Campaign India Agency Report Card: Publicis Ambience

Campaign India Team, 18 December, 2008

Mumbai

Type of agency Advertising
Company ownership Publicis
Key personnel Nakul Chopra, CEO, Publicis South Asia, Aniruddha Bannerjee, president and COO, Prasanna Sankhe, Ashish Khazanchi, national creative directors
Accounts won Videocon DTH, Bharatmatrimony.com, Indiaproperties.com, Clickjobs.com, IndiaAutomobile.com, Diageo, Capgemini, Swiss
Accounts lost Godrej Sara Lee-Hit

There was a lot of action in Publicis Ambience in the human resource department. Partha Sinha quit his role as chief strategy officer to join BBH India. The other people who called it quits include Anirban Mukherjee, national planning director; Kaushik Tiwari, head of south and Pankaj Arora, SVP. The agency appointed S.Subramanyeswar as national planning director, Kaustav Das as EVP-south and Shilpa Chitre as HR-director.
It bagged accounts including  the  soon-to-be-launched Videocon DTH, Bharatmatrimony.com, Indiaproperties.com, Clickjobs.com, IndiaAutomobile.com, Diageo, Capgemini and Swiss but lost out on Godrej Sara Lee-Hit which went to Lowe.
The agency created some good campaigns this year including ‘The Human Machine’ campaign for Himani Fast Relief, Kinetic Flyte launch campaign featuring Bipasha Basu and a campaign for Citibank Metro Card.
Campaign Score: 7

How PUBLICIS AMBIENCE rates itself: 7
After a year of superlative growth , we saw a relatively sedate year, clocking up a mere 22%. But the slow-down in growth was deliberate – one of the philosophies that the agency implemented this year is that the number of clients need to be kept limited, in order to deliver true value addition.
The year 2008 has been one of significant progress. It all began in mid-07 when the agency made the big move out of Neelam Centerand moved to  Lower Parel.  The other big news on the office-opening front came in the form of Chennai – a first for Publicis Ambience. With the significant Citibank Cards business as the flagship, the Chennai outfit has picked up some key businesses over the year including BharatMatrimony.com and Indiaproperties.com. 
The agency saw it’s creative reins being handed over to the hugely talented and much awarded duo of NCDs Ashish Khazanchi and Prasanna Sankhe. And almost at the same time, S.Subramanyeswar stepped in to lead the strategy engine with a young team of planners.
 With so much already happening on the India front, the Publicis Worldwide think-tank rolled out the carpet on Contagious, the agency’s new approach to communication. Not to be confused with yet another tool, Contagious is already in motion and Publicis Ambience hasn’t wasted any opportunities in harnessing it’s power for Indian clients. Watch this space.