IL&FS Investsmart appoints DDB Mudra as ad partner

IL&FS Investsmart Ltd (IIL), a part of the IL&FS Group and one of India’s leading financial services organisations which provides customised financial management solutions, has appointed DDB Mudra as its advertising agency. With this win, the agency not only becomes the brand’s creative custodian, but also the manager of its media duties.

IIL has planned an ad spend of Rs 15-20 crore for the fiscal. In 2003, The Cell, the erstwhile in-house creative department of CNBC, which hived off its operations into a separate unit in the same year, won the duties for the brand and was supposed to chiefly look at multiple below-the-line activities for it. At that time, IIL was the first account outside Network18 (then CNBC) for The Cell.

Janardhan reveals that work on a few IIL products, such as online trading and its related offerings and NRI products, has begun already.

DDB Mudra won the business after a multi-agency pitch, which initially involved six or seven agencies. The first round was to establish credentials, and agencies such as Ambience Publicis, Rediffusion DY&R, Leo Burnett and Lowe took part. The final competition was between Rediffusion DY&R and DDB Mudra.

Janardhan says, “In the past couple of years, the action in the broking industry has increased manifold. We are looking to create strong brand differentiation for IL&FS Investsmart in a category that is seemingly getting commoditised.”

IL&FS Investsmart was set up by IL&FS in 1997. It offers investment management and advisory services, equity and debt broking, and commodity broking, among other financial services.