Adgully Exclusive | India is the future of business and advertising: BMB's Andrew McGuinness

When Andrew McGuinness and Trevor Beattie came together to establish the Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB) in 2005, they had only one goal in mind and that is "to use creativity to solve business problems". Since then BMB has been a renowned named in UK and was named as the UK Agency of the Year in 2008. Gradually BMB expanded in North America by setting up an office in New York, and some of the leading clients they have in their kitty are McCain, Carling, ING, Samsung, Ikea, Selfridges, TUI Travel and Virgin Money.

So when they started considering to expand in Asia, they thought of exploring various markets. After looking into the markets actively, BMB decided on the Indian market. Beattie felt that the Indian market was an exciting market for creative services and will be the next big thing in the coming years. So they thought of teaming up with an Indian agency which had a very strong understanding of the media space in India so as to learn the Indian market's diverse and cluttered environment. And who better than Madison World, the 22 year old communication group which has had a long standing reputation for its media services. Madison World's advertising unit mc2 which was dealing with clients like Brother International (India), Rajasthan Tourism, Organic India and Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance was thus chalked out to be merged into the joint venture with BMB.

Following talks over months, Madison India announced a 50-50 joint venture with the UK based creative agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB) on the 31st of September 2010 in Mumbai

The enterprise is said to provide creative services to advertisers. As part of this JV, a leading Creative person from BMB London will be based here in Mumbai to offer BMB India clients a global - standard creative product. BMB India will be led by Prabha Prabhu as CEO and a Chief Creative Officer from UK will be appointed imminently.

Adgully spoke to the men in question and tried to find out how BMB looks at India as a market and why did Madison feel a need to enter into a JV.

Speaking about the need for a joint venture Sam Balsara, Chairman & Managing Director, Madison World, contended that Madison World was in the lookout for various options to improve their creative services. Besides to be just more than Madison Media, it was a realistic decision for Balsara to "team up with someone and make rapid progress, since we desired to have a strong and credible offering in the creative area." So Madison teamed up with BMB's strong creative presence so as to match Madison Media's reputation

While Madison World is only looking to support the well known creative fame that BMB enjoys, BMB is here to understand the Indian market a little better, because Indian market is the next big thing in terms of advertising spends and creative ideas. McGuinness feels that he wants the BMB team in London to understand how things operate in India, because India is the future of business and advertising. "We are India to learn. It's not about us coming here with a lot of wisdom; it is about us learning as much," he says.

Initially the JV seeks to set up a team of 30 people, and gradually the team size will be increased to meet the ambitious spirits of Madison World and BMB. Both the deemed agencies want to provide their best strengths in media and creative to provide good work to their client and will want a build a good reputation to start off with.

Seeming very ambitious about India as a market, Beattie seeks to harness the growth of the joint venture with a strong combination of BMB's creativity and a good understanding of media provided by Madison World.

Some of the challenges that Beattie sees is to find an audience and at the same time to get clients and to build the recognition around BMB. A few categories of brands that the JV will be looking to bank upon are travel brands, leisure brands, technology and mobile technology.

While BMB is looking forward to explore the markets across the sub-continent, the UK based agency feels that India is the right start to build on a good reputation and a back of mind recall for their creative services. On the other hand, Balsara feels that the move is a practical approach to raise the strength of Madison World's creative offerings.

As the top two names in creative and media have come together, the leaders in the specific areas of interest and the clients will be looking closely at the new advances. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]