Mudra South to handle The New Indian Express Group account

Mudra South has bagged the creative and media duties for the Madurai based The New Indian Express Group (NIE Group). Mudra’s media arm, Optimum Media Solutions (OMS), will handle the media duties. The group, which consists of two companies, Express Network Pvt. Ltd and Express Publications Ltd, owns language publications such as ‘Dinamani’ and ‘Kannada Prabha’ (newspapers) and ‘Malayalam Vaarika’, ‘Cinema Express’ and ‘Tamilan Express’ (magazines).

The business, which is estimated to be worth around Rs 4-5 crore, was earlier handled by a local agency called Fidelis.

The business was awarded to Mudra South without any official pitch, just on the basis of the agency’s clientele and past work.

The New Indian Express Group’s director, marketing, Vinod Kumar, who refers to Mudra as an ‘Indian multinational agency’, says, “There wasn’t any need to call for a formal pitch. We were quite sure of what we needed and, after an informal evaluation, we found that Mudra fulfilled all those requirements.”

“All we were looking from an agency was the implementation of a fresh approach towards the brands,” Kumar adds.

About this fresh approach, Jagdish Acharya, executive creative director, Mudra, Bangalore, says the agency will move beyond print and outdoor and try something innovative.

“It is a progressive group and the communication will be suited to that,” says Acharya.

The agency plans to use lots of innovative mailers and viral marketing, especially to reach out to the industry.

Acharya, who is quite excited about working on a media brand, explains that the advertising strategies will be unique for each brand. In fact, this is not the first instance of Mudra handling a media brand. Previously, it had worked on ‘Deccan Herald’, but there wasn’t much work done on that brand.

Mudra handles brands across wide categories such as Prestige, Paragon, Nutrine and RmKV, of which the ad it created for RmKV Silks was much talked about.

© 2006 agencyfaqs!