N. Shatrujeet
Advertising

St Luke's hires creative team from Rediff; to open Bangalore office

St Luke’s India has hired the creative team of Porus Jose and Manish Kosambia as creative directors at its Mumbai office. The duo moves from Rediffusion | DYR

St Luke's India has hired the creative team of Porus Jose and Manish Kosambia as creative directors at its Mumbai office. The duo moves from Rediffusion | DYR, where they had been working for the past two-and-a-half years. The appointment of Jose and Kosambia has been confirmed by Praveen Kenneth, managing director, St Luke's India, who informs that the two joined the agency early last week.

Kenneth reveals that his agency had been talking to the creative duo for the last six months. "For St Luke's, I want brilliant people who are also wonderful human beings," he explains. "I want people with the right mindset, people who will willingly become a part of the system we are creating here. Porus and Manish have that mindset, and I am glad they have come in to head the second creative group here." For the record, creative directors Anand Tahilramani and Sanjay Sakharkar already head one of the agency's creative groups.

Speaking about his expectations from the new recruits, Kenneth says, "As we keep adding businesses, clients ask for senior creative resources to manage their brands for them. I think Porus and Manish can take that responsibility, as they are extremely talented individuals. I personally think it is only a matter of time before the advertising world wakes up to them."

The responsibility of managing brands is, in fact, precisely what attracted Jose and Kosambia to St Luke's. "We wanted the challenge of working on brands at the strategic and conceptual levels," says Jose. "We had had enough of working merely on scripts and cracking ideas for pitches. A creative person likes to see his ideas and his brands grow in front of his eyes, and that excitement was missing in our lives. We were tired of being mercenaries in getting new business into the agency."

Kosambia adds that he and Jose observed the transition of St Luke's over six months before arriving at a decision. "When we first started talking, this was a small place, but today it is fairly big with a lot of good people," he says. "We wanted an opportunity to handle and build good brands, which is why we moved to a mid-sized agency like St Luke's. We want to have a sense of ownership, and want to contribute to the agency's growth, and the only measurable way of doing that is by joining a smaller agency and growing it."

Jose and Kosambia, for the record, have been working as a team for over three years now. The two first came together while they were at Lowe, from where they moved as a team to Rediff, where they worked on accounts such as Colgate-Palmolive, DHL, AirTel, Thomson, Indian Oil, Daikin and Parle. While Kosambia has previously been with JWT India (then HTA) and Vyas Giannetti Creative (VGC), Jose has spent time at creative hotshop By Design and Saatchi & Saatchi India.

New appointments in creative isn't the only topic of conversation at St Luke's. The agency, which has completed 15 months in this business, is also in the process of setting up a full-fledged office in Bangalore within the next month-and-a-half. Revealing that he is putting the team for Bangalore in place, Kenneth says, "It is likely to be a creative-driven office, and I am getting in people who have the right entrepreneurial spirit to run the office."

Sharing his thoughts on St Luke's fortunes over the past 15 months, Kenneth says, "From a zero-man operation, we have grown to a 52-strong team, with a fully functional office in Mumbai and a satellite office in Delhi. From a zero base, we have generated revenue to the tune of Rs 55 crore (St Luke's, for the record, works with most clients on a fee basis). We have prestigious clients like ITC, Godrej, Bombay Dyeing, Zenith Computers, Monsanto of the US and BPCL. We've been in some big pitches with some of the biggest agencies around, and have won some of them. I think we've done fairly well."

While he admits that the first year was all about establishing and sustaining the St Luke's brand - "in a bad, recessionary period" - Kenneth insists the focus has now shifted to growth. Which explains the desire to add creative firepower. "St Luke's is seen as a very strong planning agency," he says, adding, "While this is good, I think we also need more creative power to balance the agency's offering and its perception. The appointment of Porus and Manish is a step in that direction." © 2004 agencyfaqs!

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com