Campaign India Agency Report Card: Mindshare

Type of agency: Media
Company ownership: WPP
Key personnel: Vikram Sakhuja,CEO, Group M, South Asia, Gowthaman Ragothaman, leader, Chanchal
Chakrabarti, partner, client leader - Pepsico, Ravi Rao, partner,client leader – Unilever
Accounts won Bangalore Royal Challengers, Sun Direct,  Aditya Birla Group, Taj Hotels, HSBC Canara, 
Yahoo Webservices, Godrej Interio, Anant Vikatan, GATI
Accounts lost HPCL, Bunge, Levi Strauss

If Mindshare’s own lofty standards are anything to go by, the agency had a regular, run-of-the-mill year in terms of new businesses. New businesses, in absence of any major regional or global wins, were mostly local and led by the Aditya Birla Group account win. Another significant win was Sun Direct, a JV between Kalanidhi Maran family and Malaysia’s Astro Group.

However, in the absence of any major losses, Mindshare chose to sit tight, reconsolidate and restructure.  The agency re-jigged the management structure for its top clients. Chanchal Chakrabarti took over as Partner, Client Leader for Team PepsiCo; Ajit Gurnani has been appointed Partner, Client Leader for Team Aditya Birla Group and Ravi Rao came in as Partner, Client Leader for Team Unilever, South Asia. The agency also re-designated Chirantan Chandran as general manager, Delhi, to oversee the non-Pepsi business. The agency saw some high-level exits with Sundar Raman, MD-North & East, taking over the reins of IPL as CEO and Subramanian Swaminathan (Subbu), GM-Bangalore & Chennai, joining  Times Private Treaties.  Kavitha Srinivasan quit as business director Chennai. In line with the global initiative, Mindshare India also created dedicated divisions for all its large clients that service all communication needs across media platforms, instead of providing media buying services only.

Accordingly, the agency created a “live” Bollywood film as a brand launch vehicle for Virgin Mobile, starring Richard Branson himself. Mindshare also demonstrated its effectiveness edge, bringing home more metal from Goafest than any other media agency, while stealing the show at Emvies 2008 with five Golds and four Silvers.

Campaign Score: 9

How MINDSHARE rates itself: 9

This year Mindshare has taken the right steps towards becoming the ‘Marketing Communications Agency’ on the back of its restructuring .We believe people are our assets and we have made some huge strides in attracting and retaining good talent. Our investments in Digital, Search and Mobile is quite significant in 2008 with a strong 50 member team providing online/mobile solutions to all our clients.

We are very proud to have won all the awards in 2008 starting with Goafest, EMVIES, Global Mobile Marketing and Asian Digital awards. 

We have also posted a robust growth in 2008 and that makes our entire focus across People, Product, Process and Proft equally rewarding and enriching. Our restructuring has also helped us in getting ready for the current market conditions.