Leo Burnett bags Skoda account

The Indian arm of advertising major Leo Burnett has recently wrested the Czech car company Skoda's advertising account from iB&W.

This in turn has triggered off a series of changes within Leo Burnett which also services other auto clients such as Toyota and Fiat.

The account movement is a direct consequence of Skoda's parent company, Volkswagon's global realignment programme.

With the account shift, the car company will also double its ad-spending from Rs 2.5-3 crore last year to nearly Rs 6 crore this year.

Leo Burnett, which has around 17 subsidiaries worldwide, has decided that the Skoda account will be handled by its sister concern, Orchard, which was working on the Toyota account in Bangalore until recently.

The account is expected to move out of the agency's Bangalore office by the end of this month. "We have re-shuffled the accounts to accomodate Skoda," well placed sources in the agency said.

The Toyota account will be passed on to Leo Burnett's other subsidiary Dentsu by end-September while Orchard will handle Skoda's creative account.

Orchard will handle the creative side of the account while Leo's ancillary agency Starcom will take care of the media buying department.

The Skoda account comes as a shot in the arm to Leo Burnett which lost out on the Honda Motors India's Sonata account to Ambience Publicis.

The Rs 2 crore Sonata account moved from Saatchi & Saatchi to Ambience Publicis last month. Leo Burnett, the parent company, will continue to work on the Fiat account.

Skoda's Octavia recently shifted gears from assembling their cars from semi-knocked down kits to completely knocked down kits.

The car which is credited with redefining the C plus segment with its attractive price proposition has already sold 3,370 cars in the January-July period.

The company will be launching the Superb, a D-segment car, priced in the range of Rs 25-26 lakh, next year.