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Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai , Nov. 10

SHELVING its plans to bring in a new WPP agency brand into the country, JWT is repositioning its financial services, Fortune, as a full service agency.

Set up as a specialist agency in the early 90s, Fortune had limited its business to handling public issues of its clients for the past 15 years. Today, Fortune, which is owned by JWT, is poised for a re-launch as a full-fledged mainline agency.

Mr Colvyn J. Harris, CEO, JWT India, told Business Line, "We have decided to broadbase the functioning of our financial services agency, Fortune. There is no need to bring in another agency brand when Fortune already exists.''

Fortune has offices in Mumbai and Chennai with almost 20 employees. With the limitations in financial advertising in today's advertising scenario, the agency will now extend its services as a full service agency brand to handle both financial and non-financial clients.

Added Mr Suranjan Das, Vice-President & Client Services Director, JWT, "Fortune was floated as an agency in the heydays of IPO advertising. But now we want it to become a full services ideas business. In fact, most financial clients now want to position themselves as brands and create an identity for themselves. We identified this opportunity in the financial advertising business and now want to broad base the services of Fortune.''

In the past, JWT had considered floating a new agency brand - Conquest - from the WPP umbrella. Conquest was supposed to be the third mainline agency after Contract Advertising, which is also owned by JWT. However, the plans to bring in Conquest have been put on the backburner and JWT instead has decided to reposition its existing financial communications services agency - Fortune — as a next mainline agency. "Today, financial companies have a consumer focus and don't need the services of specialist agencies anymore. We are exploring the need to have more than two branches for Fortune and should start operations from April,'' stated Mr Das.

Fortune had been pitted against the likes of existing financial services agencies such as Sobhagya Advertising and Clea in the Mumbai market.

Fortune's client roster includes Morgan Stanley and HDFC. It has also managed to bag non-financial clients, such as Tata Motors and the diamond jewellery brand of D'dmas.

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