Grey Worldwide wins Rs 11 crore Kinetic Nova account

Pune-based two-wheeler manufacturer Kinetic Motors has appointed Grey Worldwide, Mumbai, as the creative agency for Nova, its four stroke scooter brand. The size of the business is estimated to be in the region of Rs 11 crore.

Thanks to this development, Grey Worldwide, which already has the moped, motorbike and the corporate accounts of Kinetic, gets to add the Nova brand in its kitty. The media function for all Kinetic scooter and scooterette brands is with Madison Communications.

Earlier, the creative business of Nova was in the care of FCB-Ulka before agencies were invited to pitch for the business.

The news of Nova going to Grey comes close on the heels of Contract Advertising winning the Rs 15-20 crore Italian scooters account from Kinetic. In fact, when the agency pitch was called, both Nova and Zoom were under review. A decision on Zoom is yet to be taken.

Sound bytes on the communication task for Nova were hard to get.

Yet, it would be interesting to see in what manner Grey presents Nova to the Indian consumers in the current fiscal.

Nova, afterall, had bagged a handful of prestigious awards last year such as 'Scooter of the Year 2003 by ICICI bank-Overdrive, 'Scooter of the Year 2003' by Business Standard Motoring, 'Design Excellence Award' for automotive design by National Institute of Design-Businessworld.

Kinetic's marketing plans for Nova, in addition to the Indian market, includes key markets in Europe. Preparations for launching Nova in Europe are under way.

Kinetic has set a sales target of one lakh units for all the bikes, 1.25 lakh for scooters and around 35,000 for mopeds in 2004-05.

In 2003-04, the company had sold 75,000 bikes, one lakh scooters and approximately 25,000 mopeds.

Another significant development at the Mumbai office has been the Emirates Airlines South Asia advertising account. After a protracted agency review process, which saw the likes of Lowe, Ogilvy and Everest (Y&R), Grey was finally awarded the estimated Rs 8-9 crore business.

As the Emirates Airlines business was not just India-specific, but for the entire South Asia region, the agency pitch was a collaborative effort of the networks (which included Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India) of the participating agencies.

The task at hand is to aggressively promote Emirates Airlines in the South Asia region. To that end, the agency is working on a multimedia campaign. © 2004 agencyfaqs!