Devina Joshi
Advertising

‘The Times of India’ in no mood for another agency

Rahul Kansal, brand director, ‘The Times of India’, puts speculation to rest by confirming to agencyfaqs! that the newspaper is not looking to add another agency to its roster

Contrary to certain media reports, ‘The Times of India’ (‘TOI’) is not on the lookout for another ad agency. This was confirmed to agencyfaqs! by Rahul Kansal, brand director, ‘TOI’.

To put things in perspective, there was speculation in certain sections of the media that ‘The Times of India’ was hunting for an agency that would specifically handle the launch of the ‘Delhi Mirror’. At present, the advertising duties of ‘TOI’ are handled by Fortune Communications, JWT’s second agency. Leo Burnett is in charge of the ‘Mumbai Mirror’. In addition, three agencies, K-Factor, Shop (Freddy Birdy and Naved Akhtar’s agency) and Bates Enterprise, also work for ‘TOI’ and its other brands on a project basis. Bates Enterprise recently did the campaign for ‘TOI’ going full colour.

Kansal remarks, “We are quite satisfied with our current set of agencies and our aim is to consolidate our work with all of them. We do not require any additional agency as of now.”

But when pressed that he, too, had been quoted by the media in this regard, he says, “‘TOI’ had spoken to one other agency and checked its credentials, but that by no means qualifies as a pitch or spells our requirement for an agency.”

“The idea of having another agency may have occurred to our junior level staff, which some media houses used as their ‘source’. But that idea was killed as we have no such requirement.” He further adds that there is no question of taking on another agency as the launch of the ‘Delhi Mirror’ itself has not been finalised yet.

“See, when you launch a paper like we launched the ‘Mumbai Mirror’ in Mumbai, speculation is bound to arise as to when the brand will extend to other cities,” Kansal explains. “All I’m saying is that we don’t have a concrete plan yet and now is not the right time to launch the paper. This automatically stresses my point that we don’t need another agency.”

© 2006 agencyfaqs!

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