M&C Saatchi ties up with Dhar & Hoon and Kamal Oberoi

London-headquartered advertising agency M&C Saatchi has tied up with Indian creative hotshop Dhar & Hoon and ex-JWT president Kamal Oberoi to form a new agency, M&C Saatchi Communications.

This will be the 11th agency of the M&C Saatchi network in the Asia Pacific region and it will be headquartered in New Delhi.

Kamal Oberoi will be the chairman and chief executive officer of the new agency. Dhar & Hoon’s Ajit Hoon and Abhinav Dhar will be directors.

Kim Walker, president and CEO, M&C Saatchi, Asia, said about the deal in an official communication to the media: “India is a sophisticated advertising and marketing industry and we believe M&C Saatchi’s principle of ‘Brutally Simple Thinking’ will resonate strongly with clients in India as it does elsewhere. It’s an exciting time for us and we are thrilled to be making such a significant move into this market. Dhar, Hoon and Oberoi will also be great exponents of our ‘Creativity Sells’ philosophy, which has been the key to our success around the world.”

Says Ajit Hoon of Dhar & Hoon, “We were in talks with a few international agencies, when the M&C Saatchi deal happened. Earlier, we were just a creative workshop, but now, we can call ourselves a full-service agency. We hope to grow the business and create a pan-India network.”

Dhar & Hoon was India’s first ‘creative only’ service workshop when it was set up in September 1994. The workshop counts Dabur Real, Honda cars, Sony Wega Theatre, Punj Lloyd, Milkfood and Revlon among its clients. It set up a media arm, Dhar & Hoon Media, in October 2002.

M&C Saatchi was formed in 1995 by the brothers Maurice and Charles Saatchi and three other executives, Bill Muirhead, David Kershaw and Jeremy Sinclair, after they broke away from the Publicis group-owned Saatchi and Saatchi.

Apart from the recently set up New Delhi office, M&C Saatchi has 10 other offices across the Asia Pacific region in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Wellington.

Major M&C Saatchi clients in Asia include Qantas, AIA, Zuji, O2, Coca-Cola, British Airways, Tourism Australia and Mandarin Oriental. M&C Saatchi has recently started work to promote London’s bid to play host to the Summer Olympics in 2012.

© 2005 agencyfaqs!