TBWA Anthem forsakes Allwyn to Capital

TBWA Anthem officially washed its hands of the Rs 7-crore Allwyn account on December 14, 2000. The account is now with Capital Advertising. The Allwyn account was the last of the Electrolux products TBWA Anthem was servicing.

To find out what precipitated this development, agencyfaqs! got in touch with Kurien Mathews, director, TBWA Anthem. "We decided to resign the entire business when a pitch was invited on Electrolux without any information to us, the incumbent agency on the brand. We came to know about the pitch on the Electrolux brand from the market. This had happened earlier too, on Kelvinator. Since it happened twice, we felt that there was a lack of transparency in our relationship. As a result, the agency decided it was better for our respective organizations to go our separate ways. TBWA Anthem resigned the account on December 14, 2000."

TBWA Anthem and Electrolux's relationship had been on the rocks for quite some time now. Last year, a major chunk of the Electrolux business was taken away from Anthem when the Electrolux refrigerators, washing machines, microwave ovens and White Westinghouse air-conditioners account moved to O&M - which already had Kelvinator. And Capital was anyway happily servicing Electrolux MaxClean washing machines.

Talking about Anthem's work on Electrolux, Mathews said, "Allwyn won the Electrolux Global Brand Award for outstanding brand performance in any market. When Allwyn was re-launched, the market share grew from 4.7 per cent to 8.2 per cent between January-June 2000."

Of course, there's been a lot of speculation regarding the rift in their relationship. "TBWA Anthem has done some good advertising for Electrolux," says an industry source. While others believe, Anthem's work "was not serving Allwyn's purpose".

Anand Bhardwaj, executive vice-president, marketing and marketing services, sang a different tune. "Handling three agencies was a bit of a problem," he said. O&M was servicing a big portion of Electrolux products, Capital had Electrolux MaxClean and TBWA Anthem had Allwyn. In a bid to realign agencies to handle communications effectively, we decided to move the Allwyn account from TBWA Anthem to Capital."

To put things in perspective, TBWA Anthem was Electrolux's first advertising agency, when the white goods major entered the Indian market five years ago. It had the Kelvinator account for two years before it had to give it up to O&M. In return, Electrolux handed over the Allwyn account to Anthem, while the MaxClean business went to Capital.

In the whole game of account volleying, Capital is all smiles. The proposition of the Allwyn account remains the same - durability. No doubt, the creatives will change. The brand will be promoted primarily through television advertising. The promotional activities will be supplemented with below-the-line activities such as hoardings and road shows. The new ad campaign is slated to break sometime in March.

© 2001 agencyfaqs!