ITV

Tag: Sonal Dabral

  • Two Indian agencies bag metals in Clio Awards 2013

    Two Indian agencies bag metals in Clio Awards 2013

    MUMBAI: Wah Wah Music and DDB Mudra from India achieved a huge success by making it to the list in the Clio Awards 2013, which recently announced winners in nine out of the total nineteen categories.

    For the original music in the film technique category award Wah Wah Music won Silver for its entry Nike ‘Parallel Journeys‘ directed by Dhruv Ghanekar. The agency behind the campaign was JWT India, whose NCD Senthil Kumar wrote the film directed by Abhinay Deo of Ramesh Deo Productions (RDP).

    In the Print Technique category, DDB Mudra won a Bronze for work on Volkswagen Attention Assist System titled ‘Art Direction Board‘, for Illustration. The work done by DDB Mudra Delhi gives credit to art directors Raylin Walles, Rajit Gupta and Satyin Patel (also the illustrator), with CCO Sonal Dabral.

    The awards also had four jury members from India, namely chairman and chief creative officer Josy Paul, BBDO India; co-founder and chief creative officer Agnello Dias, Taproot India; Studio Eeksaurus Production and director E Suresh, and director Prasoon Pandey, Corcoise Films. The annual awards prove distinction in advertising, design and communication across various media.

  • DDB Mudra wins Itz Cash creative mandate

    MUMBAI: DDB Mudra has won the creative mandate for Itz Cash, post a multi-agency pitch.

    The account size is pegged at around Rs 200 million.

    There is no incumbent on the account. DDB Mudra Group chairman and CCO Sonal Dabral said, “It’s always exciting to partner a client and work on a brand that believes in innovative thinking and open to doing things in a refreshing way. Itz Cash is exactly that. Innovation is at the heart of this brand and we’re looking forward to creating some breakthrough work on it.”

    DDB Mudra Group president Rajiv Sabnis said, “Itz Cash is an exciting brand that has embarked on a journey of becoming a premier & innovative pre-paid payment solution company. Navin Surya and his team have decided to engage DDB Mudra in their ambitious growth plans and their vision of building a world-class consumer facing brand in the multi-service, pre-paid solutions domain. It gives us the unique opportunity to build a consumer brand in a category that is relatively nascent in India. It looks like a fast-paced and exciting road ahead.”

    Itz Cash managing director Naveen Surya said, “We are proud to partner with DDB Mudra and are looking forward to a long, exciting and committed relationship with the Group.”

    Itz Cash Card Ltd, part of the Essel Group, was established in 2006. Itz Cash initiated the concept of prepaid payment solutions to the Indian consumer and various business entities.

  • Union Bank ropes in DDB Mudra for corporate ad duties

    MUMBAI: Union Bank of India has chosen DDB Mudra to handle its corporate advertising mandate after calling for a multiagency pitch with leading agencies in the country.

    The size of the account is in the range of Rs 400 million. The agency will be the sole entity working on the account.

    DDB Mudra Group president Rajiv Sabnis said, “It is a matter of immense pride and delight that Union Bank has retained the services of DDB Mudra as the sole custodian of their Corporate Brand mandate. We look forward to building the brand further and continuing to create break-through communication for Union Bank, as we have done over the last six years. Today, Union Bank‘s campaign centered around the thought of ‘Your dreams are not yours alone‘ has become the benchmark of effective and impactful communication.”

    Union Bank general manager corporate communications support services and branch expansion departments S Aftab said, “DDB Mudra understands our brand and the teams have the necessary skills to build on our promise of “your dreams are not yours alone”. We saw that in their presentation and creative expression. We look forward to their continuing contribution in our quest to make Union Bank one of the most successful bank brands ever.”

    DDB Mudra Group chairman and CCO Sonal Dabral said, “Union bank of India has been a truly inspiring partner for DDB Mudra. It‘s this partnership that helped create the path breaking, soulful and insightful campaign ‘Your Dreams Are Not Yours Alone‘. We are therefore really honored and excited to be able to continue this partnership, creating great work and dreaming bigger dreams. Together.”

  • DDB Mudra Group outlines structure to push growth

    DDB Mudra Group outlines structure to push growth

    MUMBAI: Omnicom‘s big push in India continues as it wants to dig deep into the fast-growing emerging markets amid slowdown worries in the U.S. and Europe. Completing 100 days of integration since acquiring majority stake in the Anil-Ambani promoted Mudra Group, it has chalked out a growth map in an important market where it lags behind rivals such as WPP.

    DDB Mudra Group, the new name, will now operate in India through eight branded agencies including Mudra. The other agencies are DDB Mudra, DDB MudraMax, DDB Health & Lifestyle, RAPP, Tribal DDB India, Water and Maatra.

    A new growth area will be the India entry of TrackyLocke, DDB‘s shopper marketing agency, in partnership with Mudra Max. Realising the significance of the market with the explosion of retail, TracyLocke has identified India as a gateway to the Asian region.

    DDB Group aggressively wants to grow in the Asia Pacific region and has pursued the acquisition route to support its organic growth. “We are growing faster than our rivals such as WPP in this region. The Asia Pacific region is the only one that is seeing a significant increase in business, and we are fully committed to growing our offerings here,” said DDB Group Asia Pacific, Japan and India chairman and CEO John Zeigler, while speaking to reporters at a roundtable to announce the launch here today.

    The Asia Pacific region contributes 11 per cent to the revenues of the DDB Group, trailing behind Europe (44%) and North America (38%). The growth potential in the region, however, is huge and ad conglomerates like WPP and Publicis Groupe are snapping up companies to tap new revenues.

    As part of the restructuring, Water, the strategic branding and design consultancy, will represent Omnicom‘s brand consultancy Interbrand in India.

    The thrust will be on integrating the group‘s offerings in India as well as with specialist agency brands for their expertise from across markets. 
    “40 per cent of our mainstream advertising clients are accessing more than one service from the network in India. With such specialised offerings and expertise, we intend to grow this,” said DDB Mudra Group CEO and managing director Madhukar Kamath.

    What is the need of having two creative agency brands? Explained Kamath, “Both DDB Mudra and Mudra will divide the clients according to the relationships they have with them. Longstanding brands like LIC that have been associated with Mudra will continue to be with it.”

    The organisation structure has been simplified to meet the new needs. The executive board of the group will consist of Kamath, Pratap Bose (DDB Mudra Group chief operating officer) and Sonal Dabral (DDB Mudra Group chairman and CCO). Dabral, who quit Bates India, will assume charge on 1 March.

    “With Dabral coming on board, we are poised to become a new power in Indian advertising. The most important thing is that we have raised our creative profile,” said Ziegler.

    While Rajiv Sabnis will head the Mumbai operations, Vandana Das will be head of Delhi and Rajni Cherian will operate as EVP and head Mudra South. Sabnis and Cherian are already on board while Das will assume her post on 19 March.

    TracyLocke India will be managed by Pratap Bose, DDB Mudra Group chief operating officer.

    Said Bose, “The entry of TracyLocke complements the DDB MudraMax ‘feet-on-the-street‘ strengths and given our huge footprint in India, I believe that the TracyLocke India model will certainly add value to both our global and retail brands.”

    TracyLocke‘s roster of clients include HP, T-Mobile, Starbucks, Johnson & Johnson, Gatorade, Tropicana, PepsiCo, Sony and Unilever‘s Lipton.

    Said TracyLocke global chief marketing officer Jim Sexton, “Once we saw the level of retail expertise and comprehensive knowledge of the India consumer and shopper at DDB MudraMax, we knew we had the perfect fit. We look forward to delivering to our clients a unique brand of shopper marketing relevant to each segment of the Indian market. Additionally, we hope to share proprietary marketing tools that we can take from India to the rest of the world.”

    Water, as part of the global Interbrand network, will continue to be headed by Ashish Mishra.

    Said Kamath, “Water is no stranger to Interbrand. In fact, Ashish has worked closely with Interbrand on some of its projects in India. We are very excited that the best in India is teaming up with the best in the world in order to provide best in class business solutions to our clients in India.”

  • Ranjan Kapur is Bates India chairman

    Ranjan Kapur is Bates India chairman

    MUMBAI: Bates India has named Ranjan Kapur as chairman of the agency. This is in addition to his current role as WPP India country head.

    At Bates India the chairman position was vacant as Sonal Dabral had quit in January 2012.

    In his new role, Kapur will work closely with the senior management of Bates India to help develop an organisation structure that offers more relevant ways of engaging with clients and consumers, the company said.

    Kapur said, “Bates has developed an exciting new ‘changengage’ philosophy that helps provide solutions that are both media and discipline neutral, and it has through the line capability and resources, to deliver them.

    To drive this thinking forward we are in conversations with a few new age thinkers and we hope to finalise on the CEO for bates India very shortly.”

    Ranjan has been informally engaged with Bates ever since he stepped down as chairman of Ogilvy.

    Bates 141 regional head of planning Dheeraj Sinha feels that Kapur will help galvanise the people at bates India. He said, “His reputation precedes him and he hasn’t lost any of the passion and drive he displayed when he led Ogilvy to the top.”

    Bates Asia regional head Tim Isaac said, “The recent departures at Bates India, have presented us with an opportunity to put the right leadership in place. I am delighted to renew my partnership with Ranjan. I have worked with Ranjan many times since I first arrived in Singapore in 1986. With Ranjan as chairman and a new CEO in place shortly we will be looking to accelerate our growth in India”.

  • Bates restructures at the top

    Bates restructures at the top

    MUMBAI: Sandeep Pathak and Sonal Dabral are moving on from their positions at Bates India as the agency reshapes following the network repositioning at the end of 2011.

    Dabral is all set to shift base to Mumbai and bid adieu to Singapore where he was stationed while he served as India chairman and regional ECD. He will be joining DDB Mudra as chairman – CCO.

    Bates chairman Tim Isaac said, “At Bates he had resumed a close working relationship with me – we had worked together as a head of office and ECD partnership to great effect at Ogilvy Singapore. Sonal is a great storyteller and has rich creative talents. I wish him all the very best in his new role at DDB Mudra.”

    “Sandeep has been with Bates for 4 years now and has done an excellent job of catapulting the Mumbai office. Sandeep hasn’t decided on his next assignment yet. I wish him the very best for his future,” he further added.

    Issac said, “With our strengths in strategic planning, creativity, engagement solutions and digital along with the high quality talent pool, we are well set up to provide integrated marketing communications services that take full advantage of the new technologies at our disposal. That is what the ‘changengage’ positioning is all about. We look forward to leading the way as the model agency of the future.”

    The agency said it would continue with its growth plans on the back of a strong India management and a suite of offerings across advertising, out of home and digital activation with entities like Bates WallStreet & Landscape and Bates Sercon powering Bates India group.

    The management team at Bates in India currently includes Dheeraj Sinha (regional planning director), Dinesh Shetty (group CFO), Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar (NCD), Praveen Vadhera (country head OOH), Rajesh Ghatge (CEO Sercon ), Srijib Mallik (head, Delhi), Abeer Chakravarty (head, Kolkata) and Vasantha Krishnamurthy (head, Bangalore). The agency has a national presence across five offices including Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata and roster of clients.

  • bates unveils new corporate identity

    bates unveils new corporate identity

    MUMBAI: WPP‘s marketing communications network, bates, has unveiled a new corporate identity with changengage as the philosophy for the new agency model.


    The new logo features the bates typeface in contemporary Helvetica and three speech balloons (in original bates pumpkin, red and blue), replacing the former eye mnemonic.


    bates regional executive creative director and India chairman Sonal Dabral explained that the cluster of speech blurbs above the name is symbolic of vibrant conversations and debates that agency aims to provoke through their work. The overlapping blurbs are also a subliminal reminder of tag clouds, the language of now and the future.Lastly the vibrant colours represent the new bates – the younger, more nimble, exciting and sparkling bates, ready to create path breaking and engaging work for clients. 
     
    The new agency model is based on the troika of anagement, creative and planning leaders, supported by young and hungry digital natives. The agency said that its embracing technology across all disciplines to drive the strategies that will deliver new engagement ideas and provoke new conversations.


    “By understanding the larger shifts in people‘s lives, our new
    positioning and thinking readies us to engage this world in new ways, to provoke new conversations with people,” said bates regional planning director Dheeraj Sinha.


    In terms of solutions, a large part of the agency‘s revenue currently comes from engagement (e.g., OOH, online, interactive, shopper marketing, activation, etc). bates says that it will continue to strengthen these pockets of expertise by enriching its talent mix with technologists, shopper marketing planners and designers to deliver more sparkling engagement solutions.


    It will also continue to bolster its Cluster operating model (Greater China, India and Southeast Asia) which provide the means to leverage pockets of category and discipline expertise across markets and offices.

  • Outdoor advertising underutilised

    Outdoor advertising underutilised

    MUMBAI: The outdoor advertising industry is not growing at a pace it should, said Bates 141 Asia regional executive creative director and Indian chairman Sonal Dabral at the seventh edition of Outdoor Advertising Convention.

    Bates 141 NCD Sagar Mahableshwarkar presented Dabral‘s video clips talking about the various aspects of outdoor ads. “It is not just billboards, but live shows and activation too form a part of outdoor advertising. Outdoor advertising should engage people and should not be considered as a reminder medium,” Dabral added in one of his clips.

    The examples of outdoor advertising happening around the world were shown and Dabral insisted that India takes inspiration from innovative ideas. He also feels that outdoor advertising is restricted and the potential is not fully tapped.

    Various other aspects of outdoor advertising were discussed in detail and the drawbacks were addressed.

    Innovation was one aspect of outdoor, which was on every speaker‘s mind.

    Vodafone VP marketing Anuradha Agarwal informed that it‘s just innovation that will create buzz. She established this fact by showing simple and innovative outdoor advertisements around the world and how it is remembered even today.

    While it was agreed that outdoor medium is not given its due importance, Cheil India COO Alok Agarwal believes that the business of outdoor advertising needs ‘re-thinking‘. He said, “OOH is a giant stage. The cost of an innovative idea may be high, but ROI, when measured in life-time value, will be much higher.”

    Agarwal also maintained that to a large extent, mobile is taking over OOH and one of the drawbacks of OOH is lack of measurability. “Apart from innovation, we need to work on connection and engaging the population. Innovation is restricted due to infrastructure and law but investing money in measurement will tell us how bright the future of OOH is,” he affirmed.

    Talking about the future of outdoor and how innovations can contribute to the growth, Times OOH MD Sunder Hemrajani spoke about “Signs of Tomorrow”.
    Hemrajani stated, “Not all innovations are expensive. We are an efficient economy which is moving towards the era of innovation and we must continue to keep monetising the economy.”

    Hemrajani underlined that we live in the era of innovation and outdoor advertising should go from OOH to WOW experience! “It‘s not just awareness that is important, experience is what will make outdoor advertising stronger and impactful.”

    Hemrajani concluded by saying, “There will be a better urban transport infrastructure over the next 20 years. There are digital innovations and technology too has taken a leap.”

  • Bates 141 relocates Dabral to push India growth

    Bates 141 relocates Dabral to push India growth

    MUMBAI: Bates 141 has relocated its top creative person as it presses the accelerator to race past its 20 per cent growth in India.

    Bates 141 India chairman and Asia creative head Sonal Dabral will move out of Singapore to nest in Mumbai, being at the centre of a three-year growth plan that aims at doubling India revenues.

    “New businesses and growth from existing clients will help us double our revenues,” Dabral tells Indiantelevision.com. 
     
    Top  executives from rival agencies dismiss this as a tall order and almost impossible to achieve in today‘s tough economic and competitve times.

    “Though Dabral is a big name, the targets look too steep to climb,” says the head of a leading creative agency on condition of anonymity.

    Dabral will, however, have a few new clients to build revenues on, the most eye-popping of them being Colgate-Palmolive. According to company financials, Colgate-Palmolive India has increased its spend on advertisng and promotions by 16.6 per cent to Rs 3.49 billion for the fiscal ended March 2011.

    “We have a strong platform to build our growth on. We service clients ranging from telecom to insurance and automobile, all big ad spenders. We are on a growth path for the last four years in terms of budgets and margins,” says Dabral.
     
    The significant wins during this period include brands such as Tata AIG, TVS, Virgin Mobile and Fiat India.

    While Dabral‘s residence will shift in July-end, his designation and role within the network remains unchanged.

    Says Bates 141 Asia chairman Tim Isaac, “Clients and colleagues in India have been crying out for Sonal to come amongst them for several years now. This is not surprising as he is an inspirational and charming leader. So I encouraged him to respond to the clarion calls. He will be able to do so much more for India [which is growing at over 20 per cent a year and is a jewel in the Bates network crown] and still maintain an influence over our other offices.”

    In his role as creative head for Asia, Dabral will continue travelling to Bates offices in the region. In India, he will work closely with NCD India Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar.

    Says Dabral, “Being here 24/7 is different from coming to India once in a month. This move is to focus on our current clients and strengthen our businesses in India. I hope to bring my learning from all the international markets to push Bates 141 in India to the next level.”