The Hindu adds Ogilvy to its creative roster

With this development, Ogilvy India and Lowe Lintas comprise The Hindu's creative roster.

It has been learnt that the leading daily newspaper brand The Hindu has expanded its creative roster to include Ogilvy India. So far, Lowe Lintas had been working on the brand's communication.

Both, the Ogilvy (South) team, as well as the team at The Hindu, have confirmed the development to afaqs!.

The Hindu adds Ogilvy to its creative roster

The team at The Hindu will now focus on brand building, and wants to position itself as the No. 1 choice for the media planning, media buying and marketing fraternity in the South Indian market. Besides The Hindu, Ogilvy's mandate also includes handling the brands Sportstar (weekly), Business Line (business and finance daily) and Frontline (magazine), and all the sub-brands under these titles.

While The Hindu will focus on the South Indian region, the agency will be required to work towards establishing the rest as strong brands at a national level.

Though there was no organised pitch process, keeping the aforementioned goal in mind, the teams at Lowe Lintas and Ogilvy were asked to make presentations, after which Ogilvy was selected for the role. It was the strategic roadmap put forth by Ogilvy that helped it clinch this win. The account will now be handled by both, the teams at Ogilvy Chennai, as well as Ogilvy Bengaluru.

Suresh Srinivasan, vice-president, advertising, The Hindu Group, tells afaqs! that the group now has a perceptual goal ahead. Explaining the same, he says, "There are certain perceptions about The Hindu in the minds of people. The aim now is to reinforce the positive perceptions and rectify the negative ones."

Initial focus will be on brand managers and marketers, so that The Hindu emerges as the No. 1 advertising platform for brands.

N Ramamoorthi, president, Ogilvy Chennai, conveys to afaqs! that his team is very happy to partner a strong brand such as The Hindu in its goals for the future.

Regarding Lowe's role, Srinivasan adds that the agency will continue to be responsible for circulation-related objectives such as breeding readership, building strong numbers and looking into product sales.

Currently, there is no media agency on board for the account.

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