Bates Enterprise puts its senior management team in place

There is a buzz of anticipation in the air for the employees of Bates Enterprise. The recently formed entity, a result of the merger of Bates Asia and Enterprise Nexus, has just put its senior management in place.

Mohammed Khan, founder, Enterprise Nexus, will now be executive chairman, Bates Enterprise, while Subhash Kamath, CEO, Bates India, will be CEO, Bates Enterprise.

Charulata Ravi Kumar, executive vice-president, Bates, Kolkata and Delhi, has been made executive vice-president, Bates Enterprise and 141 Worldwide, Mumbai. Rana Barua, vice-president, Bates, Mumbai, has been designated vice-president, Bates Enterprise, Mumbai.

Alok Agarwal, who was branch director, Enterprise Nexus, Delhi, is now executive vice-president, Bates Enterprise and 141 Worldwide, Delhi.

The changes in Kolkata include Abeer Chakravarty, senior vice-president, Bates, Kolkata, being put in charge of Bates Enterprise and 141 Worldwide, Kolkata, as senior vice-president.

Amrita Chugh, vice-president, Enterprise Nexus, Bangalore, has been made vice-president, Bates Enterprise and 141 Worldwide, Bangalore.

Confirming these management changes, Subhash Kamath tells agencyfaqs!, “With such rich talent in place, we hope to offer our clientèle the best in advertising, particularly marketing services, which is what 141 Worldwide offers.”

“Even though 141 Worldwide is only two years old in India, it has become the world’s second largest marketing services company,” he claims. “By concentrating on 360-degree communication, we hope to be a true marketing partner to our clients in every sense of the word.”

In early 2005, Bates Asia had come up with a philosophy called Change Point Planning. As per this thinking, the world around us is changing at a rapid pace, be it consumers, brands or the marketplace. Change Point Planning is the strategic planning tool through which Bates Asia understands these changes and unearths the reasons for these socio-cultural trends coming into being. It then connects these findings to the client’s brands, in a sense making these brands ‘evolve with the changing times’.

For those of you who are wondering what this philosophy of Bates Asia has to do with Bates Enterprise, the answer is ‘everything’.

“Change Point Planning is going to be the philosophy at Bates Enterprise and, through it, we hope to harness the deep-rooted changes that are taking place at a very fast rate in Asia, particularly India, and use them to build brands,” asserts Kamath.

If Change Point Planning is the new thinking at Bates Enterprise, 141 Worldwide will have Behavioural Transformation as its key focus.

Kamath specifies that with the formation of Bates Enterprise, the aim will be to provide services other than pure advertising, as he believes that it is no longer sufficient to grow a brand by advertising alone. Retail, malls, creating brand building experiences in restaurants and cafes and, basically, every way of connecting with the consumer at the last point of contact is where the marketing services entity, 141 Worldwide, aims to focus.

It is also interesting to note that Kamath hopes to change the industry perception that Bates India and Enterprise Nexus have always been ‘steady’ agencies.

“Over the past, we have won quite a lot of business. We are also pitching more than we used to a couple of years ago,” he says. “One will see an even more aggressive Bates Enterprise in the future. In fact, the air here is crackling with anticipation and excitement and a new-found sense of energy, as all our employees prepare to unite and offer focused solutions to brands.”

“The best is yet to come,” he signs off.

Other administrative details such as office locations across the cities are being worked out.

For the record, the WPP Group’s stake in the new entity, Bates Enterprise, will be 87 per cent, and the remaining 13 per cent will continue to be with Enterprise Nexus shareholders.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!