Percept wins Rs 10-crore new advertising business

Percept Advertising, Delhi, has won the advertising businesses for Mobilink (paging service), Dialnet (telephony) and Joie (incense sticks). All the three accounts put together would fetch the agency Rs 10 crore. While the two brands, Mobilink and Joie, is the result of a pitch, it seems, Percept picked up Dialnet on the strength of its credentials.

The Rs 2-3 crore Mobilink account, came Percept's way following a three-way pitch. The company refused to divulge the names of the other two agencies citing company policy. Prior to Percept, the Mobilink account was with Enterprise-Nexus, Delhi, for more than three years. Talking about the reason to realign the account, Freda Joseph Swaminathan, senior manager, marketing, DSS Mobile Communications, says, "We realised that Enterprise-Nexus was losing interest in the account and thus we mutually agreed to part ways."

Based on the brief - which was to suggest ways to revitalise the paging industry - the agencies were asked to make a strategy-cum-creative presentation. Navroze Dhondy, CEO, Percept, explains, "Mobilink commands a market share of almost 45 per cent in the paging market and it is the market leader. Therefore, the challenge is to keep Mobilink ahead of competition by creating some excitement in the otherwise dull (paging) market. And we have suggested the value-additions route."

"Value additions is essential to revive the paging market, which is reeling under the onslaught of cell phones," agrees Swaminathan. It is clear, for the paging industry to blossom once again, the right customer has to be identified. "Our consumers fall in the SEC B and C category. They are traders, carpenters, plumbers et al who can receive messages in a language they can understand."

Currently, messages can be received in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati and English and the company is looking to expand this language base to reach out to more people. "The advantage pager users have is that for a sum of Rs 95 (the minimum amount needed to avail of the service), they can receive unlimited emails, text and alphanumeric messages and this proposition is certainly cost effective," Swaminathan points out.

"And all this is going to be communicated to the target users effectively," assures Dhondy, "It will be done mainly through print, and the campaign will break this month." This communication will be supplemented with below-the-line activities such as road shows, events and promotions.

Joie incense sticks, a product from Gopal Magic Moments, was won following a five-agency pitch. The agencies in the running were Enterprise-Nexus, MAA Bozell, Contract, Triton and Percept. Percept won the Rs 3-5 crore account on the back of a strategy presentation. "Now the strategy for the product is not only to identify and address the challenges but to build a brand identity for Joie. Apart from this, we are working in tandem with the marketing team of Gopal Magic Moments to work out the product development and distribution for Joie," says Dhondy.

With the agarbatti market getting organised and big players stepping in, this move by Gopal Magic Moments implies the company is getting serious in its bid to leverage the market potential. "While the size of the agarbatti market is around Rs 2,000-2,500 crore, bigger players are getting serious by the day. With HLL's Glade, Reckitt & Coleman's Haze and now Godrej planning to enter the fray, competition is bound to be furious. Therefore it is important to get focused on the brand," explains M.S Chandra, national marketing manager, Gopal Magic Moments. Given that agarbatti is a mass product, the company wants to focus its communication on television. This, of course, will be supported with print and outdoor. For the records, Joie was launched in December last year and currently it is sold in eight fragrances.

Last, but not the least, the Dialnet account is worth around Rs 2 crore. This comprises the IVR (Interactive Voice Response) account as well as the corporate account, which was with Lintas earlier. "The client felt that our out-off-the-box kind of thinking was what they needed for Dialnet, the pioneers of telephony. Thus they approached us, and after we made a presentation, they decided to take us on for both corporate and IVR."

Now Percept is working on the launch of a novel product from Dialnet, which is due to hit the market on July 20, 2001. However, neither the agency nor the company was willing to talk about this ‘new' product. But agencyfaqs! has reason to believe that this new product is a messaging service which is compatible both with the telephone and cell phones. In the words of Dinesh Sibal, branch director, Percept, "It is a service that will redefine how people use the existing means of communication. The new service will make messaging more efficient and that's all I can say. The rest is to be seen and experienced on the 20th."

The all-India launch of this service will be print driven. In fact, all future communication for this will be through print and direct contact programmes.

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