Campaign India Agency Report Card 2011: Metal Communications

Ownership: Independent

Key Personnel: Kurien Mathews, CMD, Narayan Kumar, director and creative chief, Probir Dutt, executive director, Ambarish Ray, VP, Siddharth Prasad, VP – creative, Trilokjit Sengupta, CD, Cyrus Sahiar, CD, Gaurav Soi, GM – Mumbai, Himal Kaul, GM - New Delhi

Account won: Reliance Mutual Fund, Star Gold re-launch, Times Response, Berkshire Insurance, RJ Corp, CPP

Account lost: None reported

Metal has been one of those agencies that have not produced much talked about work. Other than Star Gold’s re-launch campaign, work for other brands did not especially catch the jury’s attention. While the agency has landed new businesses from Reliance Mutual, Berkshire Insurance and Times Response as well, there have not been too many headline-grabbing campaigns for these brands.

Several new people joined in senior positions in the company including Gaurav Soi as general manager – Mumbai and Himal Kaul as general manager – New Delhi. The agency stayed away from entering any awards this year.

The jury feels that big blitz TVCs are all that is required to make Metal a strong contender in the coming years.
How Campaign India rates the agency: 5

How Metal rates itself: 8
Metal’s third year exceeded expectations, and the agency has doubled in size; both in terms of revenue and number of people. This has resulted in vastly expanded office spaces in Mumbai as well as New Delhi.  Overall, the agency added more than double the existing resources in all departments across both geographies it is present in, Mumbai and New Delhi. Importantly, Metal continues to hire from the IIMs – with alumni from IIM Bangalore, IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Lucknow (in addition to a sprinkling of MICANs), choosing to make Metal the first choice to build their professional careers. This was again another year of near zero attrition, both on the people and accounts front. Breakthrough, Metal’s proprietary strategic tool for brand and business continued to wow the clients exposed to it.  Eight more full-fledged paid Breakthrough Days were implemented for clients across Mumbai and Delhi. Today Breakthrough continues to be one of the most sought after courses at AICAR Business School after it was introduced into the curriculum last year. Year three is now proving that the Metal model of creating Breakthrough ideas and focusing on building great relationships works – for our clients, for our people and for our business associates. That is a lot for a three year old. 

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