Campaign India Agency Report Card 2010: Metal

Type of agency: Advertising

Company ownership: Independent

Key personnel: Kurien Mathews, chairman & MD, Narayan Kumar, director and creative chief, Probir Dutt, executive director, Ambarish Ray, VP, Siddharth Prasad, VP – creative, Trilokjit Sengupta, CD, Sharan Sai Kumar, senior planning director

Accounts won: ATS Greens, Axis Mutual Fund, Bajaj Capital, Star CJ Alive, Web 18, ZoOm TV

Accounts lost: None reported

A solid second year, bolstered by the joining of Kurien Mathews. The Mathews-Kumar partnership, founded at TBWA India where they were colleagues, continues to be strong.The agency has won accounts in a range of categories and in both their offices in Mumbai and New Delhi. Platinum Guild’s continuing with Metal is certainly the highlight , strengthened further by the fact that the agency has not lost an account.

The Axis Mutual Fund and STAR CJ Alive wins have been against the top ranked agencies, so the wins give a fillip to the agency’s reputation. More noticeable TVCs are all that is required to allow Metal to continue the fine run.

How Campaign India rates the agency: 8

How METAL rates itself: 8

METAL’s second year turned out a winner as well. The year began with NDTV Profit rating the Platinum TVC as one of the top ten TVCs of 2009. METAL was the only independent in a list of heavyweight network agencies.Not just that, it was also the only one year old company in a list that featured the works of others that have been around for over 40 years.It was once again a year of zero attrition - no people lost, no client lost. The team more than doubled in size. Some big blue chip names got added to the list though - both people as well as clients.

On the people front, Kurien Mathews joined the Board. Clients that were won include the likes of Axis Mutual Fund, Web 18, ATS Greens, Bajaj Capital,Star CJ Alive and ZoOm TV. Breakthrough, METAL’s proprietary strategic tool for brand and business, continued to wow the clients exposed to it. 6 full-fledged paid Breakthrough Days were implemented for clients across Mumbai and Delhi.

Further, Breakthrough became a complete course at the AICAR Business School, in line with METAL’s core belief of investing in talent. METAL’s dynamic blog site, www.metal-hq.com, crafted and hosted by its in-house team got a major fillip - with over 100% increase in readership and traffic, not to mention rave reviews from its loyal readers.Digital Breakthrough, the digital adaptation of Breakthrough, got implemented for 3 clients and plans are afoot for over 10 in the coming few months.If the first year was heady, the second year was about discovery - a journey in search of an honest and memorable signature.

Year three will be about putting that to the test - to grow and evolve. In line with that, METAL is already on the lookout for a larger office space in Mumbai, one that can house all the excitement, dreams, ambition, and, of course, people.