Campaign India Agency Report Card: Leo Burnett

Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: Publicis Groupe
Key personnel: Arvind Sharma, chairman of Indian sub-continent, Nitish Mukherjee, MD, K V Sridhar, national creative director
Accounts won: Unitech Wireless, Indian Express, Mccain Foods, Malboro, Dicitex India, Reliance Big TV, Samsung Mobiles
Accounts lost: Yatra.com

It has been an uncharacteristically low-key year for Leo Burnett, given the noise the agency made in 2008. Wins included Unitech Wireless, Reliance Big TV and a portion of the Samsung Mobiles business. The agency won a Silver in Outdoor (point of sale design) and Bronze in Promo Lions for the Tide Stainbroidery campaign at Cannes. This was supported by wins at Spikes Asia, The One Show, Adfest, Clio and The New York Festival. The agency’s Mumbai office was at number 14 in the Gunn Report’s rankings of the highest-ranked agencies in Asia-Pacific. Given that last year the agency was number three in the same rankings, it has obviously been a bit of a disappointment.  
Burnett appointed the ex-regional business director on Motorola at O&M, Loveleen Raina to head its newly acquired Unitech Wireless account. The agency recently hired Hemant Jain from Wieden+Kennedy. Global chairman and CEO, Tom Bernardin and Jarek Ziebinski, president, APAC, have both spoken at length about the need for strategic acquisitions in the areas of digital, design and retail, and those changes are expected to take place sometime next year.

Campaign Score: 7
 
How LEO BURNETT rates itself: 8

2009 started off well for us having been judged the Leo Burnett Global Agency of the Year. A testimony of the fact that we had as an agency performed extremely well on every aspect, including growth in business, reputation, awards, client satisfaction and employee satisfaction. We continued to grow, win awards and business in 2009. Tide and Bajaj Appliances led the way in international and local creative awards including Cannes, New York Festival, Spikes Asia, One Show, Adfest among others. The Cannes report ranked us in the top 3 Indian agencies. ‘Jaago Re’ was perhaps the most talked about digital effort in the country in 2008-2009. Uninor, Marlboro, Indian Express, Samsung mobiles amongst others added to the business tally. Current clients like General Motors added Aveo U-va and Optra.  We became the Asia-Pacific hub for some of Burnett’s largest MNC brands. Our satisfaction came from strong growth of our client’s businesses in a challenging year for business overall.