Airtel invites agencies to award media mandate

In what could be touted as the biggest advertising pitches of the year, industry is abuzz is that telecom player Airtel has invited agencies across for its media duties.

While all leading agencies have received the invite for the same; highly placed sources in the industry state that chances are that this time around Madison World, which has been handling the account for 11 years now, may have  tough fight from agencies from the GroupM bouquet, Dentsu-Aegis Network, ZenithOptimedia, OMD and Lodestar

A senior source from one of the invited agencies stated, “Airtel call for a media pitch every five years, with the last one being in 2010. This time the estimated account size is of Rs. 300 – 400 crore”. He also added that all the invited agencies have been asked to sign a ‘non-disclosure agreement’ restricting them from disseminating information about the pitch.  

It may be noted that one of the invited agencies – GroupM already has four other telecom operates in its clientele: Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Tata Docomo and Reliance Communications. Interestingly, with five media agencies and four telecom clients, sources say that GroupM would be eyeing the fifth account!    

Keep watching this space for further developments.