Airline major, Indian, ropes in four agencies

The much awaited verdict is out. Indian, earlier known as Indian Airlines, has finally zeroed in on four agencies to handle its creative duties. The agencies are Everest Brand Solutions, Rediffusion DY&R, RK Swamy/BBDO and Interpublicity. Indian is known to work with four agencies at a time, so the development was not entirely unexpected.

The size of the business is more than Rs 20 crore. Indian will not hire a separate media AOR because, as always, the media departments of its ad agencies will do the job.

The incumbent agencies were RK Swamy/BBDO, Adfactors Advertising, Bates Enterprise and Mode Advertising. These four, too, pitched for the business, but only RK Swamy/BBDO managed to retain it. Indian called for a pitch because the two-year contract with these agencies had expired.

agencyfaqs! had earlier carried reports on the pitch process. It had reported that Indian was looking out for agencies that have national operations with offices in Mumbai and New Delhi, and with the appropriate creative and media functions to handle campaigns for both India and abroad. Further, the agencies should have had annual billings in excess of Rs 30 crore for the last three years, and it should have worked for more than five years for a client in the aviation or service industry.

For the record, RK Swamy/BBDO played a key role in the rebranding of ‘Indian Airlines’ as ‘Indian’, including drafting the strategy and designing its logo.

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