LG awards Rs 80-crore media duties to Group M

In a toss-up between Group M and Universal McCann, the WPP group company has bagged the Rs 80-crore media duties of Korean electronics goods major, LG Electronics. For the record, while LG's total media spend earmarked for the calendar year 2004 stands at Rs 125 crore, about Rs 45 crore would be spent through its various branches. Here, agencyfaqs! readers may recall the report carried on January 22, which mentioned that of the three agencies that made their presentations before the company brass, two were on the final shortlist.

To service the prestigious LG Electronics business, Group M is setting up an exclusive media company called WPP Team LG. Incidentally, WPP Team LG is the second unit within Group M built around the needs of a single client, after MindShare Fulcrum, which was created to service the Hindustan Lever business. Citing ‘fresh perspective' as the reason for moving its media portfolio out of Initiative Media and aligning it with WPP Group in India, Anil Arora, head of marketing, LGEIL, says, "We are pleased to extend our relationship with the WPP group in India. We chose WPP Team LG over the others because we saw great value in its ROI focus and its House of Media-based approach, which was fully aligned with our objective of creating huge and profitable growth for LG in the Indian market."

LGEIL has set for itself an ambitious turnover target of Rs 7,000 crore for the calendar year 2004. Advertising and marketing is going to play a crucial role in translating this business objective into reality. Which is why factors such as depth of resources made available to client, strength of the media partner in the marketplace and the unique combination of strength in traditional as well as non-traditional communication channels were critical in deciding the media partner. The most important criterion for LG was however, the agency's "ability to deliver". In effect, the media agency will have to integrate media operations across 40 branch offices, 66 central area offices and 65 remote area offices.

The news of LGEIL's partnership with Group M comes close on the heels of the company's decision to realign its creative duties with O&M and McCann-Erickson. To recapitulate, about two months ago, LGEIL awarded McCann-Erickson the creative duties of products broadly clubbed under Digital Display Media (comprising colour televisions, audio and plasma display products), and O&M the duties for the Digital Appliances Company (in other words, home appliances) comprising washing machines, microwave ovens, air-conditioners and refrigerators.

Indeed, the LG win is great news for Group M. In a prepared note issued by the company, Andre Nair, CEO Group M, South Asia, says, "This is a great start to 2004, and we are aggressively investing on this new venture, so that we deliver great value and consolidate our relationship with the LG group in India. We were able to convince LG - by demonstrating our understanding of the market - how intelligent use of our size, coupled with our integrated media solutions approach, can be used to deliver significantly better business results for the client."

Part of WPP's global media services, Group M is India's largest media investment management group, and provides media investment management services to over 250 clients from six offices across the country, through its operating companies MindShare, MindShare Fulcrum, Maximize, Zenith and now WPP Team LG. Specialist services are provided through Advanced Techniques Group, BroadMind, Media Consumer Insights, M ONE, Dialect, and Group M Outdoor. © 2004 agencyfaqs!