Publicis Ambience bags K7 Computing

Publicis Ambience Chennai has bagged the creative duties of K7 Computing. The agency will be responsible for talking about the anti-virus product that is offered by the company, which has set aside Rs 8 crore for its marketing objectives.

Talking to afaqs!, John Devasahayam, executive director, K7 Computing reveals that with personal computer (PC) penetration being about 1.2 million in India, it is seriously looking at targeting the end consumer and the SOHO (small office, home office) segment for the anti-virus product.

There was no pitch process before the appointment. Kaustav Das, executive vice-president, Publicis Ambience South, has known Devasahayam since his days at TBWA, and kept in touch with him all along. This played a role in the selection of the agency.

Das says, "The conversation right now is all about virus. This is fertile territory for us to practice our philosophy of Changing Conversations. We are looking forward to build the K7 brand in India just when the category is all set to explode."

Earlier, the account has been handled by Stark Communications for a year, which has taken care of channel communication as the company was simply looking at talking about its presence in India at that time.

However, with its focus on the end-consumer now, K7 Computing felt it was time to get an agency along.

The anti-virus market has one dominant player – Norton. The advertising by the brand is usually targeted at corporates and so channel communication is taken up largely by the brand.

K7 Computing, an Indian technology company, partnered with Sourcenext, a Japanese software publishing company and was able to garner a large visibility in Japan in the home PC segment, with a subscription base of 8 million users.