Playing the glamour game

After winning the India Fashion Week event contract, Percept D'Mark is busy signing up celebrities

Shailendra Singh, managing director of the Rs 175 crore celebrity and event management company Percept D'Mark is happy and sad at the same time.

He is pleased because last week the company won the three-year contract to manage the India Fashion Week in a keen pitch against Bennett, Coleman & Co.'s event outfit 360 degrees and IMG. He is upset because business rivals are questioning the company's credentials, he claims.

"They forget that we have an edge as part of the full-service communications agency (the Rs 1,700 crore Percept Holdings) with expertise in public relations, media buying, television production and event and celebrity management," he says.

Criticism has not kept him down though, as Singh expects Percept D'Mark to grow at 60 per cent a year. For starters, Percept D'Mark's celebrity management division (already handling Shah Rukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Preity Zinta, Ajay Devgan and Rani Mukherjee), has inked an exclusive deal with actor Mallika Sherawat.

"Glamour sells. We are looking at cosmetics brands for her. A deal with an SUV brand is also in the pipeline," informs Singh. Sherawat was loved by the international media at Cannes and is an active brand, feels Singh.

A major endorsement contract for actor Sanjay Dutt is also on the cards. Singh says it will be announced next week. But what Percept is really kicked about is the possibility of signing up Sachin Tendulkar whose contract with Worldtel ends later this year.

"Yes, we have been chasing him. And our talks have been quite fruitful. If we sign him, it will be a very serious partnership. Tendulkar enjoys a global brand equity," says Singh.

On the events front, Percept D'Mark will manage the two India Fashion Week events in the year 2006. The company will also organise the fashion awards in between the two fashion events to be held in March-April and September respectively. Next week, it is holding the second Sangeet Awards in San Francisco for the music industry. The first one was held in the Royal Albert Hall in London last year.

That is not all. To achieve the targeted 60 per cent growth, Percept D'Mark plans to push its wedding management division too that was set up last year.

Recently, it opened two new divisions "" PDM (Percept D'Mark) Expositions and PDM Brand Activation Cell. The former will be responsible for business-to-business exhibitions, seminars and conferences while the latter will venture into innovative promotions, customised brand experiences etc.

To grow its international business, in the last two months the company has set up operations in Dubai (PDM Gulf) and PDM West for the UK.

Percept Holdings is the strategic holding company that owns and manages 23 marketing communications companies. Aegis Group Plc, a leading marketing services company that employs nearly 10,500 people in over 60 countries, has a 26 per cent stake in Percept D'Mark.