Grey Delhi wins John Keells

The Delhi wing of Grey Worldwide has recently bagged the creative duties for the Sri Lanka-based John Keells Food. The win comes after a multi-agency pitch, which had five agencies fighting for the account. However, the names of the agencies were not divulged by company officials. The company did not divulge any estimate on ad spends either, stating that the brand is new.

A media pitch for the account is going on, too.

John Keells, which is one of the established brands in Sri Lanka, entered the Indian market in January 2009 and claims to have captured 12.8 per cent of the total market share.

Rupam Ganguly, vice-president and Delhi branch head, Grey Worldwide feels the category at present is quite nascent and recognises the fact that no player has done any significant piece of work. "Our task would be to build the category, as well as the product, and form an emotional bond with the consumer," he says.

Apart from food and beverages, the John Keells Group is also into transport, leisure, information technology, BPO, financial services, property development, plantations and investor services.

However, Prasad maintains that in India, the company would like to focus on the food processing business as of now, and soon bring in beverages too.

Though the processed and frozen meat category has old timers such as Venkys and other players such as Yummiez and Sumeru, it hasn't seen much of brand building. Prasad maintains that the brand would be positioned as a premium one, as compared to the other players.

As far as the media mix is concerned, he says that BTL, sampling exercises and events would be taken into account. "We will undertake research and studies to understand the eating habits here, as conditions and opportunities are quite different from that of Sri Lanka," says Prasad. The brand will get into TV and print later, once it has a grip on the market.