Campaign India Agency Report Card: ZenithOptimedia

Type of agency: Media
Company ownership: Publicis Groupe
Key personnel: Ambika Srivastava, chairman, Satyajit Sen, CEO, Pavan Chandra, MD – West & South, Mona Jain, head—strategic investments, IMX, Rajat Gandhi, head, Zed Digital
Accounts won: Unitech Wireless, Videocon, Usha Industries, Swarovski, Maxima, United Biscuits, Thomas Cook, Karbonn, Ibibo, Fullerton Securities, AICC, GPI, RPG Publications, Swiss Air, Apari Forex, Vedanta, eBay, Motorola, Telenor, Jaina Marketing Associates, PA Times
Accounts lost: HP
 

It was a mixed bag  for ZenithOptimedia that started on a disappointing note as it saw its five-year old association with HP terminated. Losing Nokia on a global platform was another dampener.
Zenith has managed to retain most of their local clients and  clocked some significant wins.
The Videocon Group awarded its Rs 200-crore media duties to ZenithOptimedia. Other wins included  Unitech Wireless, and Usha Industries .
In terms of new initiatives, ZO brought in its specialist division Newcast into India, to offer cross media solutions to their existing as well as new clients. With growing focus on digital, Rajat Gandhi, head, business and marketing, Times Business Solutions (TBS), was appointed head, Zed Digital. ZO promoted Satyajit Sen, former managing director (North), ZO, to the post of CEO.
Despite the domestic wins, the twin blows of HP and Nokia has been more than disappointing.ZO will be happy to see the back of 2009.

Campaign Score: 9
 
How ZENITHOPTIMEDIA rates itself: 9

2009 has been an eventful year for ZenithOptimedia in India, in more ways than one. Here is a synopsis of some of these significant events. Across markets we have seen the effects of the global meltdown show its impact.  The advertising industry and India was no exception. Despite maintaining positive growth levels the industry growth rates have gone down drastically in 2009. At ZenithOptimedia, despite the global realignment of our founder client HP,  we have managed to grow at four times the industry average this year. This in itself is extremely significant as not only have we been able to beat the slowdown we have come our stronger.
We have won 18 new businesses this year despite the adverse market conditions. We have already written $100million + worth of new business in annualised billing. This is our largest number since our inception five years back and our fifth year celebrations have just started. The credit goes to the entire team at ZenithOptimedia on their never say die attitude giving us our best year ever!!