Dentsu Marcom opens its first office in Delhi

Having set up its first advertising agency - Dentsu Communications - in the country, Dentsu Inc Japan is starting its second full service agency in the capital - Dentsu Marcom. The shareholding arrangement in Dentsu Marcom is just like that of Dentsu Communications. Dentsu Inc Japan holds 74 per cent equity in the joint venture, while the remaining 26 per cent is with Mogae Consultants Private Ltd, the company owned by Sandeep Goyal and his wife Tanya Goyal.

Honda Motor is Dentsu Marcom's anchor account. The agency has been given the creative as well as the media duties of Honda cars (Honda Siel) and two-wheelers (Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India). The cars business, which was with Dhar & Hoon till recently, includes Honda City, Honda Accord and Honda CR-V, and the two-wheeler business, which Triton Communications had to part with, includes Honda Activa, Dio and Eterno. The total Honda business is in the region of Rs 15-20 crore.

Honda has not been particularly aggressive in promoting its brands this year though. The ad spends on two-wheelers this year has been around Rs 9 crore (in the year 2002 it was Rs 7 crore) and the spends on cars has been about Rs 5 crore. Honda Siel may have to step on the gas next year as nearest competitor General Motors India has already upped its ante in the C segment.

In an interesting aside, the Honda Siel AOR moved to Starcom (from Carat) earlier this year because of the agency's Dentsu lineage. agencyfaqs! diehards would recall that while explaining the move in June, a senior marketing official at Honda Siel had stated, "Starcom has a tie up with the Dentsu Young & Rubicam group. Internationally, in some countries, Starcom handles the Honda Siel cars AOR." As is apparent now, Starcom was chosen to park the account till Dentsu set up its JV here.

Heading the Honda business at Dentsu Marcom is Japanese expatriate, Y Miura, who has been heading Dentsu Inc Japan's liaison office in India for the past three years. His primary task till now was to facilitate the coordination between the Dentsu Inc's Tokyo office and its local affiliates.

Interestingly, the two newly set-up agency networks of Dentsu in India - Dentsu Communications (headquartered in Bangalore) and Dentsu Marcom (Delhi) - will work independent of each other and may even pitch for the same business. After all, the Indian advertising industry has a plethora of Japanese businesses to choose from, including Toyota, Honda, Suzuki, Mitsubishi, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Canon, Epson, Fujifilm, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Hitachi, Lotte, Nissan Foods and Daikin. No wonder Dentsu is getting aggressive in the country, more so because its domestic advertising business is growing slowly and the contribution from Dentsu agencies in North America and Europe is not keeping pace with its growth plans. © 2003 agencyfaqs!