Campaign India Agency Report Card: Lowe Lintas

Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: IPG
Key personnel: Charles Cadell, CEO, R Balakrishnan, chairman and chief creative officer
Accounts won: Godrej Sara Lee, BBC World News, Times Global (ET Now), Unilever Soaps (Liril, Moti and Rexona), BPCL (Speed + Max), Bajaj (Nigeria), Tata Tea (Bangladesh and Pakistan), Hannesbrands Apparel India, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund
Accounts lost: Vaseline, Dish TV

Lowe’s creative work in 2009 has been something that the agency can proudly shout about from the rooftops, if they were so inclined. In addition to their work on brands such as Hindustan Times, Idea Cellular, Havells, Tata Tea,Channel [V], Surf Excel and Lifebuoy among others, the agency’s stand on award shows has certainly created a differentiated positioning.  The agency began the year on a good note by bagging two new accounts - the BBC World News and the ET Now account, both following multi-agency pitches.
Lowe Lintas helped support a high voltage campaign for Hindustan Times which went through a rebranding exercise. 2009 was key for Lowe Lintas on account of another client - Tata Tea. Their campaign for the tea brand has not only won awards, but also found mention on reams of newsprint.
A few months back, Lowe Lintas set up a specialist division for servicing financial clients titled Linfinancial and its first big win is Axis Bank. It also lost Anil Kumar, associate creative director who moved on to join TBWA. The agency has recently entered the content production space with the launch of its new unit Lintas Productions.

Campaign Score: 9
 
How Lowe Lintas rates itself: 7

2009 was a tougher year for business given the environment and a period of consolidation for us as some of our more ambitious organizational and structural plans were put on hold. Against this, with no real losses, we saw some good new business wins and some strong growth from our marketing services units such as Linterland, LinHealth and LinOpinion. This drive had been a focus for us along with the development of the Channel Planning discipline throughout the company. We continued to produce some path breaking traditional and nontraditional work against real brands such as Tata Tea, Idea, Unilever and Bajaj. A renewed focus on talent, training and staff development also underscored the year.