Campaign India Agency Report Card 2010: MEC

Type of agency Media

Company ownership WPP

Key personnel Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Group M, South Asia, Shubha George, COO, MEC, South Asia, T Gangadhar, MD, Zubin Tatna, national director, communicationsplanning, Geetha Shiv, national director, MEC MediaLab, Rajneesh Chaturvedi, national director, MEC Access, Hariharan Vishwanath, national trading director,Suraj Nambiar, Head, MEC Interaction

Accounts won Colgate Palmolive, Reliance Communications (CDMA, GSM and 3G services), Zee Network,Mercedes Benz, BIG CBS, Dupont, ASK Group,Times Group ABS and Jayalakshmi Silks

Accounts lost Neo Sports

In 2010, Mediaedge:cia formally became MEC. The agency added a decent list of big spenders like Colgate Palmolive, part of the Reliance Communications business (rest is with OMD), Zee Network, Mercedes Benz among others. The agency also continued its integrated campaigns for brands across media including the LG Mallika-E-Kitchen Season 2 and several high-profile activations surrounding the IPL. At Goafest 2010, the agency won a bronze at the Media Abby for its work for Nivea Visage.Though Loveleen Gajria, director-integrated planning, parted ways with the agency, MEC brought on board new talent including Suraj Nambiar, head - MEC Interaction, Soumya Sarkar, senior business director and Shweta Singh, director - Integrated Planning - Delhi and Chennai.The agency’s IPL forecasts will help generate good businesses during the next edition of IPL and the upcoming Cricket World Cup. Overall, the agency managed to perform quite well through the year with good account wins and roping in new talent on-board.

How Campaign India rates the agency: 9

How MEC rates itself: 9

This year, we have had a prodigious run on the new business front. We have added big, blue chip clients to our roster that add up to annualized billings of over Rs 500 cr. We continued the focus on our strategic, media-agnostic product through the Integrated Planning (IP) approach - Citi-IPL3 activation, LG Mallika-E-Kitchen Season 2, HDFC Standard Life Spell Bee activation, NIVEA - Chennai Super Kings association, Hi5 - Kings XI Punjab Association, LG’s Online Reputation Management (ORM) programme, etc. Apart from a research study on Celebrities’ influence in purchase, MEC released the second edition of our whitepaper on the IPL ratings forecast - our predicted rating was exactly in line with the actual numbers. We have beefed up our staff in line with our new business wins and regretted exits have been well below the acceptable threshold. We have made significant investments in staff training in 2010. All things considered, a hugely satisfying year.