Campaign India Agency Report Card: Mindshare

Type of agency: Media
Company ownership: WPP
Key personnel: Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Group M, South Asia, Gowthaman Ragothaman, leader, Chanchal Chakrabarti, partner, client leader – Pepsico, Ravi Rao, partner, client leader -- Unilever, M A Parthasarathy, Partner - Business Planning, Alok Sinha, Partner- Invention
Accounts won: Full ABG AOR with Idea Cellullar, Indian National Congress, National Insurance Company Ltd., South Asia FM Ltd., MSD Pharmaceuticals, Xenos Technologies, Taj Hotels, Manipal Universal Learnings, TSG Naco, The MGM Channel Asia, MCCS, Coromandel Fertilisers, Milestone Interactive (Sony PSP) and Travel XP
Accounts lost: Lafarge Cements, Tata Steel

A more than satisfactory year for Mindshare.

The only losses were Lafarge Cement and Tata Steel out of Kolkata.The agency completed the full Aditya Birla Group AOR with Idea Cellular coming into the fold from April.
Also new to the fold were National Insurance Company, South Asia FM, MSD Pharmaceuticals, Xenos Technologies, Taj Hotels, Manipal Universal Learnings, TSG Naco, The MGM Channel Asia, MCCS, Coromandel Fertilisers, Milestone Interactive (Sony PSP) and Travel XP.
MA Parthasarathy joined as partner, business planning, South Asia; Alok Sinha as partner, invention, South Asia; and Pat Vinayak in charge of the newly-formed Team Aditya Birla Group (ABG).
While not much creative recognition came by at global events, locally it bagged 11 metals at the Media Abby’s at Goafest; was named the No.1 Media Agency of the Year 2009 at Emvies. Mindshare partnered with Brand Equity to host Compass 2008 . It also partnered with Campaign India to launch the Celebrity Ranking Research, CelebZ.
How the agency fares in retaining Unilever, which is currently reviewing its media business, will possibly set the tone for the coming year.

Campaign Score: 9
 
How MINDSHARE rates itself: 9

Mindshare’s vision to be the lead business partner got a little closer in 2009. We have invested a lot in talent and back-office this year. We have created a World Class Web Enabled Media Information System (Intelligence). All the planners are fully trained in the digital space. We now have a 45-member team of dedicated domain experts in the area of search, mobile and digital creative development, a 15-member strong analytics team and a 20-member strong communications planning team along with a “Solutions Box” that helps us to interpret data into insights. We have retained all our active businesses during this period. We have also grown must faster than the industry (despite our size and category restrictions) with nearly 25% of the revenue coming from “up the value chain” projects, well above and ahead of our objective set in the beginning of the year. And we are eagerly waiting for 2