Campaign India Agency Report Card 2010: Lowe Lintas

Type of agency: Advertising

Company ownership: Interpublic Group (IPG) 

Key personnel: R. Balakrishnan (Balki), chairman and CCO, Charles Cadell, CEO, Joseph George, deputy CEO, Fali Vakeel, COO, Arun Iyer, national creative director, Amer Jaleel, national creative director 

Accounts won: IDFC, Micromax, Matix Fertilisers and chemicals, Homeshop18, Expedia, HP Tourism, DSP BlackRock Mutual Fund (shared with Taproot), Nirula’s, IT Department (empanelment), DLF, Mayden Pharma, Grasim Industries, Wipro Ego, Canara Robeco, Somany Ceramics.  

Accounts lost: ICICI Bank, VIP

Amer Jaleel and Arun Iyer were promoted to the role of national creative directors. Madhu Noorani was made chief creative planner. Rajesh Ramaswamy took charge in Bangalore, while Deepa Geethakrishnan moved to Mumbai. Channel planning was introduced and is said to be well underway through the region. Charles Cadell departed for an APAC role within IPG, with Joseph George taking over his role. Among the key people who left was executive director Mohit Beotra who moved to Airtel; Tarun Chauhan left to join JWT; Gitanjali Sriram moved to start Naked. 

As for key hires in 2010, Naveen Gaur came on board as executive director, Deepesh Jha was appointed as ECD and Anil Naidu was named as president of Lintas Productions.

From the point of view of the quality and number of films that have emerged from the Lowe stable, it’s been a tremendous year. Idea Cellular, Surf Excel, Maruti Suzuki, Havells, Hindustan Times, Tanishq, Fastrack, Bajaj Auto and Johnson & Johnson to name a few. As far as award shows go, Lowe only supports the Effies, where they stood second this year. The agency announced plans to venture into tier 2 and 3 cities, with the opening of their Kochi office.  

It’s been a robust year overall for this IPG agency, with an enviable portfolio of work across brands and categories as diverse as telecom, FMCG, Personal care, Media, Jewellery, Automotive and Fashion accessories. We think Lowe’s worldwide CEO Michael Wall summed it up best when he told us in an interview earlier in the year,  that Lowe’s India operation is “disproportionately good”.

How Campaign India rates the agency: 8

How Lowe Lintas rates itself: 8

2010 was a great year for the Lowe Lintas creative product – arguably our best body of work over the past three years. And the width of brands on which we have managed to do great work is of particular satisfaction.  A renewed focus on new business saw us putting up our best performance in a long time -  40 new clients and empanelments in just one year! We set in motion some of our new ambitious initiatives which are now well placed to be scaled up in 2011 – Tonic (Branded Content), Republic (Government focused social management), Lintas Production (Advertising, Feature and Television content), Lin Theatre ( new media offering in Rural India ) and our Tier 2 & 3 initiatives ( opened for starters, an office in Cochin ). We also this year, executed a new and bold appraisal process and also put in place a slew of technology enablements. A satisfying year; but need to do a lot lot more in 2011.