Ad cos see fewer account shifts

As consolidation in the advertising industry has gathered pace, accounts movement has slowed down. Last year, 250 accounts worth Rs 2,800 crore changed hands.

In comparison, 2006 was frenetic as it saw more than twice as many accounts "" 580 "" worth Rs 5,200 crore move from one agency to another.

The data is culled from various sources including agency websites, advertising websites and Business Standard's own Pitch Report. In recent years, consolidation, led by Martin Sorrell's WPP, has changed the face of Indian advertising story.

"Earlier, there was less business and more agencies. The clients, therefore, kept shifting their accounts. With a boom in product and brand categories, clients are feeling the need to retain their agencies for better results, which is evident in fewer account movements in 2007," said Sandeep Goyal, the chairman of Dentsu Communications.

However, 2007 too had its share of important account shifts. Prominent media agencies to have gained business in 2007 included Starcom (which gained Rs 300 crore worth of new business), Dentsu (Rs 150 crore-plus) and Madison (Rs 120 crore-plus). However, the three media buying agencies lost only very negligible amount of business.

Mindshare and Madison, between them, lost about Rs 185 crore worth of business to rival agencies. However, they nearly made up for the loss by grabbing fresh business worth Rs 180 crore.

The prominent accounts to move were Korean consumer durables maker Samsung, which has an ad budget of Rs 120 crore, the Union government's Incredible India campaign (Rs 140 crore), Jet Airways (Rs 100 crore), Bharti DTH (Rs 80 crore) and Virgin Mobile (Rs 80 crore).

Samsung and Jet together accounted for 70 per cent of the new business that came the way of Starcom. Crayons, ZenithOptimedia and Ashok Creatives won part of the Incredible India campaign in a multi-agency pitch.

JWT won Bharti's DTH business, worth over Rs 80 crore, while Virgin Mobile awarded its media duties to Mindshare in December. Virgin Mobile plans to launch a series of mobile handsets and other accessories through its joint venture with Tata Teleservices.

Leading ad-agency JWT saw some of the important clients leave its services for other agencies. It lost the creative duties for Baskin Robbins, Century Plywood, Hero Honda Achiever and 7UP while it managed to gain accounts like Hero Honda Splendor's new version, GE Money Wizard and Bharti's DTH venture.

Last year saw new advertisers entering the business, including airlines, travel portals, media companies, networking websites and regional real estate players.

Prominent names in 2007 with annual advertising budget of over Rs 5 crore include Nok Air, JetLite, MDLR airlines, AOL, Makaan.com, Big Flicks, Guruji.com, Mantri Developers, INX media and DNA newspapers among others.