Eventus grabs news business worth Rs 30 crore

Eventus Management, the integrated marketing communication outfit floated by Fountainhead Communications, has chalked out an ambitious growth plan for the next one year. The agency has been on an account-winning spree in the last two months, which will hopefully add another Rs 30 crore to its billings in the next one year, to the current Rs 6 crore. "We refuse to be tagged as an `event' or a `direct marketing' company. We are a brand building company that looks at a host of below-the-line (BTL) solutions for its clients. By 2004 we will be the biggest in our field," claims Kaushik Mukherji, general manager, Eventus.

Mukherji is clear about the road ahead. "We are the only company that has an account planning team as well as creative people to come up with unique solutions for clients," he says. That is perhaps one reason why the agency has some of the biggest brands on board. In the last two months, it has bagged Empee Distilleries (the flagship company of the Rs 600-crore Empee group), TVS Motors, Zuari Furniture, Johnson & Johnson, Tata Indicom, De Beers (the Asmi brand), Standard Chartered, Ramco Systems, Coca-Cola and Colgate.

"All these have come to us because of the unique brand solutions we have been able to suggest. Unfortunately, in this country, most companies view BTL as an ‘additional cost' and often splurge mindlessly on television commercials. More often than not, mass, above-the-line campaigns sink without a trace. In the West, most organisations devote nearly 80 per cent spends to BTL activities and only 20 per cent to mass campaigns," he adds.

Currently, the agency is working on a specialised BTL activity for Empee Distilleries, which is planning to launch a new product. Eventus has put 790 field people to cover 3,000 liquor shops across Tamil Nadu. The client will have instant reports on each of the outlets as to what has been the conversion rate with consumers, how many were contacted and what was the level of interaction with customers at each shop. The company has created a website for the client, where it can access the information with a code sitting out of Mumbai.

Eventus has recently completed a successful BTL exercise for HDFC insurance billed ‘Papa Kehte Hain'. "HDFC wanted to reach its target audience immediately, as it was a late entrant in insurance. We went about the exercise in a very innovative manner, wherein we reached up-market schools across the country with a simple contest. Kids participating in the contest got prizes and in return they had to file a form giving the name of their parents and their address. This helped us draw up an instant database of many households in the SEC A segment that are likely to look at HDFC's insurance options," says Mukherji.

Similarly, it handled a successful ground event for Johnson & Johnson with ‘Bouncing Babies' last year that helped the organisation rope in a major chunk of the new and would-be mothers. J&J has again approached Eventus for a repeat performance this year. The launch of STAR-Vijay's ‘Marumagal' was also organised by Eventus, wherein the target was to connect instantly with 50,000 women. The outfit managed to reach 1.20 lakh women across the state through an innovative exercise - it went to popular temples and distributed the ‘archana' basked along with a slip asking them to tune in to the channel at the allotted hour.

Given its rapidly increasing portfolio, the company has recently gone on a recruitment spree. It has just taken on nine people and is "looking to further its strengths" in the four branches of Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, and in the close to 20 associate centres across the country. © 2003 agencyfaqs!