Madison Media is AOR for ABN AMRO Bank

Madison Media's Delhi office has bagged the media planning and buying account of ABN AMRO Bank. Vasant Kumar, head, marketing services, ABN AMRO Bank, confirmed the move. The account is estimated at Rs 15 crore and this is the first time that ABN AMRO has actually split the creative and the media duties between two agencies. For the record, the creative part of the business is handled by Contract Advertising, Delhi, which was also the AOR till the latest move.

Kumar told agencyfaqs! there were three agencies in the fray for the business - including Madison Media, Maximize India and Carat. The pitch happened in June and the three agencies were given a clear and elaborate brief on the bank's corporate profile and its the retail banking products and were asked to draw up a case study with suggestions on innovative use of media. "The pitch involved a single round and we looked at the agency's credentials, performance in the past, quality of the team, their approach towards planning, and zeroed in on Madison Media after a process of evaluation based on these parameters. What clinched the deal, perhaps, was their innovative approach towards the use of media," sums up Kumar.

Kumar has reason to be impressed with the track record of Rs 450-crore Madison Media. The agency won a Gold for Maruti Versa (in the Best Media Innovation - TV category) at the EMVIES held earlier this year. It also boasts of an immaculate client list with names like Coke, Godrej, P&G, Kinetic, Domino's, Maruti and Perfetti (with the last three being handled out of its Delhi office) donning its roster. ABN AMRO would, however, be the first big financial account on Madison Media's client list.

The agency, on its turn, hopes to do some ‘great, innovative' work for its new client, which is getting ready to hit the market with a big splash. Kumar says till recently the bank was not very high profile in the mass media. "But with our decision to become more aggressive in the use of media we realised we needed to go in for a specialised media outfit." To begin with, ABN AMRO Bank plans to focus on its recently introduced credit card brand Freedom. "All the advertising you will see over the next three-four months with revolve around our credit card brand. The other retail and commercial banking products and our corporate branding initiatives would be unveiled over the next 12 months or so," he says.

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