achiever to come and talk to agency executives. 

iProspect

B

Rubeena Singh, CEO  

Ownership: Dentsu Aegis Network  
iProspect looked to address an issue in 2017, that became a major talking point in 2018. Global CMOs like Keith Weed called for reducing dependency on paid media to acquire customers on digital. It launched its content arm - Intelligent Content in India. The agency labels this as an integrated content marketing service to drive measurable business outcomes for clients. The first client on board was Aegon Life.

Achievements
New accounts came in the form of Raymond Apparels (SEM, display and affiliates), HCL Technologies (SEM, SEO, Display and Analytics), Wework India Management (SEM, Analytics, Creative, Display and Analytics) and Aditya Birla Fashion (Analytics, SEO and Social Media) among others. Among awards, the agency bagged Gold in the Specialist Agency of the Year category at the Campaign South Asia Agency of the Year Awards.

Housekeeping
Training at the helm iProspect got more than 100 people from its 230-member team to pass the Google AdWords Professional exams. The agency also has 20 professionals who have been certified for DoubleClick and 43 who are Adobe certified.

Cheil India

B-

Regional head: Seungwhoi Koo

Ownership: Cheil Worldwide  
Cheil WW India looked to complete its ‘integrated’ offering in India by adding a design and eCommerce practice respectively in mid-2017. The agency roped in Prerna Mehra to head the design unit and Varun Jha to head the eCommerce offering.

Achievements
In terms of output, the agency’s film for Samsung (service van) which was released in January amassed recognition across award functions (Adfest, Goafest). It was listed on top of the ‘YouTube most watched ads of 2017’ with over 200 million views.  The big account win was UC News (ATL + digital). The agency also bagged the digital mandate for Signutra and retail mandate for Auraine Botanical.

Havas Worldwide India

B

Country head(s): Nirmalya Sen, CEO; Nima Namchu, CCO; Sandeep Gupta, CFO

Ownership: A subsidiary of the Havas Group  
Starting in 2016, Havas Worldwide India was looking at a three-year strategy of attempting to be a new-age, digital-at-its-heart brand builder. In 2017, 30% of its overall revenue came from digital. This was at 7% in 2016. Digital-focused talent was at 33% (up from 20% in 2016). The total revenue for Havas increased by 15% last year.   

Achievements
Havas Design was launched in October 2017 with an announcement of retail design mandates for Aristocrat and Maxxis Tyres. Also launched last year was a production unit under Havas Digital Matrix. The agency produced online videos for GSK. In terms of account wins, it benefitted from a digital global pitch won for GSK’s Horlicks, Eno, Crocin and Otrovin among others. Other digital wins included Bharati Axa.

Housekeeping
As a part of The Havas ‘Together’ strategy, integration of all specialisations and functions of the Havas Group under one roof in the form of a Havas Village. 2017 saw the launch of the new Havas Village in Gurugram.

DigitasLBi

A-

Country head(s): Himani Kapadia, CEO, Sapient Razorfish and DigitasLBi India; Amaresh Godbole, MD, DigitasLBi India

Ownership: Publicis Groupe  
In 2017 DigitasLBi, looked to steer clear of industry buzz words like ‘content is king’, ‘data-driven’, ‘customer-centric’ and ‘social by design’ by building an agency rooted in ‘marketing transformation’. It used the power of data to solve business problems through creativity, technology, media and customer relationships. It used its group’s Publicis. Sapient platform to tap into data engineering and study emerging technologies.

Achievements
While global realignment saw DigitasLBi lose out on Mondelez and Piaggio in India, the above strategy helped them deliver account wins which included HPCL, Nestle Nutrition, Jeep and Spice Style among others.   

Housekeeping
The agency invited clients to participate in workshops about CRM and analytics and also showcased its ‘Power of One’ offering to them.

PHD

A-

Country heads: Jyoti Bansal
The year started off with a digital unit being set up in its Mumbai office on the back of the agency bagging the global media mandate for Volkswagen in 2016. The team comprised of new hires that included data scientists and talent from the tech, luxury marketing, and brand communications backgrounds. The agency claims that over 50% of its hires came from non-traditional media roles.

Achievements
PHD launched four new specialised business units to diversify its business - PHD Studios (content solutions), PHD Analytics (data and analytics offering), PHD Programmatic and PHD eCommerce.  New business came in the form of ABinBev (media planning and buying), HP (search), Cipla (media planning and buying) and Kazo (media planning and buying) among others.

Housekeeping
Young talent was put at the forefront in 2017, and that resulted in two youngsters (Ronnie Thomas and Tejas Shah) travel to the Cannes as the winners of the Young Lions competition for media.  PHD also won Gold in the India Media Agency of the Year category at Campaign’s Agency of the Year South Asia leg.

The Social Street 

A-

Country head(s): Pratap Bose (founding partner and chairman), Mandeep Malhotra (founding partner and CEO)  

Ownership: Independent  
In 2017, (its second full year of existence), The Social Street’s stated agenda was to grow by 40%, explode into the awards scene and be a magnet for talent. The agency achieved 60% growth, by getting clients such as HPCL (OOH, experiential and events), Exide Industries (digital, OOH and experiential), Pepsico (events, experiential), MTR Foods (digital, OOH, experiential, events and retail) and TVS Motors (retail, consultancy, OOH) among others.  The total client count according to the agency is currently 160.   

Achievements
In terms of awards, it bagged a Silver (South Asia Specialist Agency of the Year) and Bronze (South Asia Independent Agency of the Year) at the Campaign South Asia Agency of the Year Awards. At Goafest, it bagged 40 Abbys in the Creative Abbys (including four Golds) and four in the Media Abbys (including one Gold). At the Emvies a Silver and two Bronze were won.

Housekeeping
The agency houses 200 people. It claimed less than 1% turnover rate among senior management (11% overall). According to an internal anonymous survey, the agency didn’t have a single disgruntled employee.

Havas Media  

A-

Country head/s: Anita Nayyar (CEO), Mohit Joshi (MD)
In 2017 one of the key strategies for Havas Media was to focus on the 4Ps - product expansion, partnership expansion, people engagement and profile enhancement. It also charted an ambitious digital growth expansion through client collaborations leading to a significant increase in billings.

Achievements
As transparency was, and continues to be, one of the major issues in the digital space, Havas Media responded with a fully transparent client facing programmatic solution that gives clients complete visibility and control over their campaigns. The solution had a client facing, transparent control tower displaying all programmatic trading, allowing clients to track and monitor their programmatic buying in one place. On the new business front the agency won, 30+ new pieces of business worth USD 76 million registering a conversion rate of 90%. This led to a revenue increase of 25%.

Housekeeping
Havas Media has penetrated into newer markets with the focus on tier II markets – new offices launched in Kochi, Kozhikode and Ludhiana.

W+K Delhi

B

Country heads: Sidharth Loyal (MD), ECDs: Shuchi Thakur and Molona Wati Longchar   
2017 was the first full year in charge for Wieden + Kennedy’s new leadership team. In September 2016, Sidharth Loyal was appointed as MD and two ECDs in the form of Shuchi Thakur and Molona Wati Longchar joined the agency. While W+K has a heritage across the world for great award-winning creative work, its India office was lacking in this space. And that changed in 2017 as it bagged Gold and Bronze at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity for Nike’s ‘Da Da Ding’.

Achievements
During the year, one of the pillars for growth for the agency was taking multiple client projects in-house including films, where its creative teams wrote, shot, directed and edited those pieces of work. The agency’s hiring process changed as it looked for people outside of traditional agency setups. Housekeeping

The agency launched a new learning and training initiative called WKED to help all employees to learn new skills and refresh existing skill sets.

Happy mcgarrybowen

B

Country head/s: Kartik Iyer, PM Praveen Das

Ownership: Not disclosed
In 2017, Happy mcgarrybowen (Happy mgb) an agency that was primarily focused on the South decided to expand its wings to the North of India. Then it decided to collaborate with NGOs to establish its CSR & SBCC (social behavioural change communication) offering. In the North of India, this strategy paid dividends as the agency started with signing on Wash United (Berlin) for its CSR division. This was followed by Suzuki Motorcycles & MG Cars also appointing Happy mgb as their AOR.   

Achievements
The agency believes that its growth rests on four pillars — communication (digital is considered to be an integral part of the offering and not a separate offering); design (along with brand and packaging, the UX component is also an important part); CSR & social behavioural change communication (an emerging space in the Indian market, that could become a strong driver in the future); and B2B (wherein there are few specialist services on offer.)

Dentsu X India

A-

Country head: Divya Karani, CEO

Ownership: Dentsu  
Till 2016, for Dentsu X, its stature preceded its size. But 2017 was an inflection point for the agency in more ways than one, as the agency redefined and rebranded itself ‘Beyond Media’ and in the process redefined the communication space in which it operated.

Achievements
Its growth trajectory in 2017 showed a 342% growth in our media billings as compared to 2016. Among the major accounts that added to this gain were the AMFI (Association of Mutual Funds in India) account it picked up in December 2016, the multi-billion-dollar pitch for Maruti Suzuki India, February 2017 and the Canon H1 pitch in February 2017 and the H2 pitch in August 2017. The agency has also not lost any account for the last six years.  

Housekeeping
The agency invested in beefing up its top talent in 2017, Roopam Garg as chief client officer in August 2017; Takashi Koyanagi as chief integration officer in August 2017; Arabinda Ghosh as chief strategy officer in December 2017 and Kumar Manish as executive vice-president in July 2017. 

FCB Ulka

B-

Country head(s): Nitin Karkare, CEO

Ownership: Interpublic Group
FCB Ulka got its nutrition for growth in 2017 through one of the big account wins of the year – Horlicks. And while it lost ZEEL, Tata Chemicals and Techno Mobiles, other account wins for the year included SBI Mutual Fund, Rooh Afza (and other Hamdard brands) and Tata Docomo Business Services.  

Achievements
While the agency lost its NCD for digital, Gerard Jayaranjan, there were plenty of new hires, specifically for the Horlicks team. A dedicated team was set up for the same. Jyotsana Singh Kaushik joined to lead the account. Shalini Rao was appointed later in the year as head of planning for the product portfolio.

Housekeeping
FCB Ulka announced the launch of Bushfire in 2017. The agency positioned it as a new age marketing and communications agency equipped to provide start-ups with services they would require in a menu format.

Rediffusion Y&R

B-

Country head(s): Dhunji Wadia

Ownership: 60% local, 40% foreign (WPP)  
Along with business growth, the focus for Rediffusion Y&R in 2017 was the integration of creative, digital and activation resources. The Privy Council was launched, a new business team formed, across disciplines and offices.    

Achievements
Growth came in the form for new businesses which contributed to almost 10% of the agency’s revenue. New business wins in the year included Anmol Industries, Hoichoi, Tata Steel, Sonalika Tractors, Government of Maharashtra (Project) and Jamshedpur Football and Sporting, among others.

Housekeeping
Uttio Majumdar (head- Mumbai) and Pranav Harihar Sharma, ECD (north and west) left the agency during the year. Sita Narayanswamy was brought in as a replacement for Majumdar. Siddhant Lahiri also joined the agency to head planning in its headquarters in Mumbai.

Madison Media Group

B

Agency heads: Sam Balsara, chairman; Vikram Sakhuja, partner and CEO, Madison Media and OOH    
Madison Media Group's stated agenda for 2017 was simple - acquire new clients and strengthen its offerings in digital. And clients came in plenty as Madison Media Group compensated for losses like Marico, Levis (account moved due to global realignment), SpiceJet, ITC and Lafarge with wins that included Titan, Viacom18, Xiaomi, Uber, Fortis, Bandhan Bank and Indiabulls Personal Finance among others.

Achievements
To increase its strength in digital, Madison launched MFusion. The agency labels the tool as one that enables brand growth as it seeks consumer insights across search, social, web and eCommerce.   Madison also acquired performance management agency Hiveminds in Bengaluru.   

Housekeeping
In 2017 it trained more than 200 employees through both internal and external trainings. One of them was ‘Train the Trainer' and the agency claims it has been very successful. Its training sessions always have someone from the top management, either conducting the training or participating in it.   

TBWA           

B

Country head: Govind Pandey

Ownership: Omnicom Group
“While everyone pays lip service to Integrated Communications, the industry essentially looks at a TVC script as the growth platform," says an agency executive. Rather than being overwhelmed by change, it decided to find excitement in the uncertainty and see possibilities in that scenario. The agency's objective in 2017 was to build on the foundations of emerging needs of CMOs, rather than historical precedents, to create a sustainable model for profitable revenue growth.

Achievements
To fix responsibility among its employees TBWA decided that employees need to have an output that could be measured. The agency reconfigured people’s job descriptions/ designations on how they contribute to the three specialisations that clarified every individual ask within the framework of its positioning.

Housekeeping
The agency promoted an internal training program called ‘Muscle Up’ to hyper-train chosen individuals on the three specialisations. This was further bolstered by participation in regional and global training programs for key personnel.

Ogilvy India

A-

Country head: Kunal Jeswani, CEO

Ownership: WPP  
For an agency that's been in India for nine decades, it's natural that Ogilvy has a long-standing relationship with several clients. In an industry riddled with constant client churn, Ogilvy India retained all its top 20 clients. Further, Ogilvy is focusing on expanding its integrated services offering to its clients. Nearly 80% of its clients are now integrated services clients, who work with the agency for more than just its advertising services.

Achievements
In 2017, among the work that dominated Ogilvy's creative display included Savlon Chalk Sticks, Star Nayi Soch and so on.

Housekeeping
The agency's digital-focused investment plan has resulted in six times faster revenue growth in digital services than the overall agency growth The digital medium makes up about 18% of overall media spends, but for the agency the revenue from digital is at 25%.

The Womb

A-

Country head/s: Navin Talreja & Kawal Shoor    

Ownership: Founders (96%); Employees (4%)  
The Womb decided to go back to the roots of what the business is all about! The answer: it's not about just ads, but about helping to find creative and non-linear ways to help clients grow their businesses and brands. Executives at The Womb believe, “from Cadbury to Vodafone to Idea, there’s enough proof that actually the more creative and thoughtful your positioning, the easier it is to do the so-called creative ads".

Achievements
In 2017, Saregama Carvaan, a product conceptualised by the agency was one way of showing that insight, creativity, and business acumen could get together to create transformational products.

Housekeeping
The ad agency shares ownership with deserving employees. Employees currently own four percent of the company. At the end of the year, the team that worked on the business gets 10% of the profits on the business won.

Thinkstr

B-

Country head: Satbir Singh     
Thinkstr’s agenda for 2017 was to grow from its five-member team and to bag three new accounts. And it managed to achieve it with ease, as it ended the year with a 22-member team and six new clients.

Achievements
Riding on client testimonials, Thinkstr was invited for a pitch for Reckitt Benckiser’s Vanish. The agency bagged that business as well as Pass Pass and Freshlook. Other account wins for the year included Indian Terrain and Times Internet.

Housekeeping
Future Thinking Thinkstr kept its talent motivated with several training programmes. Among these was coding. Five of the 22 member team undertook basic lessons in code in their spare time.


Source: Campaign India https://www.campaignindia.in/topic/agency-report-card-2017/445863

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