Popping champagne, cheering colleagues, smiling faces, lots of colour, an impressive line-up of awards, and most importantly, a rush of clients? that is what a visitor will see walking into the Mumbai office of one of India?s top league advertising agencies, Leo Burnett. While the reason is simple, achieving it wasn?t. Despite the lingering effects of the economic slowdown of 2008-2009, the agency has recorded over 36% growth in revenues in 2009-2010. And is all set to better that in the current financial year. That is perhaps one of the compelling reasons why top bosses of the Leo Burnett network ? Tom Bernardin, chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett Worldwide and Mark Tutssel, global creative officer, Leo Burnett Worldwide were in India recently with a two-pronged agenda. One, to launch their new book?Humankind?which talks about campaigns created by the agency around the globe and the behind-the-scene stories, and, second, to take stock of the India business and map out future plans.

This year the network is witnessing strong growth across regions. ?Through September this year (2010-11) we are up by about 8% in revenues. So my prediction is we will close the year well above 5%?, says Bernardin. ?India has done fantastically well. And I am confident that we will continue this feat. Globally, I had hoped that we would grow by 1-2%. But we ended up finishing 2009, 5% down. Now, those are results we are proud of because the industry and our competitors were down by double digits. In the context of the terrible economic decline that 2009 was, I am proud of the fact that we were down by just 5%. Globally the clients we have are relatively stable. So they reduced a little but they were stable. And there was no drastic reduction. Secondly, we did not lose any significant business anywhere in the world. And thirdly, despite the severe economic downturn we were winning businesses consistently around the network. So we look at ourselves as a less leaky bucket in comparison to our competitors.?

Over the last 10 years Leo Burnett India has registered an average revenue growth of 15-20%. Last year, because of the slowdown the agency was looking to end the year with a growth of 10%, but it exceeded all targets. So what facilitated this growth?

Nitish Mukherjee, managing director, Leo Burnett India, says, ?The growth has come on the back of aggressive new business wins and our ability to contribute significantly to the growthof our client?s business. And this has resulted in healthy, organic growth. In addition, our existing digital and activation businesses have also scored well.?

The agency has won a number of significant businesses this year including Tata International?s new footwear brand Tashi, Vedanta, BILT, Avantha Corporation and others. A significant amount of revenue has also been contributed by below-the-line activities.

Leo Burnett India is touted as one of the strongest creative agencies in the country and is ranked in the same league as Ogilvy & Mather, Lowe Lintas, JWT and McCann Erickson. International magazine Creativity ranks Leo Burnett India among the top 20 creative agencies in the world. Rated among the top five agencies in India, it has created memorable campaigns for brands such as McDonald?s, Complan, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Glucon D, Thums Up, Maaza, Perfitti, Tide, Whisper, Samsung, Uninor, Tata Capital, Tata Salt, HDFC Life Insurance, General Motor, Bacardi, Philip Morris among others, winning various national and international awards in the bargain.

Leo Burnett India has been a regular winner at Cannes Lions, besides others such as Adfest, D&AD, Clio, One Show, London International Awards, Spikes Asia, Lotus Awards, Andys, New York Festival, Mirchi Kaan Awards and Goafest.

And the man behind this tremendous creative reputation is Kondiparthi Venkata Sridhar, fondly known in the ad fraternity as Pops. A veteran in the Indian advertising industry, under his creative leadership, Leo Burnett India went on to win Agency of the Year in the Leo Burnett global network, twice. Continuing the agency?s superb show at Cannes, Leo Burnett India has won over nine Lions in the past three years. In recognition of his extraordinary talent, the Cannes Lions website says, ?Pops is credited with the emergence of Leo Burnett as a creative powerhouse in India?.

This year, however, he marked another milestone. The agency has created a new font in the Devanagari script to mark the 141st birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. It has the trademark Mahatma Gandhi glasses subtly incorporated into every letter.

?The creation of these fonts is our way of celebrating the life and teachings of the Mahatma,? says Sridhar, the national creative director of Leo Burnett India.

The agency plans to launch the font in various languages including English, Hindi, Tamil and others. The fonts will be promoted through the web using different social networking sites and also a full fledged website ? http://www.gandhijifont.com ? which will have quotes by Gandhi written in these fonts.

The agency is also witnessing tremendous growth opportunities in the ?insourcing? ? where a client sources ad campaigns for its various international markets from the India agency)?work space. In 2003 when Leo Burnett India was given the global agency award for the first time, it became the creative hub, in India as well as internationally, for two of Proctor & Gamble?s big-ticket brands?Tide and Whisper. Since then there has been a steady growth in the in-sourced work, which the agency believes can account for at least 10% of its annual revenues in the future.

?Coca-Cola is running our Minute Maid campaign globally. Leo Burnett India?s primary focus will continue to be to provide best communication solutions, best creativity, the most effective communication solutions for our clients. One of the outcomes of that is, as we continue to get better and better and our performance on the global stage gets us some insourcing work. It?s not one of the most important revenue streams. But, yes, we have seen growth,? says Arvind Sharma, CEO of Leo Burnett India.

The global network is now planning to invest Rs 15-20 crore in India in strengthening its capability in three spaces? digital, design and shopper marketing. Bernardin says, ?We are looking to acquire a company in the digital space. There is progress on that but I can?t disclose the details. This is one of the significant things we are doing and I hope we will close the deal by first quarter of 2011. Besides this we are also interested in building a design capability.?

But considering the size, scale and reputation of Leo Burnett India, why is the agency debuting in the digital space now when its competitors moved into this much earlier? ?It is not now that we are focussing in the digital space. But right now we have an acquisition target that we have in mind. So we are moving on it. I would say the space is competitive because everybody is after the digital world,? defends Bernardin.

Sharma adds, ?All digital spends put together in India are quarter of a billion dollars, out of an industry of $7-8 billion. So digital has been tiny. We believe digital will take off in a huge way in the next five years. And as 4G begin to come there will be a lot more focus on wi-fi.?

The focus is also on creating a design unit. Says Bernardin, ?Besides digital, we are looking at enhancing all the touch points in the creative process and design is one of them. We are looking at the space and analysing. So we are not clear if we would go for an acquisition.?

Explains Sharma, ?While you are looking at partners for some scale you also look for some designers who are exceptionally good. We have a team of five designers and recently we had our global product committee. So our approach is to build those capabilities. Some of those will be in-house and for some we will be looking for partners. In activation and shopper marketing, we have built a team and we are working with a number of clients. It includes Proctor & Gamble, IBM, Samsung, Coca-Cola and all that is based on in-house capability. But the truth is, in order to provide large scale activation capability you need to put strengths together. So we are actively talking to a potential partner who can add scale.?

Shopper maketing is being touted by brands as the latest marketing mantra. Following the global economic meltdown, companies have increased their spend on shopper marketing by 60-70%.

Industry sources say that companies such as HUL and Parle have increased their spends by a whopping 400%. P&G, that globally spends around $10 billion annually on shopper marketing, is now spending 30% of that in the Asia Pacific region. And all these investments have culminated into a more scientific and research oriented retail- marketing activity, which marketers are packaging as shopper marketing.

?We are aggressively looking at the shopper marketing and retail area. We have strengthened the shopper arm across the globe,? says Bernardin. ?So we plan to bring international talent to train people here. In addition to this, we may look at acquisitions.?