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Leo Burnett bags Glycodin account
The account, pegged at Rs 6 crore, moves from O&M
Pharmaceutical company Alembic India has awarded the creative duties of its cough syrup Glycodin to Leo Burnett. The size of the business, according to company executives, is in the vicinity of Rs 6 crore. The media business continues to be with MindShare.
Glycodin, before it changed its agency, was under O&M’s care. The account, however, was not won in an agency pitch. Alembic executives decided to align Glycodin with Leo Burnett, purely from the point of view of operational efficiency.
Explaining the matter, Geogi Zachariah, business head, Alembic OTC division, says, “We are a young division with two brands – Zero, a zero-calorie sweetener, and Glycodin. Now, since Zero is with Leo Burnett, we decided to move the Glycodin business to Burnett as well for the sake of better internal coordination and operational efficiency. But I must say that O&M had done a very good job on Glycodin.”
Coordination being one reason, the other was Leo Burnett's impressive launch of Zero. “Leo Burnett successfully launched Zero and today, the brand is doing well in the market,” says Zachariah. To that adds, Arvind Sharma, CEO & chairman, Leo Burnett, “Our work on Zero was incredibly good and that, to my mind, got us the Glycodin business.”
Zachariah also mentioned that since the company had a yearly working agreement with O&M, it was time to review the business in any case.
Elaborating on the communication task at hand, Zachariah says, “As far as brand saliency is concerned, Glycodin is very well established. Just to substantiate my point, the sales of Glycodin went up by 10-11 per cent last fiscal when the category growth declined. So the task for Leo Burnett is to make the brand more relevant to the consumers.”
Now how does Leo Burnett plan to make the brand more relevant? For one, Burnett’s Sharma mentions, that since most advertising in this category shows people coughing, the brand suffers from lack of adequate attention. So, this is one mistake that the agency is not going to make.
Another point, adds Zachariah, that the agency would have to keep in mind is the baseline of the Glycodin brand – 'Khansi Ki Chutti' – created by O&M. “The slug would remain the same but the communication would have to aggressively promote the thought,” he explains. © 2005 agencyfaqs!