Campaign India Agency Report Card: Orchard Advertising

Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: Publicis
Key personnel: Thomas Xavier, chairman and national creative director
Accounts won: Peter England People, HUL Project, Nicholas Piramal, Subhiksha Telecom, SAB Miller Regional, Godrej & Boyce, Tata Chemicals,
Colors, Combe
Accounts lost: Air Deccan, Lotte India

Orchard Advertising saw some movement at the top management level. Thomas Xavier was promoted as chairman and national creative director as Nitish Mukherjee moved to Leo Burnett as managing director. Vibha Batra quit the agency to join Ambience Publicis as a creative director. 
The agency had a decent year with account wins like Peter England People, HUL Project, Nicholas Piramal, Subhiksha Telecom, SAB Miller Regional. Godrej & Boyce, Tata Chemicals,and Combe. Orchard’s most significant win this year would be Viacom 18’s GEC Colors which was earlier handled by Rediffusion Y&R. It lost Air Deccan’s business and resigned the Lotte India business (The business was up for a review and Orchard did not participate in the pitch). The account went to R K Swamy BBDO.
Colors  will probably be the big opportunity for Orchard to make a mark; the channel is doing well and, in the hypercompetitive GEC space, the top three channels will be very active.
Campaign Score: 6

How ORCHARD ADVERTISING rates itself: 5
The best and most satisfying way to grow: organically. That is probably the best way to describe Orchard in 2008. The year started with our founder member, Thomas Xavier, taking over the mantle as chairman, with his existing responsibility as NCD. With which came a “re-vision” of the business we were in: talent branding where the key purpose was to create a point of influx for every individual, working at Orchard, to grow exponentially. And we introduced and adopted the philosophy of “Human Kind” in-house before we unleashed it on our client brands and saw immediate success. We won the telecom business from Subhiksha, all regional businesses across brands from SAB Miller, Kinder Joy for Ferrero, Crizal from Essilor, to name just a few. Fortunately this did not go unnoticed in the marketing fraternity, reflecting in a flurry of new business wins.  The fall out of a good year though is the high standards that you set for yourself. And with 2009 just round the corner, we would say that 2008 has been just average. Call it modesty or hunger for more. We at Orchard would say we deserve only 5/10 on our own scale.