Alokananda Chakraborty
Advertising

Santro back with Saatchi; what happens to WagonR?

Hyundai Motors India has moved the Rs 12-15-crore Santro account from SSC&B to Saatchi & Saatchi, Delhi, which helped launch the brand in India

Hyundai Motors India (HMI) has moved the advertising account of Santro from SSC&B to Saatchi & Saatchi, Delhi. Thus, the Rs 12-15-crore account comes back to the agency that helped launch the brand in 1998 in India. The advertising accounts of Sonata and Accent remain with SSC&B and Grey (respectively), and the media planning and buying account of all three stays with Zenith Media.

Confirming the move, Sanjeev Shukla, manager, marketing, HMI, said, "We wanted to bring some excitement back into the brand. So the decision to move." Information available with agencyfaqs! indicates there was no formal pitch preceding the move, which became effective in August.

Which leaves one question unanswered: What happens to WagonR, which was being serviced by Saatchi & Saatchi since July 2000? While no one was available for comment on behalf of Saatchi & Saatchi, Maruti executives insist while Saatchi & Saatchi has ceased to work on WagonR, no decision has been taken on a new agency for the Rs 7-8-crore account.

Interestingly, in its four-year career, the Santro brand has changed hands as many as four times. The small car from the HMI stable opened its India account with Saatchi & Saatchi in 1998. The agency broke the monotony of feature-driven advertising in the category with the help of a breezy campaign banking on the youth appeal of cine star Shah Rukh Khan to establish Santro as the standard in the ‘B' segment of the passenger car market. Talking about the Saatchi campaign, HMI's Shukla told us last year, "Hyundai was a Korean company, not a known brand at all and was not really trusted and/or perceived as having an image. The shortcomings had to be overcome fast - within six months - and we had to successfully launch a car too! We met all that and much more…"

In the year 2000, HMI moved the Santro account to Capital Advertising, which resigned the account in no time as it was on the verge of getting ‘more substantial' business from Maruti. Between April and October 2000, Bates worked on the advertising account of Santro and spearheaded the launch of Santro zipDrive, the first brand in the ‘B' segment to boast of a power steering. It was in October 2000 that SSC&B was entrusted with the brand, before it was moved again this month.

When contacted, Ajay Chandwani, president, SSC&B, said, "While I don't have a good enough reason to explain why Santro was taken off our custodianship, I would say we have been more or less compensated with HMI's corporate business. On Sonata too the company has upped its ante. The billings for these two would be more or less equal to that of Sonata and Santro put together."

HMI's Shukla, however, added, "Don't look at this arrangement as three agencies and three brands. There would be few more additions to our portfolio next year. So we have to start working with more than one or two agencies." If industry buzz is anything to go by there are at least three brands that HMI has lined up for launch in 2003.

But for now, the journey (for Santro) has come to a full circle. © 2002 agencyfaqs!

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