Campaign India Agency Report Card: BBDO India

BBDO INDIA

Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: Omnicom
Key personnel: Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer,
Sangeet Pillai, Planning Director, Ajai Jhala, CEO
Accounts won: 7Up, Quaker Oats, Hewlett Packard, new joint venture from Turner Broadcasting, Bayer  HealthCare, P&G Gillette
Accounts lost: None

BBDO India has got off to a slow start. But it’s a race they say they will conquer in time. With the team that they have in place, they are likely to live up to the promise as well. With Paul chosen to head the creative team, and BBDO electing to relocate a BBDO New York resource like Pillai to partner Paul, the top management team was complete when they got on board Ajai Jhala as CEO. To date, with the exception of the Turner JV account, the rest of their business is as a result of global alignments. But given some time, that may well change.
The year has seen BBDO focus more on housekeeping than they would have liked; finding office space before getting to the tough part of finding talent and getting after new business. That part starts now, now that the office in Mumbai is functional.
Next year should see significant activity at BBDO.
Campaign Score: 6

How BBDO INDIA rates itself: 2
Bill Bernbach said about love and ideas “Ideas are like love… the more you analyze it, the faster it disappears”.  Too early to dissect ourselves? Honestly speaking, we are still work in progress. We have a long way to go.  We have six exciting businesses, and our urgent need is to contribute to their growth in India.  These are 7 Up, Quaker Oats, HP (Hewlitt Packard), a new joint venture from Turner Broadcasting, Bayer  HealthCare and P&G Gillette. We’ve declined 8 pitches because we are keen to concentrate on the clients who already trust us. Our cause has attracted talent like Ajai Jhala, Sangeet Pillai, Raj Deepak Das, Sandipan Bhattacharyya and Josy Paul. But we are only as good as our last work. And that’s yet to be proven. But we can only give ourselves a score of 2. Because our benchmark is BBDO New York and Almap BBDO and other great BBDO offices. And because we would like to be judged by our work, and only by our work. Everything else is academic. And it’s too early for us to play tennis with our eyes on the scoreboard.