Sumita Vaid
Advertising

Canon awards Rs 20 crore business to Dentsu Marcom

While the entire creative account moves from Rediffusion DY&R to Dentsu Marcom, Dentsu gets only a part of the media business

Canon India has awarded the estimated Rs 20 crore advertising business to Denstu Marcom. The development was confirmed by Alok Bharadwaj, director and general manager, consumer imaging and volume products, Canon India.

While the entire creative account moves from Rediffusion DY&R to Dentsu Marcom, only a part of the media business has moved from The Media Edge (TME) to Dentsu. Prior to the shift in the business, the entire media duties were in TME's care.

Canon India, however, felt that the media pie was large enough to accommodate two agencies. Thus, Dentsu has been empaneled alongside TME.

On the face of it, it may appear that this is a straight forward case of realigning the business since internationally, Canon is serviced by Dentsu. But that is not case. Please bear in mind, Rediffusion DY&R is part of the Dentsu Young & Rubicam network. So, for an account to move from one Dentsu agency to another calls for some probing.

So why was Dentsu given the business? Bharadwaj said, it was for the same reasons that any other company would want to appoint a new agency.

Bharadwaj informs that Dentsu was awarded the business based on its meritorious performance, when it had made a direct pitch to the team at Canon India. "The agency made a creative and a strategy presentation and showed us some of its media models. Based on that, we evaluated the agency on certain parameters. And prime among them were the agency's creative approach and its passion to work on the account. We clearly saw the agency's interest on working on the account and a talent team to execute the work."

Now, the biggest challenge that awaits the agency is the delicate task of preserving the consistency in the brand communication of Canon, since the company straddles three very divergent areas of businesses. Canon is present in the office space solutions with its offerings of high-end copiers and printers, in IT peripherals such as laser printers, and also in digital cameras.

"Since we exist in these three areas of businesses, the creative challenge for the agency is to put across the brand message without diluting the consistency of the brand communication and ensure that the consumer gets a clear perception of the brand - something that was missing in the previous advertisements," points out Bharadwaj.

For that, of course, Canon expects out-of-the-box creative thinking from Dentsu and a dedicated resource in the form of three servicing teams working on each of the categories.

While the company is clear in terms of its overall brand strategy and specifically on product categories, digital cameras will be pushed aggressively. "About 50 per cent of the total marketing budget has been set aside for the digital cameras." And in IT peripherals, with laser printers, the creative task is to create a mindspace for Canon, in a category dominated by Hewlett-Packard.

Bharadwaj is quite confident the agency will deliver.

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