The Hindu Business Line : O&M, Group M form Kinetic

OGILVY & Mather and Group M have combined their out-of-home businesses to form Kinetic. This WPP unit came into being last year, when WPP merged Poster Publicity International and Portland Outdoor in the UK.

The outdoor outfit of O&M, Ogilvy Landscapes and Portland Outdoor, would now operate under the Kinetic India umbrella, but each of them would have separate entity. Apart from these, Poster Publicity International and the outdoor unit of David, Wallstreet David, would also come under Kinetic.

With this launch, Mr Pratap Bose, President, Ogilvy Activation (who is now going to take over as Managing Director, South Asia, Kinetic), hopes to garner 70 per cent share of the out-of-home business within the next year-and-a-half. The size of the organised outdoor market in India is around Rs 1,000 crore.

Kinetic has around 200 people working in its various offices across the country and Mr Bose hopes to get billings worth Rs 500 crore within the first year-and-a-half of operations. "Our greatest differential would be creative and innovative use of the outdoor media and our vision is to become the world's foremost agency to communicate with people on the move." WPP has a 50 per cent stake in Kinetic, while the other 50 per cent is owned by the Kinetic management. It has been rolled out in all the major out-of-home markets such as UK, Malaysia, Thailand, Switzerland, France, with start-up billings in excess of $3 billion.