Sony Entertainment Television calls for Rs 40 crore creative pitch

Sony Entertainment Television (SET) has called for a creative pitch across its bouquet of channels, which include Sony, SET Max, SET Pix and SAB TV. The agencies in the fray include JWT, McCann-Erickson, Leo Burnett and the incumbent Euro RSCG. The size of the business is estimated to be upwards of Rs 40 crore. The media duties, which are with MediaCom, are not under review.

Euro RSCG has done some prominent work for SET Max, prime among which are the ‘Deewana Bana De’ campaigns.

“Euro had been working with us on Sony and SET Max for quite a long time,” says Albert Almeida, executive vice-president and business head, SET Max. “But with the acquisition of the brand, SAB TV, last year and the launch of SET Pix in April, our bouquet has expanded. So, the natural thing for us to do was to review our creative duties.”

“We’re looking for an agency that can be a business partner to us and provide us with great ideas for our network,” Almeida continues. The aim, according to him, is to go beyond simple ad campaigns and put in that extra effort to help SET India grow as a brand, be it through new media activities or otherwise.

“Now that we have three active channels and the fourth one (SET Pix) all raring to go, we’d like to appoint an agency that is interested in building a long-term relationship with us,” Almeida adds.

SET India may continue to have a single agency on board or appoint two agencies, but a decision on that is yet to be taken.

For the record, SET India acquired SAB TV from the Adhikari brothers around May-June 2005 for Rs 57 crore, and repositioned it from a purely comedy channel to a general entertainment channel in October 2005. English movie channel SET Pix was launched in April 2006 and is positioned on the platform, ‘Great Stories for Movie Lovers’.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!