Debashis Bose quits Hakuhodo Percept, forms JV

Bose has been with Hakuhodo Percept for seven years, and has now formed a joint venture with the Arms Group

Debashis Bose, CEO, Hakuhodo Percept, has moved on. He has partnered with Sangeeta Sen, former vice-president, creative, Hakuhodo Percept, and Reet Singh Ahluwalia, chairman, Arms Group, to set up a 50:50 joint venture called Arms Crestra. Ahluwalia holds a 50 per cent share in the venture, and the remaining 50 per cent is shared equally by Bose and Sen.

Arms Crestra, a full-service agency, will offer above-the-line activities as well as below-the-line and media services. The functioning of both the agencies under the Arms Group – Arms Communications and now Arms Crestra – will be independent of each other.

Debashis Bose

Bose, who takes over as MD and CEO of Arms Crestra, says, “Our core competence is strategy and creative and even our name reflects this focus; ‘Crestra’ is a synthesis of CREative and STRAtegy. Our differential is media-neutral creative concepts that are expressed across a 360 degree bandwidth of consumer touch points, executed jointly with our integrated marketing communications partners.”

Bose has been in the advertising and marketing business for more than 25 years. He has been in various marketing roles at Asian Paints, Modi Olivetti and ‘India Today’. He began his career in advertising at FCB-Ulka as strategic planner. He has held senior positions at Everest and Interact Vision, following which he moved to Hakuhodo Percept. Bose was with Hakuhodo Percept for seven years – he joined the agency in March 2000 as COO and built the agency from scratch. He was elevated to CEO in 2002.

Sangeeta Sen

Bose’s partner at Hakuhodo Percept, Sen, is executive director and chief creative officer at the new destination. Sen has more than 16 years of experience as a creative person in advertising. Bose and Sen, together, have worked on television and print campaigns for businesses such as Maruti, Sony, Panasonic, Suzuki’s two-wheelers and Sharp. Sen and Bose’s association goes back to when they first met in Interact Vision; they have been together as a team since then.

Ahluwalia says, “We see great synergies in this partnership and expect Arms Crestra to play a significant role in the group’s growth trajectory. Arms Communications will continue as an independent agency with its own operating philosophy and portfolio of strong Indian clients.”

“For most of the large advertising networks today, relationship management weighs more than the actual value addition required to be made to the brand. The time is up and clients will soon require agencies to bear responsibility as brand custodians,” reveals Bose.

Arms Crestra has put in place a suite of planning tools to take a brand from its birth to the shelf and beyond it, by making every effort to get it off the client’s shelf. It has designed ‘Imageneering’, a branding process that involves studying the market scenario for a particular product, its competitive scenario, taking a look at consumer needs and behaviour, putting in place a brand proposition, and then developing the creative. Following this, the creative concept is leveraged and executed across touch points through above-the-line and below-the-line activities and other integrated marketing communications.

Arms Crestra already has a portfolio of clients such as Uppal’s Housing, Minda, Blackberry, Switch Masters and Uppal Vornado – the campaigns are readying for release in the next two months. The agency is eyeing a closing billing of approximately Rs 20 crore for the year ending March 2008.

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