The Hindu Business Line : Mudra focusing on biz growth in South

Chennai, Nov. 27 Mudra (South) is all set to announce new business bagged in the next 10-15 days. Its President, Mr S. Radkhakrishnan, said the ad agency is training its sights on specific categories — entrepreneurial brands (which are largely owner-driven), lifestyle, retail and new technology.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Radhakrishnan, who recently took over as President (South), Mudra Communications, said the South accounted for about 18 per cent of the agency’s business overall. Tamil Nadu, especially, is in his focus to grow business in the Southern region, he said.

In the last 18 months, Mudra has been beefing up its South team by inducting at least a dozen experienced people. Among its recent recruitments at the senior level are Mr Ranji Cherian, Senior Vice-President, who came in from JWT, Mr Joono Simon, Executive Creative Director, who is “probably the most awarded creative person”, Mr Saji Jayakumar who will head the Kochi branch and Mr Vignesh Iyer who heads the Chennai branch.

Client relationship

The agency is also strengthening its relationships with key clients, which include UB Spirits, RmKV and Madura Garments. It has also taken up a “huge initiative” of training people for advertising, Mr Radhakrishnan said, adding that though these courses are voluntary, attendance at the four-hour courses is 100 per cent on Saturday, a holiday. As part of the training, employees are sent to seminars and workshops, and experienced personnel from the company who already lecture at B-schools on advertising also teach.

The agency is creating a ‘retail vertical’ as it has “enormous knowledge” of retail skills, said Mr Radhakrishnan. It has Big Bazaar as a client, as well as major silk store RmKV in the South, with whom it has been associated for the past four years. In the past, it had worked with several other silk stores including Deepam of Bangalore and Remanika of Kochi. “We will create a specialists’ team and target business in retail,” he said.

In fact, Mudra’s work on RmKV has been shortlisted for the Advertising & Marketing Effectiveness (AME New York) awards and is the only one in the retail category to achieve that distinction from amongst 40 entries worldwide, Mr Radhakrishnan said. The results are to be announced early next month.