Campaign India Agency Report Card: Publicis Ambience

Type of agency: Advertising

Company ownership: Publicis Groupe

Key personnel: Nakul Chopra, CEO, Publicis South Asia, Aniruddha Banerjee, president and COO, Prasanna Sankhe, Ashish Khazanchi, national creative directors

Accounts won: K7 Computing, Sah Petroleum, Saheli

Accounts lost: Tata Westside, Sweekar, Revive

Publicis Ambience definitely hasn’t seen the best of years in 2009. Although its performance can at best be described as steady, the agency has hardly won any new accounts this year; certainly not any major ones. But on the upside, it hasn’t lost too much business either.

The bright side of the year for Ambience would definitely be its performance at awards. It won a short list at Spikes Asia for its Himani ‘Human Machine’ campaign. It also won a Silver Lion in the Outdoor Lions category for the ‘Cupid Condoms’ campaign. Another award won includes the bronze that Publicis scooped at Clio’s in the Innovative category, for its campaign for Wespro Digital Cameras. The agency has bagged some business in the course of the year, such as Sah Petroleum, Saheli contraceptive pill and K7 Computing. It has lost some business like Sweekar, Review and Tata Westside. Its most recent work was for Himani Sona Chandi Chawanprash, which was TV led, featuring brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan.

Campaign Score: 7

How Publicis Ambience rates itself: 8

Publicis Ambience is one of the fastest growing and best performing offices within the Publicis group. Keeping in mind its past record and present talent the objectives set for the agency are to double the India revenues in 3 years, starting 2009. This year in spite of the economic slowdown, Publicis Communications has exceeded its business targets and performed excellently against all three objectives set for the year.  The first objective was to be amongst the top three creative agencies at award shows. We were among the top three agencies at Goafest ’09; in the top three of all Indian agencies at Cannes ’09; in the top three at Spikes Asia;  number three among PWW offices;  joint first place in ‘The Work ‘09’ – Asia;  strong footprint at key award shows:  One show, Clio, D&AD,  AdFest.  

Our second objective was to be amongst the choice of the new generation for talent. Towards this end, we reported single digit attrition rate for the first three quarters of the current year;  we handpicked resources whenever required;  for the first time, we  were ranked in the top three at major international and national award shows, in 2009;  strong client-agency partnerships and new business wins.

The third objective was to strengthen partnerships with existing clients and win new business. Towards this end, we delivered quality and result oriented creative solutions; inducted proprietary systems and processes to provide better value to client partners; enjoyed a Client Relationship Index rate at an average of 7.8 out of 10 (Internal Publicis rankings) and had organic growth of 12% from existing key clients (YTY 2008-09)