Campaign India Agency Report Card 2011: Lowe Lintas

Type of agency: Advertising

Ownership: Interpublic Group (IPG)

Key personnel: R. Balakrishnan (Balki), Chairman and CCO; Joseph George (Joe), CEO; Fali Vakeel, COO; Shahrook Munsiff, Finance Director; Arun Iyer, NCD; Amer Jaleel, NCD; Michelle Suradkar, HR Director; Pravin Savant, CTO

Accounts won: Suzlon, 3M, Tata Interactive Services, Birla Ultratech, Videocon D2H, GE Healthcare, HUL OK soaps, Muthoot Pappachan Group, Expedia, iProf, Tourism Victoria, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Samsonite Luggage, ET Now, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Sun Pharma, Global Health Strategies, Wildlife Trust of India, RNA Corporation, HCL Technologies, among others

Accounts lost: Swissotel, SRBM Udyog, Saradha Agro Development, Via.com

The agency notched several points for the addition of new businesses across multiple categories. Furthermore, many of their campaigns like Idea and Tanishq were talked about. The agency’s work for Suzlon, an account won early this year, was appreciated by the jury. While there were exits like Sabyasachi Misra (chief growth officer) and Suraja Kishore (SVP) in Mumbai and Deepesh Jha (creative head) in Delhi, the agency announced the appointments of S Subramanyeswar (national planning director), Sujit Sanyal (SVP) and Tushar Kadam (ECD) in Mumbai and Aejaz Khan (SVP) in Bangalore. Though the agency has not opened any new offices, Lowe Lintas has set up two new divisions – LinEngage and LinProductions – in 2011. The agency continues to steer clear of creative awards,  but Lowe Lintas was recognised as the fifth most effective advertising agency in the world, according to the Effie Effectiveness Index 2011 released in July.
How Campaign India rates the agency: 8

How Lowe Lintas rates itself: 9
This was a year of success at Lowe Lintas. Our new business gain across markets and divisions has been unprecedented and the best ever - 90 clients signed up in just the first 10 months of this year! We continued to do successful and noticeable work across the board and across diverse categories. We initiated our engagement with academia early this year and have had meaningful partnerships with several key institutes. We rolled out the famed Lowe Worldwide Planning Toolkit to not just all the 30 account planners but also to over 350 people in account management. We partnered with MSN to understand consumer attitudes towards CSR in India. In June, our mid-level employees in the creative department attended a norm breaking one week REBOOT workshop in some of the most stimulating environments in France. We are the only agency where the top management (including the chairman and the CEO) have personally met every appraisable employee of the agency during the annual appraisals.  Today, we believe we have fully delivered on what we set out to do – whether it be our creative product,  client retention record, our new business gains, our talent strategy, our thought leadership initiatives or even re-enforcing ourselves as a rooted, brand focused, brave and uncomplicated agency.