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CHENNAI BASED TRIBE 10 WINS TWO NEW ACCOUNTS

As reported in www.agencyfaqs.com
NEW DELHI, January 23

Tribe 10, the four-year-old, Chennai based advertising and brand consulting firm, has bagged the creative and media duties for Gaitonde and Little Italy. According to industry estimates, the accounts are pegged to be cumulatively worth Rs 2 crore.

Rajani Nair, partner and creative director, says, “For Gaitonde, which is a men’s leather footwear brand, we are looking at relaunching the brand and then establishing it. For this, we will focus mainly on print and outdoor.”

She adds, “Little Italy is a fine dining restaurant chain and our communication strategy is to promote the restaurant in Chennai, for which we will only target print.”

On the future course of action of the agency, Shankar Iyer, partner and creative director, says, “Tribe 10 has plans to expand its operations to other parts of the country. Also on the anvil are plans to enter into technical and technological tie-ups for knowledge and resource sharing to offer better service and one-stop solutions to clients.”

“We want to take our clients beyond advertising, to see the real magic their brands can be. Our brand consulting arm is all set for this. And with all this development, a new system will be put in place that will benefit clients in a big way,” adds Nair.

NAMES PEOPLE PLAY

As reported in The Economic Times, Brand Equity on WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2005
by RAJIV BANERJEE

It’s taken a while for agencies who extol the benefits of differentiation to put their own brands where their mouths are, but a new crop of agencies have done just that. Starting with their agency names. Here’s a sample — 1pointsize, 361 degrees, Flaky, Mellow & Grounded, Marching Ants, Tribe 10 or WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get).

Most of these agencies are young, set up on average three years ago. And in the absence of a big-ticket creative director or other founder, they’ve gone with a name that stands out as the best way to ring a bell. “The name’s your calling card till the time you have big names and clients,” says Dritish Ghoshal, head, servicing, Marching Ants advertising, who admits that none of its founders was famous enough to have the agency named after them.

In the case of some agencies, the name reflects the persona of the agency as well as the people behind it. Take Flaky, mellow and grounded, a Mumbai based agency. Priti GC, one of the founders, calls herself flaky, (which translates into proactive, if you’re a prospective client) and Saumya Khona is mellow. Put them together, and get a grounded company. “Grounded reflects the seriousness of our approach despite the opposite personalities of the partners,” says co-partner Khona. Of course, one can be too literal with this approach — there’s a small US agency called Hawairish, because it’s founded by two people, one who’s Irish and one who’s Hawaiian.

Down South, 1pointsize likes to be known as a pure creative outfit without any peripherals attached to it and Tribe10 signifies a gang of people with a Nadia Comaneci-like perfect 10 in their creative abilities. And according to 1pointsize CEO Sharad Haksar, the idea is to always be small in size but big in the creative work that comes out. “As any idea starts with a size, the name was therefore apt,” says Haksar. He adds that while brainstorming for names, they almost froze on 10pointsize. “We realised that the name was not small enough to define our agency,” he says.

For Amal Sethi, the name 361 Degrees stands for that added extra which he believe his agency delivers. Like many larger competitors, he’s averse to being called just an advertising agency, and Sethi hopes the name will convey the philosophy of the organisation.

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The reasons may be diverse, but all of them say that an interesting name helps in getting prospective clients interested. “It’s a good ice breaker in cold calls,” says Ghoshal, who adds that clients are curious to know more about the name and that makes a good beginning for the conversation.

Sethi of 361 Degrees agrees, adding that there are some clients who immediately understand the idea behind the name. Then there was the client who thought it meant the agency would work only 361 days out of 365, but on the whole, Sethi agrees with Khona saying that response is usually positive — an interesting name bodes well for interesting ideas. Shankar Iyer, partner at Tribe10 remembers the initial days when clients used to look upon the name strangely: “That’s changed now and the name actually gets us a higher brand recall,” says Iyer.

Of course that doesn’t let them get away with doing anything less than any other agency. “A different name helps break the ice, but after that it’s the same challenge to get a client as with any other agency,” says Iyer. But at least they’ll have the pleasure of baffling those who read their key numbers.