Campaign India Agency Report Card 2011: Happy Creative Services

Ownership: Independent

Key Personnel: Kartik Iyer, CEO/Co-founder, Praveen Das, CCO/Co- founder, Carl Savio, creative director, Ravi Bhat, group head strategy, Naren Kaushik, associate creative director

Account won: Flipkart.com, Myntra.com, Papa Johns Pizza, Wipro Technologies, People

Account lost: Reliance Brands - Diesel / Timberland  (the agency says it had to resign the accounts as the creative opportunity to do original work had come down to doing adaptations)

The jury believed that there’s always been a positive buzz about Happy. With their work on Flipkart and Myntra.com, they have proved that being a small agency is never a challenge. In fact, it was the jury’s opinion they have all that it takes to become a great agency even in the niche segment they operate in.  The agency picked up one Silver and two Bronzes at the Abbys. Happy recruited Carl Savio as creative director and Kedar Chauhan as associate creative director. However,  Akshay Ananth, business director, chose to leave. Happy started its Mumbai operations in December 2011 with Pallavi Nayak as general manager, and this could be one step towards breaking out of what has been a Bengaluru pool of clients so far.
How Campaign India rates Happy Creative Services: 6

How Happy Creative Services rates itself: 8
2011 has been a phenomenal year for Happy. A year that probably represents holistically everything the agency set out to be. We launched two of the most recognized e-commerce brands in the country. The Flipkart.com ‘No Kidding’ campaign got a lot acclaim from the peers of the advertising industry as well as customers, leading to a lot of unpaid PR and viral coverage. The Lee Never Wasted bag ripped through the internet in 48 hours of posting on our blog. The Lee bag design went on to win us three awards as the Abbys, one Cannes nomination and in book entries in The Work and Communication Arts. The bag design has been chosen for use in other markets for the Lee brand. The corporate film we created for Wipro Technologies – ‘Transforming Business. Transforming Lives.’ went on to win the Gold in the IT category at the Galaxy MerComm awards. We were called in to work on a special project for Google. We were awarded the People brand from Madura garments without a pitch for our expertise in the fashion apparel business. Our design client Milk Route awarded us the advertising business for his new milk brand without a pitch. It was a big year in films for the Happy having created more than 12 films in one year. To commemorate our 4th anniversary Happy opens operations in Mumbai starting 1st Dec 2011. Happy continues to stay true to its philosophy of not just being an advertising agency having designed the identity and retail experience for a BBQ restaurant. We grew in more ways than one in 2011. We added 11 new people to our team, strengthening our advertising team and design unit. Kartik Iyer took over as CEO and Praveen Das as chief creative officer. We hired our first creative director - Carl Savio. We moved to a new office with a cafeteria, TT table, home theatre room and a conference room.

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