Specialist consulting firm, Domor launched by Nitin Jain, Rema Harish

Media veterans, Nitin Jain and Rema Harish have jointly set up a strategy and ideation consulting firm, Domor Communication Consulting. Domor will be an objective consultant in this space, with no alignment to any advertiser, agency or media owner.

The aim of launching this venture was to help advertisers and allied businesses improve marketing effectiveness. The new firm has been established in strategic partnership with international domain leader, R3.

Domor Communication Consulting combines Jain's 22-year track record in advertising (JWT), media (MindShare), ambush marketing (Cola wars) and TV advertising sales (Viacom) with Harish's 20 years' experience, across India and South East Asia, at the forefront of strategic planning, research and consumer insights at JWT and GroupM.

Jain, director, Domor Communication Consulting shares with afaqs!. "We planned to name the company 'Catalyst' initially, but as the name was already registered, they played around with other words to finally come up with 'Domor', which stems from the thought that while there are plans and strategies, clients and agencies need to 'do more'."

Providing a background for launching such a venture, he says that over the past few years, the separation of the creative and media functions has caused a substantial erosion of the synergistic approach between the marketer and his brand communications agencies. This has led to less effective brand building. The problem is now exacerbated by the multiplicity of agencies offering overlapping services. Each agency offers strategic advice, but not all of it connects back to the core brand values, he thinks.

"The marketer is increasingly not getting enough advice on 'what to do' and 'what not to do'. The focus instead is on 'how best to do something'. Marketers are resorting to external audits hoping to fix the problem, especially in the media space. The audit ends up being a mere postmortem of what can be measured, rather than being a constructive, diagnostic critique. The auditor is rarely around to either identify the problem or to provide solutions," he says.

For its purpose, Domor Communication Consulting brings together a synergistic, analytical and lateral approach to problem solving, by converging and supplementing the agency relationships. The firm's gamut of services to the marketers includes process audits and advisory to identify areas for improving effectiveness; pitch consulting to identify and select the right agency; media strategy advisory to shift the focus from channel choice to true investment and platform decisions; ideating to build brand property; resting on core brand values and valuation; and measurement of tentpole media properties.

Domor will also engage with media agencies in the areas of pitch management and advisory and incubation of new initiatives, in addition to offering strategic planning support. The firm will also consult with media owners in the areas of sales strategy, ideation and creation of media properties and capability building. The consultancy will work on a flexible engagement model, with remuneration de-linked from advertiser spends.

Domor is currently engaged with Ferrero India and ZenithOptimedia.

Sharing how the association between him and Harish came about, Jain reveals, smiling, "Rema and I didn't get along very well when we worked together. But others and we too, realized that we had complementary skills and that's how we got together for this venture." The duo planned the launch for about a month and registered the company in mid-September

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"We didn't want to launch a media planning and buying agency. We wanted to do something unique in nature and working out our main focus took some time," he says.

For now, the firm will operate from Delhi, but has plans to start an office in Mumbai as well. It currently works with a team of three people, including Jain and Harish.