Campaign India Agency Report Card: Mediacom

Type of agency: Media
Company ownership: Madison (51%), WPP (49%)
Key personnel: Divya Gururaj, MD, Ashwini Kamat, GM – Mumbai, Anita Devraj Mookerjee, GM – Bangalore/Chennai, Vinish Joshi, GM – Delhi, Hemen Desai, GM, Team P&G
Accounts won: Adani Power, TVS Srichakra
Accounts lost: None

The alignment of MediaCom with Madison (with Sam Balsara picking up 51% stake in this WPP-agency) and the consequent winning of the P&G account by the combine was so big last year that 2009 seems to have been marked the year of consolidation by MediaCom’s management.
While it did add Adani Power to its kitty, the agency took it easy pitching-wise, preferring to concentrate on its newly acquired roster of clients such as Skoda, Edelweiss, Dell and RBS.
The agency did well at Cannes this year and in various other global and local award shows. MediaCom’s ‘To Shave or Not to Shave’ campaign done for Gillette brought it a Gold and a Silver Lion at Cannes; the People’s award at  the Festival of Media 2009 and a Silver at AME.
MediaCom also focused on strengthening its team and recently appointed Ashwini Kamat as general manager, Mumbai. In addition, she will also be overseeing strategic communication planning, research, insights functions across MediaCom clients. Sanjay Sharma quit to start his own entrepreneurial venture.
An innovative print roadblock by MediaCom for Volkswagen ended the year on a smiling note for the agency.

Campaign Score: 7
 
How MEDIACOM rates itself: 8

2009 has been a great year for MediaCom, both in growth & glory.
The momentum that we kick-started in ‘08 continues with growth of +35% YOY, driven by strong new business wins last year (P&G, Dell, Skoda, etc), several new launches (Deccan360, Skoda Superb, Audi Q5, Aegon Religare Life Insurance, Adani Power, Volkswagen etc.,) and clients moving a larger share of marketing spends to us with our holistic service offering (Dell digital in Bangalore and several confidential analytics projects commissioned).
We have made a mark for India on the world stage - First ever Cannes Gold and Silver Media Lions, first People’s Choice Award @ Valencia, first at Spikes Asia and the only media agency to win Best Idea at AME.
Our firm foundation continues: strategic planning (India is APAC’s launch pad for the new global communications planning framework, RWC2.0),  freshness, great new talent (Ashwini Kamat) and a rocking team (Media Magazine’s APAC Best Planner and Bombay Ad Club’s Young Achiever Award)!