Campaign India Agency Report Card 2011: Crayons

Ownership: Independent

Key Personnel:  Kunal Lalani, MD, Ajay Chopra, director, Ranjan Bargotra, president, Gautamm Mehra, COO - Ultraviolet, Gopinath Menon, CEO - Melon Media, Gurjit Singh, COO - Amber (OOH), Rashpal Rana, VP, Ashish Rehi and Rajat Meresh, CDs, Shiv Kumar and Sanjay Chauhan, CSD, Sanjeev Bhirani, senior  VP (Mumbai), Arijit Ray, branch director, Aman Patha, branch manager, Vijayshree Krishnan, branch Manager (Chennai), Shailesh Kackar, AVP (Jaipur), Shrinivas Sinha, senior business director - Melon Media, Sandeep Sharma, senior media director – Operations (Delhi) - Melon Media, Indrani Roy, business director (Delhi) - Melon Media

Account won: Zen Mobile, 3Cs company, Logix Group, Floriana, Tata Motors (NCR), Punjab Tourism

Account lost: None reported

Crayons launched five specialised agencies – Melon Media, Amber Out Of Home, Ultra Violet Digital and Jade Events in July. The agency picked up Zen Mobiles account, which moved from Bates. According to the jury, they are doing what they are best at doing, which is work in the PSU sector. 
How Campaign India rates the agency: 6

How Crayons rates itself: 7
2011 was a landmark year for Crayons.  One, the agency completed 25 years and two, we restructured the agency and created four new specialist verticals (divisions ) as separate brands.  Thus we have Crayons (creative), Melon Media, Ultraviolet (digital), Amber (OOH) and Jade (events) each headed by a seasoned professional.  Gopinath Menon was brought in to head Melon Media as CEO,  Gautamm Mehra was roped in as COO to Head Ultraviolet and Gurjit Singh heads Amber OOH as COO, with their respective teams.  These new verticals are expected to open more avenues for business for the agency and accelerate the growth rate.

Besides restructuring, the organic growth at the agency has been pretty good with most clients increasing their ad spends. The Basmati Meter campaign for Kohinoor  with Sharmila and Soha Ali Khan created new benchmarks in the rice category, the campaign for Tata Motors in NCR region not only brought a shift in mindset of car buyers but shot up the test drives and sales numbers! The first ever 3D ad created by us for Kajaria Ceramics created ripples and followers in the print media. On the events front, the ongoing third consecutive Grand Kerala Shopping Festival (handled by us), spread over 45 days in Kerala is perhaps one of the biggest activation exercise in India. On the digital side we should be closing the year with one of the largest ever global online campaign! (the formal letter is awaited)

There has been a spate of new businesses in the second half of the year which include Zen mobile, 3Cs, Logix, Floriana, Tata Motors (NCR), Punjab Tourism, ESIC, National eGovernance Programme (NeGP) etc. And yes we have not lost a single account in last two years! It has been a good year and we expect to reap the benefits of investments/ decisions made in this year,  in the coming years.