Mudra Group-30 Years & Growing

1980-90

The decade of birth

1991-2000

The decade of growth

2010 onwards

Explosion

2001-10

The decade of tra nsformation

30 YEARS & GROWING

Campaign India - Commemorative I1 1Campaign India - Commemorative I1 1 2/14/11 12:33:58 PM2/14/11 12:33:58 PM

It’s not 30, it’s 1057 reasons to celebrate

First, turn to the back cover of this issue...

What you’ve seen is the real reason for this special issue. It’s not about 30 years of Mudra, though the date certainly coincides.

It’s about what Mudra has become.It’s become a communications conglomerate with 1057

professionals as of today.It’s become a communications powerhouse as opposed to

being an advertising agency.And, funnily, the advertising agency that it once was might

never have been.In a fantastic necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention story,

Mudra was born because the agency that handled Vimal chose to discontinue the relationship because they wanted to work for a conflicting brand.

So the in-house department at Reliance that addressed, largely, the BTL needs of Vimal, decided to become the solution provider for the ATL needs as well.

Then they decided that they were good enough to provide solutions for non-Reliance brands too; after all, they were doing a good, even great, job with Vimal.

So they created the iconic Rasna communication (and brand) for their first ‘external account’. And when necessity dictated that they had to expand, they did.

They expanded geographically, to where they needed to be, to service their growing client roster. And their growing ambitions. They expanded into areas of expertise that their clients required. And they went on and on.

Their furious expansion caused us at Campaign India to break from the norm and do a double spread ‘simplifying’ Mudra.

Thirty years after their birth, they’re the largest home-grown agency in the country, nipping at the heels of the international brands that entered India almost 100 years ago.

And now they’re ready to shift gears.The agencies ahead of them need to keep an eye on the rear

view mirror. The agency that they see is closer than it appears.

CONTENTS

“Ready for explosive growth” 04That’s a confident statement made by Madhukar Kamath, Group CEO and MD, Mudra Group; rooted in the knowledge that Mudra is reaping the benefits of investments

Four pillars of Mudra group 06Once upon a time, 30 years ago, Mudra transformed from a marketing department in Reliance to an advertising agency. As they kept adding specialisations, Mudra was transformed from an agency to a group. Here’s a snapshot of who does what.

View from the outside 08What do Mudra’s partners, captains of industry, Mudra’s competitors and CEOs of media houses think of Mudra?

Mudra works for them 12What do those who work with Mudra for their brand-building and communication needs think of their contribution?

They helped build Mudra 16Mudra has been a stepping stone for a number of great Indian adlanders, all with great memories of their stints there and what they gained from Mudra

The Mudra India ‘A’ team 18An organisation is only as good as its people, more so in the communications area. Here’s Mudra India’s ‘A’ team

The best of Mudra India 20Creatives that made a difference

DDB Mudra 22The very best of Mudra meets the best of DDB to create magic

Mudra Max 24Pratap Bose joining the agency has brought in a new dynamism

Ignite Mudra 26In an age of clutter, Ignite Mudra found the required differentiator

Milestones in the life of Mudra 28Key dates in the journey of Mudra

MICA: Going beyond business 30Mudra’s commitment to the communications arena is best proven by their investment in MICA

Anant Rangaswami

campaign india Mudra supplement 3

FOUR PILLARS OF MUDRA GROUPOnce upon a

time, 30 years

ago, Mudra

transformed

from a marketing

department in

Reliance to an

advertising

agency. As they

kept adding

specialisations,

Mudra was

transformed

from an agency

to a group.

Here’s a

snapshot of who

does what.

6 campaign india Mudra supplement

campaign india Mudra supplement 7

And three other pillars, the

national resources of Mudra

Bobby Pawar, chief creative

officer, Mudra Group“What provoked me to join Mudra

was the sheer challenge that the

opportunity offered. To turn around,

or even manouver, a ship of this

size is worth the coming. So, doing

that was far more challenging than

joining a smaller shop, which

would be easier but not quite as

challenging...”

Ajit Menon, executive director,

organisation development,

Mudra Group“Mudra is an entrepreneurial

agency that gives marketing

solutions. So when we hire, the first

quality we need is the

entrepreneurial quality - you should

have a good business team and you

should be a person who is living and

breathing a creative product. That

doesn’t mean you simply go to a

pitch, win it and come back. You

should have a certain business

sense and say that you’re running a

business, not just a creative shop.”

Dilip Upadhyaya, chief financial

officer, Mudra Group“We have to manage the cash flow

in a meaningful manner allowing our

operating team to remain focused

on the key business. The finance

function ensures that the

management is free to focus on

growth, while we work to ensure

financial health and stability.”

The Mudra Group has its core advertising

business, housed under Mudra India. This

consists of Mudra, the advertising agency;

Water, the strategy and design

consultancy; Maatra, the localisation and

pre-media services and Tantr Films, a

content creation unit.

Jude Fernandes, CEO, Mudra India says,

“What’s most significant is this entire

shift from being just an advertising

agency. There is much larger planning

focus and we’ve got a huge senior

planning team across the country making

sure everyone’s working with the same set

of tools. Plus, we’ve got strong creative

heads in all our three offices. So we have

complete solutions and we carry out the

entire execution.”

He adds,“In every office we have large

businesses which continue to grow with

us. Most of our relationships have all

started with a small beginning.”

It is this beginning that started in

Ahmedabad and went on to create iconic

campaigns for little known brands (then)

such as Vimal, Rasna, Godrej Powder Hair

Dye, Dhara Sunflower Oil, Reliance India

Mobile.

“There are clients who’ve been with us

over the last few years as they’ve

expanded their retail network.Currently,

we have clients such as the Godrej Group,

Future Group, LIC, Union Bank, HCC and

the Lavasa Future Cities campaign which

has got everyone talking. Similarly, The

Times of India and Worldwide Media are

small but they are adding on business.”

“We have understood the client,” he

says. “ What’s more important is we have

understood the client’s needs. Advertising

works because its an investment.”

Mudra Max is the third agency under the

Mudra Group umbrella, that houses the

media buying and various specialist units.

MAX, therefore, houses Connext and

RADAR, the two media buying units. RADAR

is exclusively for handling Reliance brands.

This division also has various specialist

units catering to OOH, retail design and

visual merchandising, navigation and

marketing solutions for trade, promotions,

rural, events and sports.

Pratap Bose, CEO, Mudra Max and COO,

Mudra Group says, “There is still some

unfinished business in terms of more units

to be launched. What we would like to do

next would be to get into the next

generation forms of media which could be

getting into mobile marketing, word of

mouth among others.”

Bose says that thanks to Mudra Max,

clients get a combination of an experiential

plus communications planning agency.

He says, “The way forward is to find the

best in class partner, for each of these

units to grow them substantially.” Last

year, Mudra Max announced an OOH JV

with Clear Channel, prior to which there

was Portland Mudra. It recently entered

into a partnership with Concrea

Communications for youth marketing.

Going forward, Bose wants to grow these

specialised units into their core

competencies. “We want to position Mudra

Max as a specialist communications group

within the agency. Where we stand now,

and where we would be standing a year

from now on, is going to be very different,”

he says. “Today, the one differentiating

factor would be that we are the largest

communications group with real specialist

skills across all consumer touchpoints.

That’s our biggest USP and the ability to

integrate all these units with advertising

will also be our biggest strength.”

DDB Mudra, headed by Sandeep Vij is the

second agency under the Mudra Group. It

consists of advertising agency DDB Mudra

Advertising, the interactive and new media

unit Tribal DDB, the relationship marketing

division Rapp and a health and lifestyle

marketing unit, DDB/Mudra Health and

Lifestyle.

Vij says, “Today the agency model is

under transformation. Fortunately, DDB

Mudra is being sculpted at the cusp of

change. We are building a culture that truly

inspires the internal culture of

collaboration. It is being built around the

idea of open collaboration.Today, clients

want integrated teams to solve problems.”

Vij says they’ve created a structure where

each unit is separated by semi-permeable

membranes allowing the free flow of ideas,

processes yet retaining that which gives

the cell its DNA. Last year, the agency

infused fresh talent at the leadership level

when it hired Mike Follett and Rajeev Raja

to run ‘One Voice Planning’ and ‘Creative’

respectively across the Group ensuring

fluidity in thinking and truly holistic creative

business solutions.

“In essence we have moved on from

being disparate agencies to a team of

experts, from being discipline to idea

oriented, from consecutive production

thinking to a concurrent collaborative

production, from separate to open,” he

says. Vij is currently trying to mould an

internal culture that “truly inspires internal

collaboration enabling us to build and

harness our collective creative energy”.

Client partners in India include

Volkswagen, Neutrogena and Clean &

Clear (Johnson & Johnson), Henkel, Lipton,

Reliance Mutual Fund, RBS, Wrigley, Idea,

The Times of India, Philips, Novartis,

Schering Plough, HDFC, Tata AIG, HP, Tata

Communications and Unicef.

Ignite Mudra is the fourth agency of the

Mudra Group that was launched in 2009

and is positioned as an agency that

partners Indian entrepreneurs. The agency

works closely with entrepreneurs in trying

to understand their needs, not only in brand

building but also supporting them through

a consortium that provides services in

corporate law, funding, organisational

development and sales and distribution

expertise provided in conjunction with a

consortium of domain experts.

Chandan Nath, president and head,

Ignite Mudra says that working with

entrepreneurs needs an understanding

mindset. “You’ve got to respect the ideas,

dreams and vision of the entrepreneur.

They’ll look for relationships rather than

business. I think entrepreneurs are more

into relationships than simply doing

business with agencies. And if you have

been there, they respect that, which is very

rare for other clients.”

Nath lists brands which he describes as

Mudra Group classics from Ahmedabad.

“Vimal created and added fashion to

fabrics. Dhara redefined purity in edible oils.

Symphony launched the category of air

coolers. Ajanta was the revolution of

musical quartz wall clocks. Look at Paras

brands - Moov, Krack, Livon, DermiCool,

Itchguard, Recova, each name that I’ve

mentioned is not only a brand success, it is

also a category creator. I mean there was

no itch relieving cream before Itchguard

was launched. Another new entrant,

Nutralite today has acquired more than 25

plus percent share of the market.”

Nath emphasizes that the consortium

gets together leading professionals from

the industry offering skillsets which they

believe will contribute to the growth of an

entrepreneur.

Ashish Mishra

chief strategist

and head,

Water

Consulting

“We can

dream freely, in a real,

achievable way and

more often than not,

whosoever wants to

take the initiative is

allowed to do so.”

Jude Fernandes

CEO, Mudra

India

“We are

aware of

our clients’ needs.

When we go into the

market, when we are

talking to a potential

client, we are not

talking only

advertising.”

Rajeev Raja

national

creative

director, DDB

Mudra

“Today,

Mudra as a Group is

rock solid. We are not

paying mere lip

service to the term

‘full service agency’.”

Sandeep Vij

CEO, DDB

Mudra

“Each unit

in DDB

Mudra is

separated by

semi-permeable

membranes allowing

the free flow of ideas

and processes, yet

retaining that which

gives the cell its DNA.”

Anurag Gupta

chief strategy

officer, Mudra

Max

“We’re an

agency of

very apolitical, very

entrepreneurial, very

independent people

and from a culture

point of view, we’re

malleable.”

Pratap Bose

CEO, Mudra

Max, COO,

Mudra Group

“Mudra is

a place

where we are not

mavericks, we are

not militants, we

don’t hire and fire -

its an agency built

on certain

principles.”

Chandan Nath

president and

head, Ignite

Mudra

“As a Group,

today we have the

expertise of a variety

of skill sets, which

according to me are

not offered by many

advertising

agencies.”

Units Mudra India,

Water, Maatra and

Tantr Films

Key people Jude

Fernandes (CEO),

Ashish Mishra (chief

strategist and head,

Water Consulting),

Arijit Ray (president,

Mudra West), KB

Vinod (creative head,

Mudra West), Aditya

Kanthy (VP - planning,

Mudra West), Ranji

Cherian (president,

Mudra South), Ajay

Naqvi (EVP and head,

Mudra North and

East), Nirmal Pulickal

(ECD, Mudra North

and East)

Key accounts Godrej Group, Future

Group, LIC, Union

Bank of India, HCC,

Lavasa Future Cities,

Femina, Filmfare,

Lonely Planet, The

Economic Times,

United Spirits, Dabur,

HBO, TTK, Aditya Birla

Nuvo

Units DDB Mudra,

Tribal DDB, Rapp India,

DDB/Mudra Health

and Lifestyle

Key people Sandeep Vij (CEO),

Max Hegerman

(president - Tribal

DDB), Venkat Mallik

(president - Rapp

India), Rajiv Sabnis

(president - DDB

India), Mike Follett

(SVP - strategy and

planning, DDB Mudra),

Rajeev Raja (national

creative director - DDB

Mudra), Soumitra Sen

(president - DDB

Health and Lifestyle)

Key accounts Volkswagen,

Neutrogena, Henkel,

Lipton, Wrigleys,

Novartis, Philips,

Johnson & Johnson,

Reliance Mutual Fund

Key people Chandan Nath

(president and head),

Key accounts Paras Pharma,

Electrotherm, Zydus

Cadilla

The lowdown Units RADAR,

Connext, Prime Group

(OOH, retail and

navigation solutions -

Primesite, Prime

Retail, Prime

Wayfinding, Prime

Consult, Prime Green),

Kidstuff (promotional

marketing), Street

Smart (interactive

OOH), Multiplier (trade

marketing), Terra (rural

marketing), Videotec ,

10 Integrated (sports

marketing), Celsius

(events marketing),

Portland Mudra, Clear

Channel Mudra LLP

Key people Pratap

Bose (CEO), Anurag

Gupta (chief strategy

officer, Mudra Max),

Aneil Deepak (SVP

strategy & planning),

Sanjay Kacker (SVP,

Celsius), Mandeep

Malhotra (president-

OOH), Sanjeev Hajela

(president - retail &

way finding), Sameer

Mehta (VP, head,

Multiplier)

Key accounts Aircel, Shell

Foundation, TVS

Motors, ITC, Pepsi,

Wrigleys

The lowdownThe lowdown

The lowdown

Mudra IndiaDDB Mudra

Mudra MAXIgnite Mudra

When there might have been none. Mudra might never have been born had an agency not resigned the Vimal account because of conflict with another in the roster.

Editorial team Bindu Nair Maitra, Gunjan Prasad, Arcopol Chaudhuri Design team Sachin Rajwadkar, Kaushal Gandhi, Sujit Mandvikar. Cover design Anya RangaswamiPhotography Pawan Manglani and Mohammed Shafiq

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This supplement contains 32 pages including covers.

“READY FOR EXPLOSIVE GROWTH”The confident statement made by Madhukar Kamath, Group CEO and MD, Mudra Group; rooted in the knowledge that Mudra is reaping the benefits of investments

4 campaign india Mudra supplement campaign india Mudra supplement 5

All of a sudden, the Mudra Group is monolithic; nu-merous strategic business units straddle all conceiva-ble needs of a brand to com-municate a message.

A closer look reveals that nothing is sudden; that the Group has been growing steadily, with a sprint in the last decade,the last of the first three decades that Mudra has seen.

Madhukar Kamath, Group CEO and MD, Mudra Group, describes each decade: “There are essentially three decades in the history of Mudra. Decade one was that of birth and in-novation; the birth of an agency which rewrote the rules and which

didn’t conform to what was stat-ed in the ‘commandments’

in the advertising indus-try. “Thou shalt be

based in Bombay or Madras or Delhi,” “Thou shalt be international,” and “Thou shalt be a whole lot of things.”

“That was the decade of birth, then came the dec-ade of growth,as this was the time when Mudra expand-ed with several

offices across the country and added

more people to its fold. 2001-10 has

been the decade of t r a n s f o r m a t i o n ,

Mudra evolved from an agency to a marketing

communications group.” That’s easy to say. Which

Ranjan Kapoorcountry manager - India, WPP Group

“Mudra’s got a strong

advertising agency and today, there is an absolute revival and aggression in them that I have not seen before. Look at the way they’ve hired at a time when nobody was hiring.”

John Wren CEO, Omnicom Group

“I’m extremely impressed

in the professionalism and team work that I saw. Mudra today is a world class agency with great creative product and I’m very proud to be their partner.”.

Lutz Kothe

chief GM -

marketing and

PR, Volkswagen

India

“DDB Mudra has understood the VW brand in a very short period of time. They’ve adapted our brand guidelines to India and raised brand awareness by double digits.”

Santosh DesaiMD and CEO, Future Brands

“Today, Mudra is one of the

few organisations that is genuinely more than just about advertising. Culturally, it may have matured and ripened, but it has not become something else.”

Colvyn HarrisCEO, JWT and president, AAAI

“Mudra now holds the perception

of being a full-service agency, a good one at that, having diversified into many specializations in the last one year and it continues to grow.”

Kishore BiyaniCEO and founder, Future Group

“Mudra has certainly helped

make Big Bazaar a part of India’s life and culture. They understand our core consumer and know how to talk to them.”

Adi GodrejCMD, The Godrej Group

“Our relationship with Mudra

is long and diverse. One thing unique about Mudra is that they go toconsumers. They take the trouble to move around, interact. Its impressive.”

Chuck Brymerpresident and CEO, DDB Worldwide

“Mudra is growing

capabilities in areas outside traditional advertising and this shift is similar to what DDB is doing globally. We are happy with our partnership.”

Sam BalsaraCMD, Madison World

“Right from its launch, Mudra has

come across as a no-nonsense, performance based agency. Today, Mudra’s story is much like the growth story of Indian entrepreneurs.

John Zeiglerpresident and CEO, DDB Asia Pacific

“Mudra has found

resolve, they are on the road to leading creatively. They are out from the shadow of their past structure, they’re looking at opportunities to change everything they do.”

ations, and have often supported us in times of difficulty, especially when we didn’t have time to execute cam-paigns, when situations changed, when businesses changed. They have bent backwards and put in all their resources to bail us out in situations, and that’s what we appreciate. We never hear or feel, from their body language, that they ever say no, and there is a very positive and open atti-tude of ‘can do’, which is what we love in DDB Mudra.”

Sharma’s views are ratified by Mudra alumnus Santosh Desai. “The good thing about Mudra is that they’re involved, in business terms. I think that it is one of the few organi-zations in this sector that is genuinely more than just advertising.”

Client delight with an area that Mudra has focused on must please Kamath immensely.

“The Mudra team headed by Jude Fernandes has always worked seam-lessly with our teams on all projects, often carrying out services which were not necessarily within the scope of work defined. It’s always like one big Godrej team,” says Tanya Du-bash, executive director and presi-dent (marketing), Godrej Industries.

Products and services need to be tested and certified in the market. Who better to judge the performance of a communication company than someone who needs the communica-tion to work every single day?

“Mudra represents the values we represent,” says Kishore Biyani. founder and CEO, Future Group, “There is a good cultural fit between the Future Group and Mudra—they understand us and our needs. More importantly, they understand our core consumer and know how to talk to them. Most agencies come with a different mindset, they try to please

Indian or international, that he want-ed to work with. “When it came to de-ciding on agencies here, it was very important for us to find an agency which clearly understood what our brands stood for. Based on the brand strategy we developed and the un-derstanding that various agencies demonstrated, we decided on DDB Mudra, which was an additional ad-vantage for us because it belongs to the DDB network.” If it were not a network agency, would Volkswagen still have decided on Mudra? “Yes,” is his definitive answer.

To other clients, too, Mudra being Indian or part of a network is not a matter of significance; the value that they get from Mudra is. Raghunan-dan, MD and CEO, Paras Pharma-ceuticals says he sees a lot of value. “In the last 18 months, we have come to expect more work out of Mudra than in the past – and they have been able to measure up to these new expecta-tions. More importantly, we are de-lighted by their going beyond the brief. A new product that we are going to launch in the coming months is a brainchild of Mudra. The concept was their’s; they have been able to flesh out the category and they have been able to convince us that this was a good opportunity for us to get in.” That’s indeed going beyond the brief.

Vivek Sharma, chief marketing of-ficer, Philips India sees the global link to DDB combined with the Indian roots as an advantage. “They bring a lot of value in getting the global learn-ing from DDB into India and yet, re-tain the Indian relevance and Indian sensibilities. And they do stand up to their beliefs and thoughts about what the brand should be in India and that’s what I really admire in them. They demonstrate a greater under-standing of the business and our situ-

Godrej’s views are endorsed by Narasimhan Tupil, marketing direc-tor, HP Technology services, APAC and Japan. He has had a long associa-tion with Mudra and is gratified that, with the changes in Mudra, their orig-inal values are still visible. “There are two things which, in my view, differ-entiate Mudra from the many other agencies that I and some of my team members have worked with. The first differentiator is that they’re true business partners; they don’t act like an agency, which is a real compliment to the way Dhirubhai Ambani and AG Krishnamurthy founded the company. The second one is respon-

siveness which pure-ly from the time-to-market issue is very important to us.”

“On the first point, I’ll give you an ex-ample. There are two ways of doing a brief. One is to listen to the client and then come back with a brief, confirming your interpretation of what the client

has said. The second one, when you actually act as a true business partner is when you question the assump-tions. Mudra takes keen interest to understand the business market we’re operating in, what are our main concerns, what are our pressures and our objectives. That happens when you question the assumptions or you want to know more about the prod-uct or the service you are communi-cating for. This is what I always find people in Mudra doing.”

Godrej and Narasimhan have seen Mudra from the time it was a purely ‘Indian’ agency. For Lutz Kothe of Volkswagen, Mudra was an agency,

advertising agency is not attempting to shed itself of the ‘agency’ tag?

In Mudra’s case, the changes that Kamath speaks of, are changes that their clients seem to be seeing, expe-riencing and benefiting from. There’s no greater testament to the fact than Adi Godrej’s views. Mudra has worked with various Godrej brands for 25 years, almost the age of the agency itself. “We have a very close relationship with Mudra for about 25 years,” says Godrej. “They have han-dled a number of our brands and products over the years – soaps and hair colour; they have handled Real Good Chicken, they have handled durables. So our re-lationship with Mudra has been long and diverse. The one thing I found about Mudra which is unique, to my mind, is that they go to consumers. I have seen them. They keep speaking to consumers and give us feedback — and that I like. Ad-vertising agencies generally believe that their job is only being creative whereas I have seen a lot of insight coming out of Mudra. I think they have taken the trouble to go to the market, to interact with consumers..”

This is no accident. “It’s made man-datory that you have a certain number of days in the field. People forget that partnerships can only happen if you know what is happen-ing in the market. No planner can sit without having x days each month, in the market. These are small steps that everybody needs to take. I can’t talk about other agencies but we have felt the need,” says Kamath.

Mudra is a no-nonsense agency and focuses on the brands and business’ interestsKishore Biyani, Future Group

the client. Mudra is a no-nonsense agency and focuses on brands and business interests. We have grown to-gether over these eight years. Our re-lationship started when we had just 10 stores. Today we have 150 and this journey has been marked by some valuable contributions by Mudra. They’ve helped make Big Bazaar a part of India’s life and culture.”

What comes through is that there is something that Mudra is doing right when it comes to defining their own role and culture, and a lot of that has to do with people. That’s an area of concern and focus for Kamath.

“We are handling people on two fronts —one, inter-nal and the other, external. Internally, we are focussed on hiring for aptitude, not just skills be-cause those can be built on and devel-oped subsequently. At the same time, we are focusing on pro-viding developmen-tal inputs, exposure and experience to existing people, primarily to help them change orbits. Externally, we will need to step up on going out ag-gressively and talking about the nu-merous opportunities in the Group, in as many fora as possible. We have to stress on the fact that there is a wider spread of opportunities in our communications group — opportu-nities aimed at building brands.”We’ve got to start looking at it as not just a career in advertising but a career in communications.”

If Biyani’s was the ultimate acco-lade, there’s more. DDB’s John Zei-gler wishes that they had a bigger piece of Mudra – but is still happy in

the relationship that DDB and Mudra share. “It’s like a wife who turns 40. At times you feel that you are actually locked into a marriage and then as you turn 40, you realize- ah, the marriage can actually be what you want it to be; you don’t have to be focused on the fact that you are mar-ried. And in that middle era of matu-rity, I think both of the partners start to flourish together. We are learning a lot from Mudra and Mudra is, under Madhukar’s leadership, learning a lot and connecting more with DDBthan it ever has. I can see that rela-tionship flourishing and maturing to the benefit of both. I would love to

have much greater ownership equity but our relationship is such that our own-ership equity is less and less impacting the working and strategic relation-ship that we have.”

Satisfied clients. Clients who admire them for their Indi-anness, clients who admire them for

their international links. Clients who appreciate their going beyond the brief. Clients who have benefited from extraordinary commitment. Clients who see Mudra as a partner.

That’s a long list of positives.Kamath sees the past three decades

as the basis of their optimism. “We’re in this phase today because of the in-vestments and the lifecycle stages of the various growth engines devel-oped, because of the talent base we have, in terms of width and depth. I don’t think we are going to have phas-es of ups or downs; now it has to keep skyrocketing. We’re ready to ex-plode.”

“No planner can sit without having x days each month with consumers, in the market”

“We are focussed on hiring for aptitude, not just skills as those can be built on and developed”

Campaign India Commemorative I3 3Campaign India Commemorative I3 3 2/14/11 12:34:03 PM2/14/11 12:34:03 PM

FOUR PILLARS OF MUDRA GROUPOnce upon a time, 30 years ago, Mudra transformed from a marketing department in Reliance to an advertising agency. As they kept adding specialisations, Mudra was transformed from an agency to a group. Here’s a snapshot of who does what.


And three other pillars, the national resources of Mudra

Bobby Pawar, chief creative officer, Mudra Group“What provoked me to join Mudra was the sheer challenge that the opportunity offered. To turn around, or even manouver, a ship of this size is worth the coming. So, doing that was far more challenging than joining a smaller shop, which would be easier but not quite as challenging...”

Ajit Menon, executive director, organisation development, Mudra Group“Mudra is an entrepreneurial agency that gives marketing solutions. So when we hire, the first quality we need is the entrepreneurial quality - you should have a good business team and you should be a person who is living and breathing a creative product. That doesn’t mean you simply go to a pitch, win it and come back. You should have a certain business sense and say that you’re running a business, not just a creative shop.”

Dilip Upadhyaya, chief financial officer, Mudra Group“We have to manage the cash flow in a meaningful manner allowing our operating team to remain focused on the key business. The finance function ensures that the management is free to focus on growth, while we work to ensure financial health and stability.”

The Mudra Group has its core advertising business, housed under Mudra India. This consists of Mudra, the advertising agency; Water, the strategy and design consultancy; Maatra, the localisation and pre-media services and Tantr Films, a content creation unit.

Jude Fernandes, CEO, Mudra India says, “What’s most significant is this entire shift from being just an advertising agency. There is much larger planning focus and we’ve got a huge senior planning team across the country making sure everyone’s working with the same set of tools. Plus, we’ve got strong creative heads in all our three offices. So we have complete solutions and we carry out the entire execution.”

He adds,“In every office we have large businesses which continue to grow with us. Most of our relationships have all started with a small beginning.”

It is this beginning that started in Ahmedabad and went on to create iconic campaigns for little known brands (then) such as Vimal, Rasna, Godrej Powder Hair Dye, Dhara Sunflower Oil, Reliance India Mobile.

“There are clients who’ve been with us over the last few years as they’ve expanded their retail network.Currently, we have clients such as the Godrej Group, Future Group, LIC, Union Bank, HCC and the Lavasa Future Cities campaign which has got everyone talking. Similarly, The Times of India and Worldwide Media are small but they are adding on business.”

“We have understood the client,” he says. “ What’s more important is we have understood the client’s needs. Advertising works because its an investment.”

Mudra Max is the third agency under the Mudra Group umbrella, that houses the media buying and various specialist units. MAX, therefore, houses Connext and RADAR, the two media buying units. RADAR is exclusively for handling Reliance brands.

This division also has various specialist units catering to OOH, retail design and visual merchandising, navigation and marketing solutions for trade, promotions, rural, events and sports.

Pratap Bose, CEO, Mudra Max and COO, Mudra Group says, “There is still some unfinished business in terms of more units to be launched. What we would like to do next would be to get into the next generation forms of media which could be getting into mobile marketing, word of mouth among others.”

Bose says that thanks to Mudra Max, clients get a combination of an experiential plus communications planning agency.

He says, “The way forward is to find the best in class partner, for each of these units to grow them substantially.” Last year, Mudra Max announced an OOH JV with Clear Channel, prior to which there was Portland Mudra. It recently entered into a partnership with Concrea Communications for youth marketing.

Going forward, Bose wants to grow these specialised units into their core competencies. “We want to position Mudra Max as a specialist communications group within the agency. Where we stand now, and where we would be standing a year from now on, is going to be very different,” he says. “Today, the one differentiating factor would be that we are the largest communications group with real specialist skills across all consumer touchpoints. That’s our biggest USP and the ability to integrate all these units with advertising will also be our biggest strength.”

DDB Mudra, headed by Sandeep Vij is the second agency under the Mudra Group. It consists of advertising agency DDB Mudra Advertising, the interactive and new media unit Tribal DDB, the relationship marketing division Rapp and a health and lifestyle marketing unit, DDB/Mudra Health and Lifestyle.

Vij says, “Today the agency model is under transformation. Fortunately, DDB Mudra is being sculpted at the cusp of change. We are building a culture that truly inspires the internal culture of collaboration. It is being built around the idea of open collaboration.Today, clients want integrated teams to solve problems.”

Vij says they’ve created a structure where each unit is separated by semi-permeable membranes allowing the free flow of ideas, processes yet retaining that which gives the cell its DNA. Last year, the agency infused fresh talent at the leadership level when it hired Mike Follett and Rajeev Raja to run ‘One Voice Planning’ and ‘Creative’ respectively across the Group ensuring fluidity in thinking and truly holistic creative business solutions.

“In essence we have moved on from being disparate agencies to a team of experts, from being discipline to idea oriented, from consecutive production thinking to a concurrent collaborative production, from separate to open,” he says. Vij is currently trying to mould an internal culture that “truly inspires internal collaboration enabling us to build and harness our collective creative energy”.

Client partners in India include Volkswagen, Neutrogena and Clean & Clear (Johnson & Johnson), Henkel, Lipton, Reliance Mutual Fund, RBS, Wrigley, Idea, The Times of India, Philips, Novartis, Schering Plough, HDFC, Tata AIG, HP, Tata Communications and Unicef.

Ignite Mudra is the fourth agency of the Mudra Group that was launched in 2009 and is positioned as an agency that partners Indian entrepreneurs. The agency works closely with entrepreneurs in trying to understand their needs, not only in brand building but also supporting them through a consortium that provides services in corporate law, funding, organisational development and sales and distribution expertise provided in conjunction with a consortium of domain experts.

Chandan Nath, president and head, Ignite Mudra says that working with entrepreneurs needs an understanding mindset. “You’ve got to respect the ideas, dreams and vision of the entrepreneur. They’ll look for relationships rather than business. I think entrepreneurs are more into relationships than simply doing business with agencies. And if you have been there, they respect that, which is very rare for other clients.”

Nath lists brands which he describes as Mudra Group classics from Ahmedabad. “Vimal created and added fashion to fabrics. Dhara redefined purity in edible oils. Symphony launched the category of air coolers. Ajanta was the revolution of musical quartz wall clocks. Look at Paras brands - Moov, Krack, Livon, DermiCool, Itchguard, Recova, each name that I’ve mentioned is not only a brand success, it is also a category creator. I mean there was no itch relieving cream before Itchguard was launched. Another new entrant, Nutralite today has acquired more than 25 plus percent share of the market.”

Nath emphasizes that the consortium gets together leading professionals from the industry offering skillsets which they believe will contribute to the growth of an entrepreneur.

Ashish Mishra

chief strategist

and head,

Water

Consulting

“We can dream freely, in a real, achievable way and more often than not, whosoever wants to take the initiative is allowed to do so.”

Jude Fernandes CEO, Mudra India

“We are aware of

our clients’ needs. When we go into the market, when we are talking to a potential client, we are not talking only advertising.”

Rajeev Raja

national

creative

director, DDB

Mudra

“Today, Mudra as a Group is rock solid. We are not paying mere lip service to the term ‘full service agency’.”

Sandeep Vij CEO, DDB Mudra

“Each unit in DDB Mudra is

separated by semi-permeable membranes allowing the free flow of ideas and processes, yet retaining that which gives the cell its DNA.”

Anurag Guptachief strategy officer, Mudra Max

“We’re an agency of

very apolitical, very entrepreneurial, very independent people and from a culture point of view, we’re malleable.”

Pratap Bose CEO, Mudra Max, COO, Mudra Group

“Mudra is a place

where we are not mavericks, we are not militants, we don’t hire and fire - its an agency built on certain principles.”

Chandan Nath

president and

head, Ignite

Mudra

“As a Group,

today we have the expertise of a variety of skill sets, which according to me are not offered by many advertising agencies.”

Units Mudra India, Water, Maatra and Tantr Films

Key people Jude Fernandes (CEO), Ashish Mishra (chief strategist and head, Water Consulting), Arijit Ray (president, Mudra West), KB Vinod (creative head, Mudra West), Aditya Kanthy (VP - planning, Mudra West), Ranji Cherian (president, Mudra South), Ajay Naqvi (EVP and head, Mudra North and East), Nirmal Pulickal (ECD, Mudra North and East)

Key accounts Godrej Group, Future Group, LIC, Union Bank of India, HCC, Lavasa Future Cities, Femina, Filmfare, Lonely Planet, The Economic Times, United Spirits, Dabur, HBO, TTK, Aditya Birla Nuvo

Units DDB Mudra, Tribal DDB, Rapp India, DDB Health and Lifestyle

Key people Sandeep Vij (CEO), Max Hegerman (president - Tribal DDB), Venkat Mallik (president - Rapp India), Rajiv Sabnis (president - DDB India), Mike Follett (SVP - strategy and planning, DDB Mudra), Rajeev Raja (national creative director - DDB Mudra), Soumitra Sen (president - DDB Health and Lifestyle)

Key accounts Volkswagen, Neutrogena, Henkel, Lipton, Wrigleys, Novartis, Philips, Johnson & Johnson, Reliance Mutual Fund

Key people Chandan Nath (president and head),

Key accounts Paras Pharma, Electrotherm, Zydus Cadilla

The lowdownUnits RADAR, Connext, Prime Group (OOH, retail and navigation solutions - Primesite, Prime Retail, Prime Wayfinding, Prime Consult, Prime Green), Kidstuff (promotional marketing), Street Smart (interactive OOH), Multiplier (trade marketing), Terra (rural marketing), Videotec , 10 Integrated (sports marketing), Celsius (events marketing), Portland Mudra, Clear Channel Mudra LLP

Key people Pratap Bose (CEO), Anurag Gupta (chief strategy officer, Mudra Max), Aneil Deepak (SVP strategy & planning), Sanjay Kacker (SVP, Celsius), Mandeep Malhotra (president-OOH), Sanjeev Hajela (president - retail & way finding), Sameer Mehta (VP, head, Multiplier)

Key accounts Aircel, Shell Foundation, TVSMotors, ITC, Pepsi, Wrigleys

The lowdownThe lowdown The lowdown

Mudra India DDB Mudra Mudra Max Ignite Mudra


VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDEWhat do Mudra’s partners, captains of industry, Mudra’s competitors and CEOs of media houses think of Mudra?


From an outside perspective, I feel Mudra works on an overarching belief of a‘future backwards’ strategy. This implies that they constantly keep track of disruptions from multiple sources and the impact of consumer behaviour and industry sectors. The advantage of this approach has been their lack of complacency and the ability to renew themselves time and again to face challenges of the future and stay ahead of the change curve. The exponential growth happens because of the organisation’s ambition to grow inorganically and not be constrained by usual perceptions of roadblocks to growth. In one sentence I can capture Mudra as an incumbent organization with a start-up mentality that renews its corporate vision time and again and thrives.

“Mudra is a leading communciations group in India as well as Asia. It’s a strong organised group that has not only been doing great work over the years but is also very well positioned for the future. It is growing our capabilities in a number of different areas outside of the traditional advertising realm. We are doing a lot more work in digital communications, CRM, areas that are becoming more and more important to our clients.

The shift that Mudra has made towards becoming a communications group is similar to the shift that DDB is making all over the world. It’s making that shift from what has historically been an advertising agency to now a more

integrated full service communications company that is delivering a wide range of ideas through multiple media and different platforms.

The relationship between DDB and Mudra has been a great partnership, we have worked very well together and continue to do so. Mudra has a number of national clients along with a number of global DDB clients that it works together with, from Philips to Volkswagen to Johnson & Johnson to Wrigleys, Henkel, Unilever. We are happy with our partnership. We continue to work and develop that partnership for the future. I believe that we are going to continue to strengthen our ties together and build a broader set of resources for the future.

“I’d describe Mudra as the dancing princess of Asia about to bloom and impress us all.

I think the reasons why I can make that statement is because the agency has a history of stability and understanding of the Indian market from a position of being focused and connected to big Indian companies. They had a wonderful sort of upbringing and a solid history, and now, I think under Madhukar’s leadership, creatively they have found resolve; they are on the road to leading creatively, in terms of their work. They are out from the shadow of their past structure and ownership and development, and they’re looking at opportunities to change everything about what they do, to really come into the new age of creativity, integrated solutions and doing that in a way that is amongst the best in India. So you could summarize all that in terms of ‘their time is right.’

“We’ve had many discussions with Mudra.It’s like a wife who turns 40. At different times, you feel that you are actually locked into a marriage and then as you turn 40, you realize- —ah, the marriage can actually be what you want it to be; you don’t have to be focused on the fact that you are married. And in that middle era of maturity, I think both of the partners start to flourish together. And we are learning a lot from Mudra and Mudra is, under Madhukar’s leadership, learning a lot and connecting much more with DDB than it ever has. I can see that relationship flourishing and maturing to the benefit of both parties.”

“We have a very close relationship with Mudra for about 25 years. They have handled a number of our brands and products over the years – soaps and hair colour; they have handled Real Good Chicken, they have handled durables. So our relationship with Mudra has been long and diverse.

“The one thing I found about Mudra which is unique, to my mind, is that they go to consumers. I have seen them. They keep speaking to

consumers and give us feedback -- and I like that. Advertising agencies generally believe that their job is only being creative whereas here I have seen a lot of insight coming out of Mudra. I think they have taken the trouble to go to the market, to interact with consumers. That I have always been very impressed with. I can tell you that some of our advertising has been really strong and successful.”

Chuck Brymer, president and CEO, DDB Worldwide

John Zeigler, president and CEO, DDB APAC & Japan, DDB Worldwide

Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar UniversalBhaskar Das, executive president, BCCL

“During my recent visit to Mumbai, I had the opportunity to meet the entire management team of the Mudra Group. I’m extremely impressed in the level of professionalism and team work that I saw. Mudra today is a world class agency with a great creative product and I’m very proud to be their partner.”

“Mudra holds the perception of being a full service agency, a good one at that, one that’s very diversified into many specializations and it continues to grow. Madhukar is a good friend and he does well for the agency. This is Mudra’s 30th year and the agency is gearing up to do many things. Over the past one year, after Pratap joined, there’s been a flurry of activity at the agency, several new businesses have been launched. I hope they become successful and I wish them well for the future.”

John Wren, CEO, Omnicom Group

Colvyn Harris, CEO, JWT India

I think the good thing about Mudra is that they’ve taken the fully integrated route and while other agencies talk about integrated solutions, a sizeable portion of Mudra’s revenue already comes from their marketing services units. Therefore, their larger 360 degree offering is very impressive and they’ve always taken a holistic view of offering solutions to clients. So their growth story is interesting – they started with a very entrepreneurial mindset, when advertising was dominated largely by people with upper middle class backgrounds. Moving on from there, they’ve anticipated the changes in the

market-place and diversified themselves accordingly, making the right investments. Their growth has been bottom-up and with a leader like Madhukar Kamath who, by the way, needs no introduction to collaboration. Madhukar’s a fine collaborator and he’s made the Ad Club and AAAI come together for Goafest. So integration within the agency should come easy to him. Today, Mudra is well-poised. Globally, marketing services is becoming huge. At any time, if that happens in India - which I foresee happening in the future - Mudra will be at the forefront of dealing with the change.

Adi Godrej, chairman, The Godrej Group



I still vividly remember the first Mudra Videotec signature ages back and I believe now, as I believed then, that it was ahead of its time! That has been the hallmark of Mudra; the ability to anticipate the changes in the industry and environment. Mudra showed the way to this industry on how to diversify and provide wholesome communication solutions, not to forget the contribution in providing talent to this industry through MICA. I’m certain that Mudra will continue to challenge the status quo in this industry and set new trends.

The first time I heard of Mudra was in the late 80s or the early 90s, when they were in the top four or top five agencies in the country. I’ve not interacted much with Mudra but I’ve worked closely with Madhukar (Kamath) in various industry capacities and Pratap (Bose) when he was on the WPP side of things. In the 1970s and the 80s, network agencies weren’t such a big thing in India - quite unlike the scene today - so there was a culture of home grown agencies of not just Mudra, Chaitra, Trikaya, Lintas or even HTA for that matter. So I hadn’t reacted much when they launched, but by the early 1990s, they’d grown to become a highly respected advertising agency. That perception continues to exist today.

I really don’t know much about their growth story, but I do know that as a group, they’re highly respected in the industry. I really admire Madhukar as a person. Unfortunately, I’ve never had a chance to meet their very, very esteemed founder - AGK. But I’ve seen Madhukar as president of AAAI and he’s someone I truly respect. Indeed, Mudra has been instrumental in the launch of many enterprising brands coming out of Gujarat and thereafter spreading their network to the rest of India. The agency has also been fortunate to have the right clients to back their ideas, which is why you have brands like Dhara, Rasna, Vimal becoming homegrown successes.

I’ve seen some of the work that’s been coming out of Mudra MAX. You know, I say this as a compliment here - when entering award shows, Ogilvy packages entries very well. One, through good work and the other, by ensuring that those entries are viewer friendly. But ever since Pratap (Bose) has joined Mudra, he has brought that Ogilvy touch to the Mudra Group. So for example, Mudra MAX’s strengths are now in outdoor and activation. This year at the Media Abbys for example, Mudra MAX is way up there, in terms of the total shortlists.

So in the future, I expect the good work to continue from the Mudra Group. Without a doubt it will, especially with the kind of leadership they have. I hope they can continue to give a credible face to Indian advertising.

Seema Mohapatra, regional director ad sales, South Asia, BBC Worldwide

R Gowthaman, leader, Mindshare, South AsiaVikram Sakhuja, CEO - South Asia, GroupM

Mudra is India’s biggest source of pride when it comes to homegrown agencies. From a small entrepreneurial set-up in Ahmedabad, the agency has grown into a nationwide communications group. It’s heartening to see their intent convert to action, as they diversify into specialised units in order to offer a variety of solutions to clients. What is even more interesting is that all their units are under one umbrella and with a new address on the cards, Mudra can really walk the talk when it comes to integrated communication solutions. With this, they’re creating a fine example of an agency that is future ready, considering the dynamic media landscape we operate in.

Rajesh Kamat, COO, Viacom18

Mudra can be remembered for many different things. Brings back memories of ‘I love you Rasna’ , ‘Only Vimal’, ‘My daddy strongest’ and of course AGK for all of us in media. A truly Indian agency which has been standing tall with many firsts to its name. They have been pioneers on a lot of fronts, much ahead of others and never shying away from creating new business opportunities. Mudra Videotec with Buniyaad in the good old days or establishing MICA - a great contribution to the industry and many more. It has reinvented itself every few years and I am sure we will see much more in the coming years. The entrepreneurial spirit and passion reflects in everything they do. Wishing Madhukar and the team all the best in taking it to greater heights.

VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDEWhat do Mudra’s partners, captains of industry, Mudra’s competitors and CEOs of media houses think of Mudra?

I’ve seen Mudra from the day it started till today. In the initial years, the impression always was like, “Hey, they are coming after us!” Since we were No. 3 on the run, they were always watching our tail and they were very aggressive. They had found a place in the scheme of things. They were an Indian agency that was challenging these three nasty multinationals who had all the plum accounts and they had Rasna and Vimal. The Indian entrepreneurs were waking up and they were beginning to build brands. Mudra was ‘an Indian agency for Indian clients’ a positioning which initially we sort of pooh-poohed. When I left in 1984. Mani Aiyer used to tell me that Mudra’s growing and while we were growing at a fairly steady pace, they were coming after us.

The next thing I knew, before I returned, Mudra had actually overtaken us and they had become the No. 3 agency which was obviously very aggravating for O&M.

Obviously they became a huge competitor to us and there was no doubt about it that they had found fabulous credibility with Indian clients and they continued to grow. I think Mani (of O&M) was very strong in financial management and Krishnamurthy was equally strong and that’s where they had a tremendous advantage.

Everyone was improving their margins and Mudra kept pace with that. When things started decelerating, we had the good sense to go on raising our margins and Mudra did the same thing.

I’m not sure whether other agencies looked at that aspect of the business. Mudra had an equally strong focus on the management of business to deliver profit from their office.

Today, if I were to describe Mudra to say, somebody from America,I’d say that they have got a strong advertising agency. Even in their first decade, you saw them as a strong advertising agency, which had advertising solutions.

While some of us were diversifying, we didn’t see them diversifying as much, then, but now I feel that it’s happening. It’s like a revival. There was a bit of a plateau and then one sees it going up again.

I see that there is an absolute revival and aggression in them that I have not seen before.Look at the hiring they have made at a time when nobody was hiring.

Ranjan Kapoor, country manager, India - WPP


What do those who work with Mudra for their brand-building and communication needs think of their contribution?


The very fact that we’ve been working for nine and half years speaks volumes about our association with Mudra. Mudra has taken through two of our brands - Sugar Free and Nutralite - through its formative years. That’s an important achievement in itself. When we select an agency for an upcoming brand, the geographic location becomes very important and as far as Ahmedabad is concerned, Mudra is one of best ones. Two examples stand out in Mudra’s contribution to the brand - one was when 9/11 happened and we were on-air on all the news channels. The kind of coverage we got, was the building block or foundation for Sugar Free. Second was where Mudra helped Nutralite become a formidable brand in the retail segment. This has happened thanks only to a long association.

It has been easy for me to come in and settle down because Mudra’s familiarity with the Paras brands has been for a fairly long time. It has been a fairly fruitful relationship over the last 18 months, where we’ve come to expect more out of Mudra and they’ve been able to measure up to it. The activity levels on each of our brands has gone up considerably. The agency has succeeded in going beyond the brief - for example, one of the new products we’re going to to launch in the next few months, is a brainchild of Mudra. They have been able to flesh out the category and convince us that it is a good opportunity for us to get into. The agency has a very significant role to play in our growth.

LIC has shared a long and fruitful relationship with Mudra. As one of the key agencies working on our brand, they have produced the extremely memorable “Zindagi ke saath bhi, Zindagi ke baad bhi” to the latest Pension film “Statue”. It is with great pleasure that I extend my warmest congratulations to the entire team on the occasion of their completing 30 years and wish them the very best in their journey forward.

Anand G Deo, MD, Zydus Wellness S Raghunandan, MD and CEO, Paras Pharmaceuticals Chandru Kalro, EVP, TTK Prestige

Aloke Malik president, Peter England Fashion & RetailD K Mehrotra, MD, LIC of India

T Narsimhan, mktg head, Asia Pacific & Japan, HP

Vivek Sharma, CMO, Philips India M V Nair, CMD, Union Bank of India

RAPP India is one of the big success stories in HP in Asia Pacific, its actually considered one of the best benchmarks of what you can do with an agency and its a source of great pride for us.

My interaction with Mudra is more than 12-13 years and their biggest strength is the fact that they act as true business partners, they’re responsive and their time-to-market.

In my industry, time-to-market is critical and also, you know, as opposed to some other industries, so Mudra is good with turn-around times which is something I appreciate in them.

Our business is a complex one and they make a good job of understanding it.

DDB Mudra has found the right balance between the global positioning and Indian relevance. It has contributed significantly to building brand Philips in India by virtue of their sheer commitment, dedicated teams, senior level involvement and good, creative inputs. There is always a very positive and open attitude of ‘can do’, which is what my team in Philips loves about DDB Mudra. From being a transactional relationship three years ago, now we have a relationship which is built on trust, partnership, we’re comfortable with each other and allow each to make mistakes - we’re now long term partners. It is so good now that we often meet without any work and agenda - just to eat, drink and discuss.

We have been associated with Mudra for four years now. They’ve been involved with the re-branding exercise the bank under went last year. It undoubtedly proved Mudra’s capability to execute mammoth 360 degree communications programme nationally. The intensity of their engagement with us and our other partners was noteworthy.What I like about Mudra is their

understanding of the financial category, the knowledge of how a bank functions and their thoughtfulness of our communications needs - these are what make Mudra different! They have always explored multiple approaches before recommending the final creative solution. The internal communication campaign Mudra devised for our Nav-Nirman roll out was perhaps more challenging than the brand identity change campaign. Mudra treated the internal communication campaign with the same vigour and drive it put behind the multi-media campaign. When we ran our internal engagement program, which we had taken it to everywhere nationally, including smaller towns, it was Mudra’s specialists units which implemented it effectively and simultaneously across multiple locations.

After Mudra came on-board as our agency, we actually had a change in direction and our communication platform. It’s been a good journey so far; our association with them will almost complete ten years. They really understand continual client service. They are very warm people and unlike other agencies, they don’t have an ‘I-know-better’ attitude. They work with you. They don’t work at you, which many agencies do. Their involvement is quite substantial in our business. If they don’t know something, they are willing to listen to you. Which is why, we continued this relationship. They have a very good activation cell, which is of major interest to us and which we foresee using in the coming days for various marketing activities.

Mudra launched Peter England with ‘The Honest Shirt’ campaign 12 years back. And that is when we started working together. The Honest Shirt, was a landmark campaign for Peter England. It created a mid-priced segment in the men’s apparel category. People still fondly refer to Peter England as ‘the honest shirt’. The agency team made a significant contribution in leveraging our association with the Chennai Super Kings team and integrating this campaign with our brand positioning.The timelines were extremely tight, availability of players uncertain. Despite these challenges, the Mudra team came up with some fine work. Team Mudra’s passion to keep on improving the creative quotient stands out for special mention as does their energy and enthusiasm.

MUDRA WORKS FOR THEM



MUDRA WORKS FOR THEMWhat do those who work with Mudra for their brand-building and communication needs think of their contribution?

Our relationship with Mudra started around September 2005. The brand name ‘Yo Bikes’ was coined by Mudra. It was important beginning for us, because we had never done consumer products before - we’ve been a B2B market player for many years. Therefore advertising and Mudra both were new things for us. Also, not being an auto player, we had to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy for our auto products. We chose Mudra because we went by the brand and reputation that the agency enjoyed in the market. They have done a very good job. It’s a very strong relationship - we’ve worked very closely in the last five years. There was a lot of learning that came from Mudra, in terms of advertisements, brand promotions. Lot of things we hadn’t known as a B2B company - so they not only performed their role as an advertising agency, there was also a lot of learning which came in through their ability to go beyond the brief. They are absolutely committed to our success. They’re part of our team, we don’t see them as Mudra anymore. So they certainly play an important role in the coming days for the growth of our brand and our products. With the kind of technological changes that we’re making in the product and our plans for the next two years, I think Mudra’s involvement will only increase.

Volkswagen operates all over the world and our brand guidelines, are very important for us. So it was very important for us to find an agency, which clearly understands our brands and how best they can be adapted locally and the agency would have to certainly lead the brand. Based on our brand strategy, weselected DDB Mudra. It was an additional advantage since it belongs to the DDB network worldwide and it would be fair to say that the intercommunication between the agencies is mature. They know the VW brand and where we are heading to. Having said that, if it were not a network agency, we’d still have decided on Mudra. At the end of day, it’s also about performance and how do they understand how we want the brand to lead.

Their responsiveness has been a critical factor. The time between Mudra’s appointment and the release of the communication was a very short span of time. So the relationship has been excellent. It’s very good. In the beginning everybody has to learn. So DDB Mudra was appointed before I came into the market and within this very short period of time they adapted our brand guidelines to our Indian strategy. They came up with a lot of creative approaches and this worked very well.

But it’s paying off. For example, what we are heading for is awareness. Our awareness in India last year was very low and with the first activities and the variety of campaigns, they used a 360-degree approach and raised our brand awareness in double digits. So it was a huge success for us. Additionally, what we also clearly see at the end of last year - because we launched on the 11th of November - our sales went up. After the announcement of Polo, we were number one on Google with more than one lakh clicks on our web page. After the Polo innovation in TOI, our showrooms were completely overcrowded. Everybody wanted to see the cars. Our dealers are happy. Motivation is very high and at the end of the day, we are selling cars. And when we look at our bookings, we know already for our cars it was a success. Out of all the work we’ve done - I’ve loved the innovations we’ve done with media, as much as the brand commercials which ran from 11 November onwards. So, essentially we’ve adapted the brand in a very, very short period of time. Normally, more or less, you need half a year to do something like this if you have had the knowledge.The foundation of the Volkswagen brand has now been laid and the consumers now knows that we’re coming into the market with the New Beetle, Touareg and now, Polo. So, they’ve realised that the brand really makes an effort in this market. So it’s not really advertising, but a commitment to the country. That’s why in our TOI innovation, we ended the last page with the headline, ‘Here today and tomorrow’ and this is what customers understood, not in terms of terminology, but as a consumer.

Lutz Kothe, chief GM - marketing, PR, Volkswagen India M Suku, head - media strategy and alliances, R-ADAG

In an industry in India overwhelmingly dominated by global communication networks, Mudra has stood out as an outstanding example of an Indian global communication network brand uniquely configured around the needs of Indian markets, marketers, consumers and media.

Mudra will always be remembered by me for its visionary and early bird approach to sponsored programmes on TV (Buniyaad, Rajni etc), its

Sports Management effort of World Cup Cricket in the mid-80’s and the first ever branding attempt of IPO’s (Reliance Khazana) among many other achievements.

In a business where global communication networks paid lip service to talent, Mudra was the first to set up a focussed institution MICA to continously generate the much needed talent which the communication industry today sucks up entirely before even students pass out!

In a high profile industry, Mudra has been consistently low profile and I hope that the celebrations around the 30 years of Mudra raises the profile and importance of a very unique, effective and Indian communications network.

Mudra is a company with which we share a lot of values; their culture is very similar to ours, it is a very people-intensive business.Mudra, I think, is very down-to-earth and every person who has represented Mudra to us has brought in an enormous amount of value and personal relationships and a lot of friendship on the table, while being completely professional about whatever they have delivered. As a company, when we wanted to enter the second segment in pressure cookers, just the bigger segment so-to-speak —after years of discussing, we decided to enter. When we designed the product, Mudra had come on board and we asked Mudra to do a workshop on what is product strategy, etc. The story is legend: at the end of a workshop on the presentation, this is something which changed the way we designed the product completely, we went into redesigning when they said, “When you want to enter a battle, you must either choose the weapons or choose the battleground. You cannot leave both to your opponent.” I think it was extremely significant because Hawkins was a very big market leader and they were very strong in the north and the east, where this product was selling. I think Mudra brought a confluence of ideas from some of the experiences in the other offices as well; we work with Bangalore but we know we actually have all the Mudra offices as resources at hand, when a push comes to a shove. This is something Mudra has brought to the table.

Going forward as we expand into rural markets and gain the loyalty of the dealers by creating a point-of-sales communication which is very, very clear to the customers and to the dealers. That’s where I believe many of Mudra’s specialist units will come into play. I think, today, marketing is no more about advertising. Whenever a creative is being presented we’ve always insisted that Mudra present a broad media plan on how that creative will be taken forward and what it’ll mean in terms of the various time parameters that we want to evaluate together, so that we know exactly how we will look at it, not just necessarily from a creative perspective.

Any of the presentations by them is an integrated presentation. I think that strength that Mudra brings to the table is invaluable. I’m sure they believe that customers want such inputs and, therefore, they do that.

I think Madhukar is absolutely right in pushing Mudra as a partner in business which is why they’re now becoming a knowledge partner. So Mudra just commissioned a research and had six workshops with us, run by an independent moderator who would pick up all the ideas and, you know, give a shape to the whole thing. Those six workshops culminated in deciding how we should approach the communication, and I think to that extent, it’s clearly their commitment to try and find a solution as a partner, rather than just to come up with a couple of catchy base-lines. It was solid research, solid process of understanding I think that singular thing that they did tells us how committed they are to working together. Mudra has done a wonderful job and I’m sure, has positioned itself to a knowledge partner of the business. We look at Mudra as an agency which brings knowledge that combines together with ours. So that’s one-plus-one making three.

Over many years of partnering with Mudra MAX as one of our solutions provider in the BTL communication space, we’ve seen Mudra MAX grow strength to strength. We at PepsiCo Flavors, look forward for doing much more constructive work with the group. Congratulations to each member of the team for achieving grand success.

Alpana K Titus, executive vice president, marketing - flavors, PepsiCo India

We have been working with Mudra for around 25 years and the association is across several of our Group companies and brands. I think Mudra’s work with Godrej Powder Hair Dye, which now comes under the umbrella brand under Godrej Expert, has been invaluable. The Mudra team headed by Jude Fernandes has always worked seamlessly with our teams on projects, often carrying out services which were not necessarily within the scope of work required by them. It’s always like one big Godrej team! Mudra’s efforts in No.1 have certainly helped us gain market share over competitors. We also benefited from Mudra’s specialist services including the rural arm, their digital arm and their point of purchase and activation services.

Tanya Dubash , executive director, Godrej Group

S Ravichandran, MD, TTK PrestigeAvinash Bhandari, group CEO, joint MD, Electrotherm


THEY HELPED BUILD MUDRA Mudra has been a stepping stone for a number of great Indian adlanders, all with great memories of their stints there and what they gained from Mudra


I had just joined Reliance as an advertising manager, and Frank Simoes was our ad agency. The focus of our advertising, then, was on Vimal sarees.

By 1979, Vimal Suitings had become a very big brand and this was a dilemma for Frank Simoes. They were handling Raymonds as well, and the brand was very close to Frank Simoes’ heart. They had to choose between the two and asked us if they could retain Vimal Sarees and choose Raymond ahead of Vimal Suitings. We didn’t take this well; we thought all Vimal brands should be under one agency. We decided to sever ties with FS and start our own agency. We had already set up and had been running a studio to address the BTL needs of all brands anyway, we had the confidence to handle the brands on our own, even the ATL needs. We had the infrastructure in place and there were no great investments

When I joined Mudra in 1991, my biggest learning was without question, working with people, because it was the kind of place that fosters the whole idea of working together and we learnt the importance of working as a collective. It wasn’t just about what you do whether you’re good or bad at your work, but your ability to work along with other people.

You know when organisations say ‘we’re like a family’, its the cliche of the worst kind. But Mudra was a true conception of the term ‘family’ and it was brave enough to welcome all kinds of people.

The agency also had the courage not to go down the beaten path - it did things things differently, by deriving strength from the average rather than from the best, that was the unique part about Mudra culture.

So it wasn’t just about what you do or how good or bad you were at your work, it

I joined Mudra in 1988, when it was a fairly young team. What struck me about Mudra was the fact that there was this spirit of trying to create something new. The energy was infectious; we were working like a closely knit team. I’d studied at NID where you were encouraged to work together as a team and my similar

I worked with Mudra in the early 90s, which was perhaps the formative years of the agency. Those were heady days. We were out to prove a point to the industry which looked at this Ahmedabad-based home grown agency with a great amount of skepticism. We believed we could achieve anything, and at the same time used to remind ourselves everyday that we were the underdogs.

The energy levels were so high that one could almost touch and feel the heat. As AGK used to put it, we had “fire in our bellies”. I feel privileged to have worked with Mudra, under a great leader . Even after so many years, when I think of some of the things we did, my heart swells with pride. On its 30th anniversary, I salute Mudra.

“My initial exposure to Mudra was when they were handling Vimal. I was with Reliance at that point of time and I was assisting Mr Anil Ambani. They did

some great work for Vimal’s TVC featuring Viv Richards. It was a wonderful piece of work. I also remember the conceptualisation of Mudra Videotec which was responsible for Buniyaad. Then as part of my group vocation, I spent two years in Mudra, as part of research development. Those two years were great, there was high energy at the agency. The industry saw us as upstarts. At that time, the industry was dominated by multinational affiliates from HTA to Lintas to Ogilvy Benson & Mather. But we were different. What was different about us was that we were not conventional advertising types. A lot of us in the senior

management at that time didn’t come from an advertising background. I wasn’t from advertising myself. At Reliance, I was part of the group strategy team. Then I came to Mudra. If I remember right, the two years that I was there, we more than doubled the billing. What’s more, Mudra pioneered a few important things. One, account planning is something we drove very hard because a lot of our clients were were trying to compete against MNCs. In terms of creative, we had an interesting strategy. We had a great creative team in-house. A lot of our work used to be television based, we were one of the early pioneers of television. The original telecasting of cricket matches in the country was completely sponsored by Reliance. We had a strong strategy orientation and strong creative inputs. We also managed to tap into the creative genius of the filmmakers. Hence, a whole bunch of outstanding work came out of Mudra in those days. Also, one of the challenges that we saw at that time was the shortage of talent in the industry so that’s how MICA was set up. Overall, those were exciting times “

A G Krishnamurthy, chairman, AGK Brand Consulting R Balki, chairman and chief creative officer, Lowe Lintas Sonal Dabral, chairman and regional creative director, Bates141

Rahul Kansal, chief marketing officer, BCCL

J Ramachandran, professor - corporate strategy and policy, IIM-B

required. All that we did was to convert the studio into an agency.

The brief was not to make profit. Dhirubhai Ambani just said, “Make Vimal’s advertising the best advertising in the country.” By 1982, we had started producing good work for Vimal, and started receiving calls from others asking if we would handle their communication needs. The first call that we received was from Nelco, which was headed by Ratan Tata in those days, and was a formidable brand. Mr. Venugopal, who was the marketing head at Nelco, called to say that they were very impressed by the Vimal work and asked if we would work with them. Dhirubhai suggested we wait for some time. The first external business we handled was a year later, when we took on the Rasna business. Then we began expanding nationally. The rest is history.

When it launched, Mudra came across as a performance based agency. During that time, advertising came across as a genteel profession. It was kind of an old boy’s club. Everybody sort of played by the rules. Everything took time. But Mudra came in as a no nonsense , hard working, willing-to-roll-up-their-sleeves, working long hours, working on a Saturday...that kind of

Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World

When I quit O&M as executive director, I saw in Mudra an opportunity to do a lot more building/creation than in my current job. When I eventually joined, my biggest learning at Mudra was that advertising needn’t be a ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ profession that operates on the periphery of showbiz. I also learnt that only agencies capable of getting off their ivory tower and understanding the reality of Indian markets and consumers would survive and thrive in the future. What left a lasting impression on my work ethics was the importance given to substance over style - in an industry thickly populated with gas bags, I learnt the importance of talking the ‘moti baat’. I remember, when Dabur invited Mudra for a pitch for a new toothpaste brand, while

most other agencies would have spent the limited time available in trying to put together a glitzy presentation, we at Mudra were so focused on trying to get the strategy right, we finally made the presentation on acetates – with the presenter constructing the key charts right in front of the client, in an interactive way. The presentation worked like a dream, Mudra came on board and within the next one year had won some 50% of Dabur’s business – including Chyawanprash, Vatika, LDM, Hajmola and Hajmola candy. This down-to-earth presentation (of an insightful/ sound strategy) underlined, to my mind is a major cultural trait of Mudra – a belief in the supremacy of substance over style.

My first memories of advertising are in Mudra. That’s where I started my career. In those days, the Mudra Videotec logo used to come at the end of many TV programmes. I was one of the first guinea pigs of what would eventually become MICA. We started in a small flat in Ahmedabad - Chaitanya Towers - with Rs 1000 as our starting salary. Mudra was always an emotional place, it always sold by emotion, not by rationale. I remember an ad for BPL, which AGK had completely trashed, but the client loved it, Alyque wrote a long mail to AGK saying it was a fantastic ad. AGK then sent me a letter, saying, “I was wrong, you are right.” So that was a learning experience - it was not about who you are, its about what it is. A lot of times, I feel I’ve been away from that organisation, but I’ve never been away from that culture. Me, Ramki, Prathap

Santosh Desai, managing director and CEO, Future Brands

(Suthan) - all of us today have a very unsaid bond between us. At some point of time, we all felt we were useless. But there did come a time, when we thought we were useful, thanks to Mudra.

Mudra was the agency which said, ‘Who said we can’t do it?’. Mudra started out as an entrepreneur and now has turned into something of a successful businessman. The challenge for Mudra now is to keep the spirit of entrepreneurship alive. Its got a very rich foundation and I think the agency now needs to find a lot more hungry people. They don’t need good old professionals who’ve worked in other agencies. They are an agency which has made ordinary people do extra ordinary things. And that’s what makes people want to congregate. We never said, ‘Hail Mudra!’ We always said ‘Hail Us’, because we felt great being together in the agency.

agency. It was born from a Reliance culture where the baseline was ‘Where Growth is Way of Life’ and with the Ambani credo of ‘Every job has to be done in time’, ‘Nothing is impossible’. Now, these were certainly not sentiments one could express with agencies of those days. I remember, even for me, working on a Saturday was a bit uncomfortable and quite often our meetings were held on Sundays. And its quite unthinkable for a corporate to have a meeting on Sunday. But at Mudra, it was perfectly normal. Today, Mudra’s growth is much like the story of Indian entrepreneurs. For its future, new businesses will come from Indian entrepreneurs - not MNCs - who want to become future Ambanis. But any good growth oriented vision should consider how to make this industry grow from Rs 20,000 crores to Rs 2 lakh crores. Mudra must develop the necessary skill-sets in anticipation of the client’s needs, to acquire all those skill sets which will help sell more and more chocolates, more and more airtime, more and more soaps. Only once that goes up, will advertising grow.

was largely about your ability to get along with other people.

The sense of participation and sense of ownership towards the work was so strong, that people gave it more than 100 per cent.

So the sense you get working in Mudra is something that cannot be replicated by any other agency. Today, the good thing about Mudra is that they’re one of the few organisations that is more involved in business terms with their clients and therefore they are genuinely more than just plain vanilla advertising.

Culturally, Mudra may have matured, it may have ripened, but it has not become something else. Very often when you leave an agency and you look back, you feel like such a stranger. But with Mudra, I still consider it a place that I will understand and be able to relate to.

experience at Mudra confirmed the fact that creative ideas were a team effort, with people building on an idea and taking it forward. I worked there for about 8-9 months. It’s very important early in your career to have happy memories of your chosen profession. My early days at Mudra were just that.

Prateek Srivastava, group president - South, O&M


THE MUDRA INDIA ‘A’ TEAMAn organisation is only as good as its people, more so in the communications area. Here’s Mudra India’s ‘A’ team


I had been having chats with Bobby (Pawar) for several months before I actually joined Mudra. What made me join was probably the fact that the chemistry was right with the people involved. I related with the new thinking in place. Otherwise, Mudra is a large institution and place. I looked at it and I felt that I would be happy to be a part of it. We have a job to do, there are a lot of clients, and there are a lot of brands which need attention. Each one has their own problems but we are trying to create solutions, we want to excel.

Creativity is what works in this business and we want to be known as the most creative place producing some of the best possible ideas which work for the clients and become advertising for ourselves.

My experience has always been doing work on the brands and making a difference to clients. That comes definitely as priority number one.

KB Vinod, creative head, Mudra West

I have spent seven years here for very good reasons. I wanted to do advertising. I wanted to be in Bombay, and the first opportunity that seemed substantial and interesting was at

Mudra and I was part of the Reliance Infocomm launch, the biggest brand launch in advertising history. Its been a great experience -working on the launch and now with Madhukar.

What attracted me to the prospect of joining Mudra was the challenge of heading a region. There was this very strong people side to Mudra which I haven’t seen in many agencies. Under Madhukar’s new team there’s far more aggression. Mudra was willing to look at one as a person who came with a certain body of knowledge and experience and if you could bring something to the table which looked different, they were willing to buy it.

Mudra has been a Top 5 agency for three decades. And they have big plans matched with the drive to make it happen. Throw in clients with a lot of creative potential like HBO, Wrigley’s and Philips and you have a pretty good set-up for any creative guy to work off. But all this aside, a shop is just a shop and it’s the people who make the difference. In an industry filled with strange people, I was pleasantly surprised to find Ajay Naqvi and Bobby Pawar to be good guys, fun guys. You know, the sort you don’t mind sitting and having a beer with. Moreover, I was lucky to have inherited a pretty decent crop of creatives like Raylin Valles, Neville Shah and Vandana Katoch.

Experienced enough to fend for themselves and keen to make something of the place. I hope I can live up to their expectations and make this place into a shiny, happy and cutting edge creative agency that you feel happy to get up in the morning and drag yourself to.

The thing that impresses me most about Mudra is the consistency with which it has been creating innovative and effective advertising in the recent years. Obviously this has been possible because Mudra,

unlike any other agency, creates truly integrated communication solutions for its brands. Also what is heartening to know is that it’s actual brand work that is picking up so many metals, both at home and abroad. As for Mudra south, I am looking forward to some exceptional work coming out of the Bangalore, Kochi and Chennai offices.

Ranji Cherian, president, Mudra South

Nirmal Pulickal, ECD, Mudra North and East

At Mudra North and East we are going back to the basic. Create a great place for people to think and nurture ideas and brands and consumers will be delighted. We want to be a place

known for great set of people who are passionate about what they do. You would see in the coming months that we have turned a new leaf on creative solutions. We have some great campaigns lined up on our key busineses. We have engaged with very exciting new businesses. We have a rock solid creative, account management and planning team and we are just getting warmed up :)

Ajay Naqvi, EVP and head, Mudra North and East“Mudra was the place I began my career in —

and I have been with the agency for over 15 years.

When I started, Mudra seemed like a place which was doing pretty benchmark work which was audacious, and had a “can do” and challenging spirit. It had more substance in an industry which is seen from the outside as a superficial, glamorous industry. It seemed like a place where that could be used for someone who had management proficiency and wanted to have greater satisfaction, wanted to make a difference in a variety of things.

Mudra’s culture resonates very well in terms of making people feel important, making people feel very comfortable and valued. In fact, the place where a lot of ordinary people come together and get a feeling that they can do something extra-ordinary.”

Ashish Mishra, chief strategist and head, Water

Mudra India is the genesis of the larg-er Mudra Group one sees today. What started as an in-house crea-tive team now serves as a mainline

agency for some of India’s iconic brands and leading advertisers.

The agency has gone on to build some iconic brands over the years - right from Vimal, Dhara, Rasna, Nestle Polo, Reliance Infocomm, Maxtouch, Samsung, McDon-ald’s amongst several others. Now it stands tall within the Mudra Group that celebrates 30 years this year.

Jude Fernandes, CEO, Mudra India said, “Mudra India has a unique way of thinking and that’s not going to change, because there’s a certain way we look after our cli-ents. So its a unique culture. What is going to change is the way we network within the Group and solve our client’s problems. So if there’s a digital solution that a Mudra India client needs, there’s Tribal DDB that can be approached. If there’s a rural opportunity, we will network with Mudra MAX. There-fore, today when I go into the market to talk to a potential client, I am not talking only advertising.”

The same sentiment is now being repli-cated across all of Mudra India’s offices in the north and south. Sanjay Sharma, presi-dent, Mudra North and East says, “Mudra North has become a healthy and respecta-ble agency in the last 2-3 years. We should be amongst the top three agencies in the next few years. What differentiates us from the others is that we walk the talk about ‘in-tegrated solutions’. With all of us sitting in the same office, communication has be-come seamless.”

Ranji Cherian, president, Mudra South, states examples where Mudra has gone be-yond the brief. “If you look at TTK Prestige

or United Spirits or Peter England, they define Mudra as being very entrepreneuri-al. We know how to sit together with the client to understand challenges, do things for clients which go beyond advertising in terms of understanding insights and un-locking the market opportunities. So Mudra has gone beyond pure communica-tion.”

The emphasis on account planning has increased as well, says Aditya Kanthy, who heads planning for Mudra West. “In a

strange way, Bobby’s coming to the agency has also helped ensure that planning is taken more seriously because you cannot separate strategy. Therefore it has meant that our investments in planning have gone up dramatically,” he says.

Arijit Ray who heads Mudra West agrees and adds that Mudra is one place that “re-ally inspires you to like yourself”. “There is certainly some internal drive in the system. It’s a system which is very high on account-ability, collective spirit and integration. I think that drives people.”

KB Vinod, who joined last year from Leo Burnett to head creative for Mudra West is

Mudra India’s not just strong in planning and creative, but now also has the support of the Group’s various units, says Jude Fernandes, CEO

“Mudra India has a certain unique culture which won’t change. What will change is the way it interacts with the rest of Mudra Group”

part of the fresh new creative leadership for the agency. Vinod is currently not worried about industry perception of the agency. “We want to excel. Creativity is what works in this business and we want to be known to be the most creative place producing some of the best possible ideas which work for the clients that will eventually become ad-vertising for ourselves. So after that hap-pens, industry perceptions will take care of themselves.”

Agrees Joono Simon, creative head for Mudra South, for whom Bobby’s joining the agency was a huge motivator besides being given the space for creative freedom. “As a creative person, especially when you have reached a certain stage, you need that larger space to really perform and do things which you think are right, which are for-ward-looking and game changing. Mudra has that sense of nurturing this spirit.”

The launch of Water was an important development in helping brands go up the value chain through brand consultancy and design solutions. Ashish Mishra, who heads this unit started his career in Mudra and has been here ever since. He was instrumental in launching the strategic planning function at the agency as well.

Another addition has been Maatra, which specialises in ‘localisation’ and pre-media services. During the relaunch of Union Bank of India, for example, Maatra helped change the look of 3,000 branches in 72 hours.

“Right from the beginning, Mudra has been doing pretty benchmark work which is very audacious, which has that “can do” spirit, very Indian, not snobbish. A lot of this value seemed very appealing, being bril-liant without being all about projecting it or showing off,” Mishra says.

Primarily, the responsibility of a large flagship operation attracted me. The mandate given to me by Jude and Madhukar was to take the agency to the next orbit in terms of revenue, profile and skills. There is some internal drive in the system. We’re high on accountability. I think that drives people. There’s a high degree of collective spirit and integration which comes down from the top.

Arijit Ray, president, Mudra West

Aditya Kanthy, VP - planning, Mudra West

Vipul Thakkar, ECD, Mudra South



VIMAL 'OnlyVimal' was the first of many memorable campaigns from Mudra

CYCLE AGARBATTI Almost divine, the campaign got Mudra its first Cannes Lion

PETER ENGLAND Mudra positioned it as 'The Honest Shirt' BIG BAZAARThe biggest retail brand

UNION BANK OF INDIA Corporate rebranding

RIM 'Kar lo duniya mutthi mein' went on to change the face of telecom in India

THE ECONOMIC TIMESThe power of ideas

POLO Fun with pun: Campaign of the year

SIGNATURE Indian Derby

JOCKEY Uninhibited, carefree, cheeky

DHARA 'Dhara dhara, shudh dhara'

MCDONALD'SThe India foray

LIC Zindagi ke sath bhi, zindagi ke baad bhi SAMSUNG PLANO LONELY PLANET India is only the second nation globally to see the mag's launch

BINNIES

LAVASAFuturistic township, future-ready positioning

RASNAThe iconic 'I LoveYou Rasna' campaign

THE BEST OF MUDRA INDIA



ADASIA 2011 BRANDING

AIR INDIA EXPRESS BRANDING

MCDOWELLS NO.1PLATINUM

BIG BAZAARMaha Bachat

L&T MUTUAL FUNDS Strong Foundations

THE ECONOMIC TIMES POWER OF IDEASTERI Light a billion lives

RELIANCE METRO BRANDING MCDOWELLS NO. 1 Deccan Chargers

OLIVE PAD




THE ECONOMIC TIMES Breakfast with the FM

JOCKEY Just Jockeying

PHILIPS MRI SCAN

THE WEEK Courage to go beyond

VIMAL PAN MASALA Saffron Rain

JOS ALUKKAS

FEMINA For all the woman you are

BANK OF BARODA Stick Man LAVASA Future Cities

ELECTROLUX Thinking of you

HBO Excuse Box PETER ENGLAND Beginning of good things


PHILIPS Energy efficient lighting



DDB MUDRAThe very best of Mudra meets the best of DDB to create magic

Rajiv Sabnis,president, DDB IndiaCulturally, we do well because its a meeting of minds and not a personality

driven organisation. There is so much action happening all around the Group. You can feel the energy and positive vibes of the group.

Rajeev Raja,national creative director, DDB MudraThe vision of Madhukar and the Board is already bearing fruit. The

creative leadership is firmly in place, and our young creative teams are very special to us. We nurture them, provide them a happy, fun environment to kindle their creativity and at the same time clearly communicate our very high expectations of them.

Michael Follett,Sr. VP - planning, DDB MudraI’ve always believed in collaboration, that none of us is as smart as all of us. I think that

Mudra lives out that mantra each and every day. It starts with the way that the company is structured – it really is a team of experts, who all have something to bring to the table, but all know how to play together. But it goes further. I see that spirit of collaboration and team work within each of the Mudra agencies.

Max Hegerman,president, Tribal DDB IndiaMudra’s got a responsibility for brands and for its people, besides its

understanding of pure planning coupled with pure technology. Social media will be a big focus area for us over the next few years.

Venkat Mallik,president, RAPP IndiaWe have a significantly sharper data-led way of approaching whatever we do, both from the

point of view of insights, as well as from the point view of the results that come out of it. This genre of communication partner or marketing services partner is likely to have a great future in the next three-to-five years.

Soumitra Sen,president, DDB Health & LifestyleThe Mumbai Smiles project, which went into the Guinness Book is a fine

example of collaborative work. We’re very passionate about health and lifestyle segments that are not an easy game for mass media agencies to handle.

THE MEN IN CHARGE

Ask Sandeep Vij about collaboration and he’ll give you several examples, “Wikipedia, Linux, the idea of co-creation, Hollywood and Bolly-

wood are all built around this idea,” he says. “DDB Mudra is also built around the idea of open collaboration where we are moving from disparate agencies to a team of experts - from discipline to idea orient-ed, from consecutive production to con-current collaborative production, from separate to open,” he says.

It is to support this spirit of collabora-tion that DDB Mudra’s leadership team is reasonably fresh. There’s Rajiv Sabnis who joined from M&C Saatchi to head DDB Mudra Advertising. There’s Rajeev Raja who joined from Bates141 last year as creative head, DDB Mudra, going on to become national creative director. Michael Follett, formerly of DDB London - con-sidering the mother of all planning-led agencies - and Tribal DDB New York, crossed over into India to run DDB Mudra’s One Voice Plan-ning. Vij says, “Michael now has a dozen planners under him who are being trained to be aperture ag-nostic and true solvers of business problems.”

Sabnis adds, “How big you are globally doesn’t matter to any one unless you can prove your talent to those in the local mar-kets. So one has to grow by doing great work and through engagements with cli-ents and prospects.”

“We look for people who have an eye for detail. We look for people who respect cross systems,” Sabnis says.

Soumitra Sen who heads DDBHealth & Lifestyle is one of them. You know it when he tells you about their work on Wri-gley’s and Calcium Sandoz. “I am a strate-gy consultant to Wrigley’s and before Mumbai Smiles happened, they came to us saying that they’re excited about what we were trying to do to reach dentists. So how do we do a conference and do a world record of oral checkups? Kidstuff, Celsi-us, Tribal DDB and DDB Health & Life-

style put in a collaborative effort. We en-tered the Guinness Book of World Records.”

Which is why, you want to agree when Rajeev Raja says: “Mudra is not paying merely lip service to the term, ‘full service agency’, but putting its money where its mouth is and has set up a diverse number of units to cater to different client requirements. As a Group, today Mudra is rock solid. We now need to win many more big brands and crack many more sparkling campaigns. We need to create some history.”

Follett who heads strategic planning, agrees. “I’ve always believed in collabora-tion, that none of us is as smart as all of us. Young creatives can come to Mudra and work in extremely exciting and diverse teams. People who think they are ‘TV’ or

‘print’ specialists have to work with digital and di-rect specialists and so on. This means that they’ll get to produce inter-dis-ciplinary, exciting work; but it also means that they’ll get to learn from their new team mates. Everyone learns from each other, everyone wins.”

In fact, introduction of new joinees is something

that Venkat Mallik, head of RAPP India finds very interesting. “It is probably the only agency group which has a specific ini-tiation process like that. So that helps you get a comfort level on a base within the first two weeks. So you know what is avail-able and the people you can reach out to. That’s a fantastic way of knitting together, a very diverse company,” he said.

Max Hegerman, president, Tribal DDB – Madhukar Kamath met him via Linked-In – says, “If you look at the Mudra group, they have distinct businesses here itself which in most companies would be cut-throat competitive. Though we are a small unit of a very big enterprise, people are very much willing to help us succeed. Peo-ple are passing leads, passing information, communicating on a regular basis, it is a family...really it certainly feels like it.”

DDB Mudra is built around the idea of open collaboration, says Sandeep Vij

“Young creatives can come to Mudra and work in extremely exciting and diverse teams”

LIPTON Clearing the mind, one sip at a time PHILIPS ‘Sense and simplicity’, with a human touch

WRIGLEY‘Boom boom boomer’ changed the dynamics of confectionery advertising

VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE German curves for Indian roads

NEUTROGENA Beauty that lasts

ORBITThe secret of actress Deepika Padukone’s smile

CALCIUM SANDOZ The secret behind healthy bones

VOLKSWAGEN The auto major’s first brand campaign

HENKO A new winner against dirt and stains

THE BEST OF DDB MUDRA


28 campaign india Mudrasupplement campaign india Mudrasupplement 29

MUDRA

BANK OF BARODA

HP WRIGLEY'S ORBIT UNICEF

HONDA

KIDBION IQ

NASIVION

VOLKSWAGEN


��

Mudra Group Corporate Website

Celebrating Nature

Start Smart

Better Breathing. Better Living.

Innovation For Everyone (Website)Water & SanitationMumbai Smiles Troliant G6 Servers

Corporate Website



IDEA CELLULAR Use mobile save paper

VOLKSWAGEN VENTO Talking Newspaper VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE Curves are back H1N1FLU Stop the infection be the hero NUVARINGThe ones - a - month contraceptive

IDBI FEDERAL Spelling BEE

NEUTROGENA Deep Clean Range

VOLKSWAGEN Innovations for everyone GRAN TURISMO Game 4 U




MUDRA MAXPratap Bose joining the agency has brought in a new dynamism

Anurag Gupta,chief strategyofficer, MudraMaxCulture wise,Mudra is hugelymalleable. It’s like

a very malleable culture.We are eagerto be the number one agency.The goodthing is that, nothing is cast in stone.There is a vision that we need to takeMudra to a new level.

Sanjeev Hajela,president, Retail& Way FindingThe PrimeGroup’s retail,outdoor,consultancy, way-

finding and Prime Green sub-unitshave been growing consistently andare ready to cater to the present andfuture needs of our clients.

Aneil Deepak,SVP - strategyand planning,Mudra MaxTo create MudraMax, just peopleare not enough.

People, offices, body of work,execution - all that fit perfectly welland we already have that platform.

Sameer Mehta,VP and head,MultiplierMudra Max is theonly agency thatgives resultoriented

solutions. Multiplier gives much moreownership to the brand.As againstcompetition, we understand thatbeing a facilitator within the tradefunnel is how you truly buildownership.

Sanjay Kacker,SVP, CelsiusAt Mudra Max, wehave the uniqueadvantage ofcross-leveragingsynergies and

strengths across our groupcompanies. It’s an honor as well as achallenge to lead one of India’spremier experiential marketingcompany. I look forward to takingCelsius to the next level in the comingyears and establishing it as a namethat dominates the experientialmarketing space both nationally andinternationally.

MandeepMalhotra,president, OOH,Mudra MaxThe team atPrimesite has notlost a single

business in the last two years andhas won most pitches.The perceptionof the outside world has alsochanged and we are seen as a robustyet steady agency.

The leadership team

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that MudraMax has possibly seen the mostamount of action over the last oneyear. It started with former CEO of

O&M, Pratap Bose joining as COO ofMudra Group and CEO of Mudra Max.

This was followed by the launch of spe-cialist units – all at a time when agencieswerecuttingdownonhiring–MudraMaxadded more people, bullish on the feelingthat marketing services as a businesswould continue to grow. So units likeTerra, Celsius and Pri-mesite continued to addmore people.

“With this,you becomepartners to clients,” saysBose.

“Typically in the non-advertising business,whether it is promotionor designs, the revenueyou earn is from the im-plementation of it.Goingforward into this year,wewill have become prettybig, not to disclose numbers but yes, Maxwill probably be as big as No. 5 or No. 6agency and therefore we’ll get the best-in-class partners through acquisitions, buy-outsandstrategic forays into thebusiness-es that we are in and work with thebest-in-class in the world where we aregoing to go.Even to the point of looking atboutique grade of agencies because it justcomplements what we do. I would say thenext year those are the sort of three big-gestthingsthatshouldbeonmychecklist,”saysBose.

Aneil Deepak,seniorVP – strategy andplanning says, “There is certainly some-thing which Max is doing right becausepeople are coming back to the agency.Maybe it is the culture. Somehow, every-body has come back to work with Mudra.Ihaveseenatleast15peopleleavewho’vecome back to Mudra within a year. Overthe years, I think everone of the peoplethatIwantedtoworkwith,somehowtheyall joined Mudra.”

Mandeep Malhotra, president – OOH,Mudra Max says thatwhen Mudra Max is par-ticipating in a pitch,things change.

“The rates of competi-tion drop, shouldersshrug and a lot of agen-cies shy away. All this isprimarily due to the mo-mentum that has comeintothebusinesswiththerestructuring. There isfresh blood, energy andan optimism that is a

pleasure to watch. One is on a non-alco-holic high most of the times,”he says.

Anurag Gupta agrees,adding,“An areawhere we’re doing differently from otheragencies is the way we’re hiring people.From this year onwards we have said thatwe are not going to hire anybody fromany activation agency or competition un-less it is an optional job or a normal serv-icing job.We are looking at very,very dif-ferent profiles...psychologists and thosekinds of people. We’ve got to make theirjobs satisfactory.”

“In the non-advertisingbusiness, therevenue you earnis from theimplementation”

MAXwill probably beas bigas No.5 orNo.6 agency ina year,says Pratap Bose

TVS SCOOTY Scooty Training Institute empowered women

DIET PEPSI JohnAbraham’s youth connect was on-ground

AIRCELAircel did whatMumbai’s civicmunicipal bodycould not

WRIGLEY GuinnessWorld Record Dental Check marathon

DELHI METROWay Finding Solutions to navigate betterRELIANCE MOBILE Hrithik Roshan urged readers to call

SHELL FOUNDATION KhidkiAmma fought kitchen smoke

THE BEST OF MUDRA MAX



VIACOM 18 COLORS BIGG BOSS Sample Flat

CARTOON NETWORK Ben 10 Launch

VOLKSWAGEN Billboard mural, not clautter

REEBOK Reezig Life - size Shoe NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF BLIND May I Help You

DISNEYArt Attack

HINDUSTANTIMESTodays front page as on your billboard

THE BEST OF MUDRA MAX



IGNITE MUDRAIn an age of clutter, Ignite Mudra found the required differentiator

Vinod Modha,consortium memberThe idea about a consortium of people from different faculty and providing services to a single client, is something that is a high-point of Mudra. It is unique and has been developed and in the last 3-4 months.

Mudra has been able to retain most of its clients and that has happened only because they’ve been able to provide good service over the years. So there’s involvement with personal care.

Most of the units have been started or they have been made operational as there was a need and the need was to service client more effectively.

There have been cases where the client has parted with Mudra and subsequently they felt that the service which Mudra was providing in terms of involvement, is lacking with other agencies.

Ashok Vithlani,consortium memberMy relationship with Mudra began over 20 years ago and I’ve been involved in corporate advisory, management structuring and during the time when DDB Needham invested in the agency. Over time, this relationship has only grown stronger.

Mudra is one of the few companies that has a balanced entity to provide various comprehensive services to position your enterprise. That means going beyond giving publicity or product positioning or brand positioning. The consortium for example, helps them take a stand on long term corporate social responsibility and how they’re modelled, even if it is a small entrepreneur what steps could be taken with what objectives. It is Mudra which said, ‘we are here to work out some relationship. We will provide you the inputs required’. Which is why we decided to form a consortium, but it’s a very informal relationship.

THE MEN IN CHARGE

When one walks into Ignite Mudra’s office in Ahmedabad, one is welcomed with a wall that’s framed with an artist’s im-

pression of a familiar basket of brands. The reaction to the wall decor is a mix of surprise and awe, simply because you re-alise that advertising for household names such as Moov, Recova, Itch Guard, Krack, Dermi Cool, Livon amongst many others was born within the walls of this agency.

Once you get to know the agency bet-ter, you realise that owners of these brands have had a long, consistent rela-tionship with the agency. So despite being a non-metro, clients in Ahmedabad have a na-tionwide set-up, which is why television advertis-ing is important. From this city alone, Mudra de-livers 30 TVCs in a year and that number’s ex-pected to go higher. The relationships are firm and it’s not surprising when you see that the leadership has been con-sistent too.

Chandan Nath, who heads the agency – it was christened Ignite Mudra last year – has been in the agency for 17 years.

“Today,” says Nath, “I think Mudra and I share almost similar values of transpar-ency, honesty, integrity, having the right motives, thinking what’s right for the brand, speaking your mind without fear, being allowed to make mistakes and still be welcome to explore and take risks.”

“So the kind of clients we work with, have tremendous respect for what we bring to the table,” Nath says.

Take for example, the consortium cre-ated that entrepreneurial businesses can benefit from. “The beautiful part about the consortium is that it includes leading professionals who offer skill-sets which entrepreneurs can benefit from – say set-ting up a distribution network, to support

on copyright issues or requiring legal counsel. These are specialities that clients can opt for in case they require it. It’s a simple thought – if our skill sets are going to contribute to the growth of an entre-preneur, we’ll support it and work togeth-er towards it,” says Nath.

Ashok Vithlani who is a consortium member of Mudra says, “Entrepreneurs often think that Mudra will spin magic.The consortium helps him find counsel and advice on understanding the differ-ent aspects of his products, their destina-tion, distribution, quality control, pricing and the entire value chain.”

There’s also pride in partnering en-treprneurs in realising their ambitions. It’s something clients en-dorse and acknowledge. Avinash Bhandari, group CEO and joint MD, Elec-trotherm, manufacturer of the electric Yo Bikes says, “Mudra has not only performed their role as an agency, we also learnt a lot by their ability to go beyond the brief. They are absolutely commit-

ted to our success. That’s why, even though the product has struggled over the last two years, we’ve still continued with the relationship.”

The agency’s ability to go beyond the brief is something which testify for. S Ra-ghunandan, MD and CEO, Paras Pharma says, “Mudra has a legacy of understand-ing our brands. Given the excellent feed-back from Mudra and consistency in out-put, we’ve now come to expect more work out of Mudra over the last 18 months. What we now expect is a lot of free think-ing on our brands.”

Anand Deo, MD, Zydus Wellness agrees. “Both our brands, Nutralite and Sugar Free were led through their forma-tive years by Mudra. They’ve made Nu-tralite into a formidable competitor to Amul.”

“The kind of clients we work with have tremendous respect for what we bring to the table...”

“An entrepreneur might not have many chances, so you’ve got to make it work for him...”

LIVON Ignite Mudra brought ‘Dolls’ alive to strengthen Livon’s ‘Let Your Hair Free’ positioning

DERMI COOL Summer relief now came with a cooling effect

YO BIKES Electric biking gets a stylish touch

MOOVA campaign that paid rich tributes to every woman

NILON’SThe long, oversized finger boosted brand recallITCH GUARD This brand created a category in itself

NUTRALITE Substituting butter, one campaign at a time

THE BEST OF IGNITE MUDRA



RECOVA Soft and smooth heels

Healthier Than Butter, Khane Main Kya HaiGas Agency, Thanda Raho Thanda Socho

Anti-Ageing Cream Anyone can drink wine but not everyone can habit

Experience Vibrant Gujarat DERMICOOL NUTRALITE GUJARATTOURISM

MOOV JANANI

KRACK VINSURA

THE BEST OF IGNITE



1989-90198719861985198419831980

MILESTONES IN THE LIFE OF MUDRA

The1987CricketWorldCup,Parasac-count win Handled the Reliance Cup, whichwas the 1987 Cricket World Cup. Mudra’s rela-tionshipwithParasPharmaceuticalsbeganthisyear, going on to build brands like Moov, Itch-guard, Dermicool, LivonandRecova.

Nationwide growth, collaboration withDDB Needham WorldwideMudra spread its wings – Delhi, Bangalore,ChennaiandHyderabadoperationscommence.In 1990, Nestle walked in as the first MNC client.In 1990, Mudra signed a collaboration agree-mentwith DDBNeedham Worldwide

25th March - A G Krishnamurthyfounded Mudra Mudra Ahmedabad wasborn with 15 employees, 500 sq.ft space, Rs40,000 and Vimal as its first client. 25th Marchis still celebrated across all Mudra offices asMudra Day.

1980

Launch of Rasna (‘I love you Rasna’ cam-paign) Rasna launched a soft drink concentratewith a range of nine flavours on a platform that of-

fered both tasteand economy. In1986, Rasna be-came India’s larg-est selling softdrink concentrate.The year alsomarked the begin-ning of Mudra’snational growthbeyond Ahmeda-bad.

1983

Launch of Videotec Mudra Videotec pio-neered sponsored programmes on Doordar-shan, well-known for co-producing Rajni, Buni-yaad, Ek Do Teen Char, Panchee, Udaan,Quiztime, Mr Yogi, Bodyline, Grammy’s, Oscars,Living Legends, Live Aid, Spiderman, Miss Uni-verse. Also produced India’s first tele-film,Janam, followed by Jeevan Sandhya,Swayam.

1984

Mudra launchesGodrej PowderHair Dye GodrejPowder Hair Dye waslaunched as a safeand natural dye. In2008, it was re-launched as a haircolourant and calledGodrej Expert

Powder Hair Dye. Mudra also handles othersbrands in the Godrej portfolio such as GodrejNo.1 soaps and Godrej Ezee. In a span of just 10years, Godrej No.1 has become the 3rd largest inthesoapcategory..

1985

Reliance KhazanaReliance Khazana, was the first ever brandedpublic issue, which signaled the branding ofpubic issues.

1986

1987

1989

-90

Launch of Vimal (‘Only Vimal’) This is thebrand that launched Mudra in its tryst with destiny.What began with sarees, moved towards suitings,shirtings and dress materials. The advertising usedIndia’s best known photographers and models andpioneered double spread colour ads. Cricketerssuch as Ravi Shastri, Allan Border and Vi Richardsendorsed the brands, leadingtothe genesis of crick-eters endorsing brands.

1980

200219971996199519921991

Birth of Mudra Institute of Communica-tions,AhmedabadMICA isthefirst residentialacademic institutionin the Asia-Pacific region, dedicated to meet theneeds of the Integrated Marketing Communica-tions industry. Since its inception, MICA hasproduced nearly 1000 professionals in the fieldof advertising, communications & marketingand is the country’s best communicationsschool.

McDonald’s enters the Indian market (McDon-ald’smeinhaikuchbaat)From being perceived as a westernized place for the richtonowbeingknownasafamilyrestaurantthatmakesyousmile, McDonald’s has taken a big leap in the consumer’smind. This change of perception was made possiblethrough a carefully executed communication plan thatalso complemented the strategic changes in pricing andmenu; leadingtoanalmostperfectexampleofasuccess-fullyexecutedcampaign.

Positioning of Peter England as ‘The HonestShirt’, LIC’s timeless baseline is bornThe ‘honest shirt’ campaign helped Madura Garmentsattainsalesof2millionshirtsintheyear1998.Itachievedthat figure within just 4 years and is the first brand in themid-segment category to cross Rs.100 crores in India.Further, the baseline for LIC, ‘Zindagi ke saath bhi,zindagi ke baad bhi’ was coined this year, somethingwhich continuestobe usedtill today.

Launch of Reliance In-focomm (Reliance In-dia-Mobile -Kar loduni-ya muthi mein)“Make a phone call cheaperthan a postcard and you willusher in a revolutionary trans-formation in the lives of mil-lions of Indians.” - DhirubhaiAmbani

Nestle Polo launched, relationship with Sam-sung and DaburbeginsThe‘MintwiththeHole’campaignwasrecognisedas ‘TheBrand Launch of the Year’. This campaign was highlyawarded across ad forums and categories like film, pressand outdoor. It won the ‘Campaign of the Year’ award andwas instrumental in Mudra winning the A&M ‘Agency ofthe Year’ award. Mudra’s relationship with Samsung alsobegins this year, as does that of Dabur. In July, Mudra’slaunches campaign for Maxtouch (The World in YourPocket), whichexists asVodafonetoday.

1991

1995

1996

1997

2002

LaunchofDharaSunflowerOil (DharaDharaShudh Dhara and ‘My Daddy Strongest’)Dhara Sunflower oil was launched under the umbrellabrand Dhara in 1992. Positioned on the platform of ab-solute purity, the campaigns remain one of the mostloved in the history of Indian advertising.

1992

200820072003

AGK retires from the post of chairman and managing di-rector of Mudra and Madhukar Kamath comes on boardWhen Madhukar Kamath returned to take charge at Mudra after fouryears, there was a whiff of change in the air. Kamath, the new manag-ing director and CEO, took over from founder A G Krishnamurthy (AGK)who had just retired. His first day of rejoining Mudra was AGK’s last. “Ihad a half-hour conversation with AGK and he simply told me, ‘Youknow Mudra, you’ve worked here. All thebest’,” recalls Kamath.

Madhukar Kamath elected as AAAIPresident, going on to become ASCIchairman in 2008; Bobby Pawar comes onboardMadhukarKamathsucceededSrinivasanKSwamy, CEO, RKSwamyBBDO, as thePresidentof theAdvertisingAgenciesAssociation of India (AAAI)and in2008,heassumedchairmanshipofASCI. Further, BobbyPawar(pictured, right)comes aboardfromtheUS, as nationalcreative

director.

Launch of BIG TV (Ho toh BIG ho), PratapBose comes on-boardReliance ADAG made a big splash with the launch of itsDTH offering - BIG TV. The creative concept is based on‘Life isn’t for livingsmall’. Within50daysof itscampaignlaunch, BIGTV received an unprecedented 500,000 in-stallation requests. This is the fastest half million in thehistoryof theDTH industryglobally.

The same year, Mudra was instrumental in the re-branding of the Union Bank of India (‘Your dreams arenot yours alone’). This involved fundamental changessuchasthelogo,aswell thestructureandprocessesofthe organization. Mudra re-branded Union Bank of Indiaby It was positioning it as a partner in fulfilling their con-sumer’s dreams.

2008 was also in important year in at-tracting senior talent in the form ofPratap Bose (pictured, right), the formerCEO of O&M India who joined theMudra Group as its chief operat-ing officer (COO). He alsoserves on the Group’s exec-utiveboard.

TheyearalsosawMudraputupanimpressiveshowat Cannesand Goafest.

Launch of Ignite Mudra, Volkswagen’sbrand campaignMudra Group launched a specialist agency inAhmedabad called Ignite Mudra, to cater to thebrand building needs of entrepreneurs nationallyand internationally. The same year, DDB Mudraalso unveiled Volkswagen’s first brand campaign.To kick-off VW’s brand campaign, DDB Mudra cre-ated a never done before print roadblock. On No-vember 11th, 2009, 68.6 lakh readers* were intro-duced to Volkswagen. The Times of India, India’slargest selling English news daily, was blocked na-tionally by a single advertiser – Volkswagen.Across 16 editions of the paper, ranging from 16 to32 pages, over nine pages of each edition wasdedicated toVolkswagen.

Mudra House: MudraHouse,an8-storeybuildingishometoover450 Mudraites in Mumbai, an exciting work-placebustling with warmth, creative energy and innovativeideas.Thoughamodernsophisticatedbuilding,thetraditional ‘warli’art infusesthespiritofcommunitythrough-out the building. The building also includesTT and Pool tables on alternate floors, a fullyfunctional gymnasium, a library andacafeteria. Inadditiontothis,MudraHouse has been awarded the Goldcertificate by LEED, an initiativeconceptualized and promoted byUnited States Green Building Council that provides a suite ofstandardsforenvironmentallysustainableconstruction.

Mudra Re-branding: In keeping with the spirit of inventiveness, Mudra Group’s corporatebrand saw the historical symbol of Mudra, ‘the hands’, freed from the rigidroundel. Replacing the solid red circle is the fresh graphic device ofthe ‘brush stroke’. Denoting experimentation, energy anddynamism, the brush stroke signifies the commonest humanbehaviorwhentryingsomethingnew-be itacrayon,apenor the artists’ brush. The brush stroke is also an integralpart of the branding of the 4 agency networks. Eachagency is now qualified by a unique symbol- the quote mark, a symbol of conversation forMudra India; the degree symbol denoting influence for DDB Mudra; the forward mark symbolizingmaximal impact for MudraMax; andthe ‘on’buttonsymbolizing aspark of ideas for IgniteMudra.

2003

2007

2008

2009

2010

2004 2009 2010

Mudra wins Big Bazaar (Is se sasta aur accha kahin nahin!)Mudra won the account for FutureGroup’s hypermarket chain – Big Bazaar.Thebiggestretailbrandof India isalsothefastest growing retailer of the world. BigBazaar, a brand that celebrates Indian-ness in its own unique way, has revolu-tionized the way Indian consumers shopfor daily needs. Over five years we havepartnered in the brand’s growth from 7stores through to 150, and grown thebusiness four times from Rs. 1200 croresto Rs 4800 crores. During this journey,Mudra created successful propertiessuch as the ‘Great Indian Shopping Festi-val’ – which generated business worth $130 million and attracted over 20 millionwalk-ins.

2004


42 campaign india Mudra supplement

MICA: GOING BEYOND BUSINESSMudra’s commitment to the communications arena is best proven by their investment in MICA

“It is so difficult to get good people into advertising.”

Over two decades ago, someone decided to do something about it. AG Krishnamurthy (AGK) chief of Mudra, had the idea of MICA and began the process of creating an institution that would train people specifically for the communications industry.

I recall industry leaders apart from AGK who brought their experience to bear on how MICA

should be set up, how it should be run and what it should teach. I especially remember Bobby Sista, Mani Iyer, Gerson daCunha. And they brought in young professionals like me, who had a business management background, and a love for advertising to help design the curriculum.

The term ‘baby steps’ was not a cliche in those days; it was a reality, because MICA was an idea without a campus! What we began with were short term courses, taught - as I recall - in a set of Mudra flats near Ellis Bridge. There were enough of us who were happy to teach at these mini-programmes. And a few intrepid (if uncertain) souls who were keen to embark on an adventure called advertising. Informal relations between the faculty and the students were also easy to establish, given that the

classes were held in the living rooms seated on sofas and the odd chair! There was little infrastructure, but abundant passion.

Meanwhile, we continued work on fleshing out the curriculum for the full two-year post graduate programme. We sought to bring in practical elements to give the students knowledge about how and what to do, along with a conceptual understanding of advertising to know why they were doing it.

MICA has come a long way since those days. I see the distance travelled every time I go to the MICA campus as visiting faculty. I see it in the new dorm buildings, the new seminar rooms, the new ‘open air cafe’. And I am proud that I have been part of this journey of success and growth.

But in its very success lie dangers. Of hubris on the part of MICA. And the danger of its reputation attracting complacent ‘job-passport’ seekers as students.

The true legacy of MICA will be proven if it attracts not just a new generation of students, but a new breed of adventurers.

And I will be happy to contribute to a new curriculum for this new breed. Again.

1991 MICA was founded

1991-93 Short term courses in media planning & market research launched

1994 Flagship 2 year post graduate program in communications management started

2007 MICORE – the centre for excellence in research founded

The lowdown

Industry exposure and placement support

The MICA campus: state-of-the-art, where students are exposed to industry best practices and fundamentals with world-class faculty in attendance

Anand Halve, co-founder, Chlorophyll

MICA through the rear view mirror

The logos on the extreme right column tell a story all of their own: the respect and reputation gained by

Mudra Institute of Communica-tions, Ahmedabad (MICA).

MICA was started in 1991, as an autonomous non-profit man-agement education institution. In a statement of the vision be-hind MICA, it was the first resi-dential academic institution in the country and perhaps in the Asia-Pacific region wholly dedi-cated to meeting the needs of the integrated marketing communi-cations industry. MICA was de-signed to complement the role

that management education plays in modernizing and profes-sionalizing communications-driven businesses.

Today, there are nearly 1,000 succesful MICA alumni em-ployed in the industry, in market-ing, advertising, media and

media research functions in the leading companies of the country.

In 2007, the Mudra Institute of Communication Research (MI-CORE) was established, focus-ing on fundamental research in the communications area, so as

to reinforce MICA as a centre for excellence. Courses at MICA are approved by the All India Council for Technical Educa-tion, another testament to the robustness of the curricula.

MICA has benefited from the active involvement of such lumi-naries as S R Mani Aiyer, Nirmal Goswami, Atul Tandon, Anant Bobilli and N Vittal.

The governing council includes Madhukar Kamath, Gerson Da Cunha, Pradip Khandwalla, San-tosh Desai and Hema Vishwana-than, amongst others.

Prof. Ashok Ranchhod is cur-rently the director, MICA.

A V Lakshminarayanan Aanchal Sethi Aarti Sharma Aarti Harilal Nagdev Aashish Chandrakant Kadam Abdul Kadir Batliwala Abhay Avinash

Abhishek V Abhishek Vijay Kadam Aditi Kaur Sethi Aditya Jaiswal Aditya Chandrakant Kale Aditya R Kanthy Ajay Dutta Ajay Kapparath Ajay Kumar Ajay

Rao Ajay Sapra Ajay Sundaram Ajay Kumar Gupta Ajay Vinayak Bhatkar Ajayan R Ajaykumar JayantilaL Parmar Ajinkya Mukund Pawar

Ajit Menon Ajit Nanda Ajit Kumar Sahoo Ajit Sakharam Satam Ajmal Giyasoddin Mohammad Ajoy Roy Chowdhury Akash Anandh Akashneel Dasgupta Akhil Sood Akhil Vijay Ranade Akhilesh Verma Akhilesh Dwarkadas Bagri Akrita

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Mudra Group-30 Years & Growing

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