Campaign India Agency Report Card: Percept H

Type of agency: Advertising
Company ownership: Percept Ltd
Key personnel: Prabhakar Mundkur, CEO
Accounts won: Toyota SUV-MUV, Yakult Danone, Celio*, Good Morning Tea and Tea Bags, Fruit of the Loom
Accounts lost: None

Almost all of the top level management that 25 year old Percept/H had hired last year seem to have quit the agency. In the middle of the year, three senior people left the agency at one go – Ajay Verma, senior vice president and branch head, Mumbai, Dilip Marathe, creative head and Iqbal Raj, national creative director. In terms of work, Percept’s most notable campaign has been the high decibel ‘Jai Ho’ campaign for the Congress party. Recently, it also rolled out a campaign for Top Ramen noodles. In December, the agency was also empanelled by DAVP (Directorate of Advertising & Visual Publicity), alongwith 29 other advertising agencies to handle its creative duties.
New business picked up this year included Yakult Danone, Good Morning Tea and Tea Bags, Fruit of the Loom, a part of the Bank of Baroda business and Celio*. It remains to be seen how the agency plans to make up for the loss of Verma, Raj and Marathe, though. 2009 also saw the departure of Ajay Chandwani, CEO, Percept H; he remains a non-executive director on the board of Percept Ltd.

Campaign Score: 6
 
How PERCEPT/H rates itself: 7

The year started with a bang for Percept H with its Jai Ho campaign for the Congress Party which became the most memorable and recalled creative of the big budget multi-media campaign. Although some of the other agencies in the country had much bigger budgets from the Congress than us.
New business kept growing for us with some reputed brands from Toyota like Fortuner, Innova, Landcruiser and Prado. In addition we added Mysore Sandal soap, Deccan Chargers, won back Pantaloons from Saints and Warriors (we handled Pantaloons until last year), and had a host of other wins like Bank Of Baroda, BSNL, Bank of Maharshtra and Government business like the National Literacy Mission and National highways Authority.
All in all while the industry struggled with the recession the agency kept growing and even declared an increment which most agencies shied from doing.
We hired Prathamesh Ghate as executive creative director with a view to raising the bar on our creative product.  Prathamesh joined us from Leo Burnett.