Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: WPP
Key personnel: Ravi Deshpande, chairman and chief creative officer, Umesh Shrikhande, chief executive officer, Rohit Shrivastava, executive VP (planning), K Vivek Kamath, executive VP (finance), MS Balaji, executive VP (Bangalore and Chennai head), Kumar Subramaniam, executive VP (Mumbai head), Prashant Mathur, general manager (Delhi head)
Accounts won: Muthoot Finance, Hypercity, Sun DTH, Excel Soft, LAVA International, Tara Jewells, Jindal Steel, Leela Kempinski
Accounts lost: Bharti AXA General Insurance, Spice Mobile
The agency was busy with the campaigns for Spice Jet, Domino’s, Whirlpool, NIIT, American Tourister and Asian Paints Royale among others. While the agency lost the accounts of Bharti AXA General Insurance and Spice Mobile, it managed to add a few more key businesses including Muthoot Finance, Sun DTH and Lava International.
Kumar Subramaniam came on board as the executive vice president for their Mumbai office while Juju Basu joined as VP and senior creative director. Joy Sengupta from client servicing joined his former colleagues at Scarecrow, while Surajit Roy, who was heading Delhi paved way for Prashant Mathur to take charge the branch. Ashish Bahl, vice president and business head also moved out from the agency. The agency has promoted Raj Nair and Atishi Pradhan to the post of regional creative director (Mumbai and South) and regional planning director (Delhi and South) respectively.
In terms of recognition, though the agency did not participate at Goafest 2010, the agency got three awards at Adfest 2010 for their work on Sanctuary magazine. The entertaining American Tourister campaign also won a bronze Effie this year.
In all, the agency had an average year with some key people movement. Though there were not many losses reported, the agency managed to win some decent businesses. The underlying story is one of solidity. Michael Maedel’s increased attention is a good sign for the agency.How
Campaign India rates the agency: 7
How Contract rates itself: 8
Every branch of Contract delivered visible, effective and creative work across categories on our biggest brands in tune with our Grow Young philosophy of keeping brands fresh and rejuvenated. Contract Delhi kept the SpiceJet ‘Get more when you fly’ series going, Domino’s Pizza Mania had the Mexican-Italian launch and Double-burst pizza launch, Whirlpool launched a semi-automatic machine Ace and NIIT launched the ‘There’s a professional in you’ campaign.
Contract Mumbai did some stellar work on American Tourister, Cadbury, Shoppers’ Stop, HSBC, Asian Paints Royale, Halls and Morphy Richards. Each of these campaigns has delivered outstanding results for our clients.
Across offices, the effort has been to provide clients with a one-stop solution for traditional media and new media. Everyone pulled together to offer our collective best response to a very challenging year. We’re looking forward to 2011.
