Top marketing professionals migrating to mid-sized agencies

Mumbai, India, 13 December 2004: Mid-sized agencies and top-notch marketing professionals are finding common meeting ground due to the greater emphasis laid by clients on result led communications. In the recent past some notable examples of clients who have disengaged the services of their PR & advertising agencies include IDEA Cellular, TVS Victor, Night Frank and Sun F&C. From among the more progressive sectors like BPOs, Pharma & Technology; companies like Intelenet (a BPO under the aegis of HDFC & Barclays), Wyeth (a leading pharma multinational) Spryance (the fastest growing healthcare BPO) and many others are re-looking at their existing agencies very critically.

The need to reorient communications to the clients' business goals has forced even mid-sized agencies to hire the industry's best marketing professionals. Soumitro Mukherji, a MBA from XLRI with over 18 years marketing and sales experience in giants like Asian Paints, HLL, Sony Entertainment Television, Pepsi and Airtel recently took over as COO of Blue Lotus Communications Consultancy, a mid-sized agency with capitalized billings of approximately Rs. 10 Crores. Mukherji reiterated the crucial difference that a marketing perspective brings to an agency and said, "Having been on the clients' side of the fence, I understand that the clients' compulsions are not irrational and must be met. As much as it has become necessary to show demonstrable results in any sphere of business, in communications too, today it is the clients' imperative. My movement to a mid-sized agency is a result of their ability to adapt quickly to the customer's needs; the older agencies are too deeply rooted in traditional thinking. I think the time has come that agencies look at the clients' brand from a marketing perspective.'

Chandramouli, CEO of Blue Lotus Communications Consultancy, stated emphatically, "Agencies have to realize that without the marketing perspective the business will automatically dry up. Meet the business objectives of the client, and you can be their permanent partner. Creativity cannot just be a splash of color and PR has to move beyond just coverage. Only the agencies that can make this transformation will succeed in this unforgiving world.'

"Some of our clients are world leaders like Trend Micro and they have chosen us over a dozen of the so called top-ten agencies only because we have been able to touch the marketing cord with them. The migration of marketing professionals to agencies is a sign of evolution in the communications industry', Chandramouli added.