Contract Advertising wins the creative mandate for Ashok Leyland

Post a multi-agency pitch Ashok Leyland's creative account has been won by Contract Advertising. Ravi Deshpande, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Contract Advertising and Kumar Subramaniam, Executive Vice-President, Contract Advertising, confirmed the development to Adgully.

The agency will handle the account from its Mumbai office.

The incumbent agency on the account creative is Mudra. Prior to Mudra, JWT has worked on the account's advertising.

The pitch was initiated around the first week of May this year and was for Ashok Leyland's entire creative mandate, including its trucks, buses, army vehicles and upcoming products.

Speaking about the agency's immediate mandate, Subramaniam tells Adgully, "Contract Mumbai has won the mandate to work on the heavy commercial vehicles portfolio of Ashok Leyland. Ashok Leyland is an established name with a strong positive equity and we will aim to build on that equity as we develop a new position and campaign for the brand."

Ashok Leyland -- India's second largest commercial vehicle maker, and a flagship company of the Hinduja Group -- has seven manufacturing plants including those at Ennore (near Chennai), Hosur, Alwar, Bhandara and Pantnagar. The company has been in the transport solutions industry for over five decades, and currently offers a range of trucks, buses, special application vehicles, and engines. It also manufactures vehicles for defence purposes. In Indian metros, four out of the five State Transport Undertaking (STU) buses are products of Ashok Leyland.

Ashok Leyland was initially set up as Ashok Motors, in 1948. Then in 1955, owing to the equity participation by British Leyland, Ashok Leyland was born. As of today, Ashok Leyland operates under the communication tagline 'Engineering your Tomorrows'. The company's vehicles stand for reliability and ruggedness.

Recently Ashok Leyland and Nissan Motor Company unveiled their first Light Commercial Vehicle (LCV) called the Ashok Leyland DOST. The product is slated to be launched in the market, in the second quarter of FY (financial year) 2011-2012.

Ashok Leyland has also, in the recent past, been in the news owing to its impending re-branding process. The company is slated to be re-branded as Hinduja Leyland. Changes in the logo and image of the brand are on the cards. As reported across media Omnicom Group's design agency, the London-based Wolff Olins, is working on the re-branding exercise. The firm's mandate includes designing the new logo, as well as, dealing with the new brand architecture of the company.