International creative agency, Imagination, has set up two new offices in India. Headquartered in London, with its Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong, the agency also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne and Tokyo.
For its India operations, Imagination has roped in Uday Vijayan as director, Imagination India. Vijayan began his career in account management and has worked with agencies including JWT, Bozell and GPJ. Vijayan will be responsible for all aspects of the Indian operations, from setting up a team to building client respect for the agency.
Commenting on the launch of Imagination in India, Mark Barrett, chief executive officer, Imagination APAC said, "We've been servicing India over the past 8 years from our offices in Hong Kong and London. We had always planned to be in India, and India is one of the fastest growing economies so its the right time. By 2015 we expect our APAC offices to contribute 40 percent of our total revenues and think India will be a significant player. In India our client list includes Ford, Tata and The Oberoi hotels."
On their goals for the first year of operations in India, Vijayan said, "We need to make clients believe that building brand experiences is extremely important and relevant. What we do is create experiences by any way; it could be digital, retail or anything else. Secondly we need to be in business. To be able to put a number would be meaningless, we may double it or not achieve it. For India we are looking at opportunities like retail since it's booming in India. So it's a blank open slate and it's an open canvas for me to paint."
He added, "We see an opportunity in India in the technology space. Bangalore is the main centre for IT and hence we have opened an office in Bangalore."
On the type of work Imagination does, Barrett said, "We've been in the business for 44 years and we are an independent agency. We've got a positioning of transforming business by creativity. We create experiences by different media, be it digital, retail or experential. We are media neutral and not committed towards any medium."
