Maxus wins ITC media mandate from Madison

In one of the biggest account moves in recent times, ITC has awarded its media AOR mandate to the GroupM media conglomerate after a multi-agency pitch across some of the largest media and advertising networks. Madison was the incumbent agency on the business. Keeping in mind the highly-diversified portfolio ITC offers across multiple locations, Maxus is putting together a highly specialised team, called ‘Team ITC. The servicing team will be based out of Bengaluru and Mumbai, and the mandate is effective April 1, 2017. 

Kartik Sharma, MD, Maxus, South Asia, said, “We are excited and humbled to be chosen by ITC to be their media partner. We have huge respect and admiration for ITC in the way they have built their business and brands. We are confident that through our consistent investments behind cutting edge tools and a diversified talent pool across data, digital and content we will help deliver competitive edge to ITC for their future growth.” 

Speaking about the win, CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM, South Asia, said, “We are delighted to be chosen by ITC as their media agency partner. This win comes as a huge recognition that we are on the right path as far as future proofing our business is concerned in an otherwise highly commoditised media industry. The investments we have made in talent, technology and data are helping us keep our clients ahead of the curve. We look forward to partnering ITC on its next phase of growth.” 

Over the last year, Maxus has been on an accelerated growth trajectory, adding several innovative services to their media investment planning capabilities. In 2016, ‘Maxus Kaleidoscope’ a mood based planning tool was launched. This web-based tool will enable brands in India to align their communication basis the emotional and behavioural parameters of the audience. This is Maxus India’s second initiative on behavioural mapping, the first being Moribus, the first-of-its-kind behavioural sciences lab by a media agency. 

Maxus also launched ‘Mesh’, a marketing command centre and dialogue engine, in partnership with Singapore-headquartered social media marketing firm Vocanic. Deployed across many blue chip advertisers in India and globally, Mesh enables Maxus to track brand health by reading environmental signals in real-time and offers actionable insights on earned, owned and paid media. Last year, Maxus also partnered with IoTBLR for pervasive computing. IoTBLR is the world’s largest IoT (Internet of Things) focused Meetup group. 

Maxus has brought down its innovation technology consulting unit ‘Maxus Metalworks’ to India as well.  Partnering with tech startups, universities, industry groups and artists, Metalworks incubates promising ideas and research and help brands market better in a connected world, working on areas of wearables, connected devices and other emerging technologies. All these developments give Maxus clients to edge with sharper targeting and effectively reaching their consumers. 

ITC is an Indian conglomerate headquartered in Kolkata, West Bengal, with diversified business includes five segments: Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Hotels, Paperboards & Packaging, Agri Business & Information Technology. The pitch was for the entire media mandate of the company across categories, for both urban and rural markets.