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Publicis acquires full-service Beehive Comm

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The Publicis Groupe announced the acquisition of Mumbai-based Beehive Communications, a 10-year-old full-service independent integrated marketing and communications agency. Beehive will be absorbed in the Paris-based advertising conglomerate’s Publicis Worldwide agency network and will operate as a unit under the rebranded name, Publicis Beehive.

Since mid-2012, this marks the Publicis Groupe’s seventh acquisition of an Indian company and Publicis Worldwide’s third, the first two being brand marketing consulting firm MarketGate and digital agency, iStrat.

Beehive Communications has kept a low profile in the industry, but been operational for a decade.
In Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru and with a team of 130-plus, Beehive has its strengths in full-fledged teams for creative and strategy, a strong media agency offering, a full-circle digital solutions basket and research and BTL teams across 20 states in India. Its client portfolio has its key strengths in verticals such as tourism, education and real estate with brands such as Tourism Malaysia, Korea Tourism Organisation, Maharashtra Tourism, Gujarat Tourism, Indiabulls, Rolta, Palladium hotel group, Chambor, MT Educare and more. Almost 40% of the business comes from the media planning and buying activity and it has many clients which make use of its integrated functions.

While making the announcement in Mumbai, Nakul Chopra, CEO, South Asia, Publicis Worldwide, said this was part of the agency’s growth journey in the last year. Clients and business have grown and the agency now has in its fold, the threesome of Bobby Pawar, Partha Sinha and Ambika Srivastava. From the Beehive side, the current leadership team will continue to lead the agency under the direction of founder and CEO Sanjit Shastri who will now report to Chopra.

Explaining the thought behind the move, Chopra said, “We have a broad strategy of what we want to achieve. We are clear that we want to be among the Top 3 in the country in terms of size, reputation and recognition.” While not revealing the money invested in the acquisition, Chopra added: “Publicis is a latecomer to this market compared to others which have a huge lead due to historical circumstance. Catching up that scale is an intrinsic part of our strategy. Acquisitions are not born out of need but more when you have an opportunity to fast track your strategic direction.”

When asked what would be the primary advantage for Beehive post-acquisition by Publicis, Shastri said: “The excuse that we are not aligned therefore we can’t grow fast, doesn’t exist anymore.”

On why his agency has been keeping a low profile thus far, Shastri said: “In the beginning, when we started winning travel and retail clients, we were terrified that bigger agencies will come and swat us like flies and pick up the business and go. That’s when we decided to keep a low profile.”

Meanwhile, the move to have a full-service unit is sure to lead to some discussions in the trade, given that media planning and buying and creative now work separately.

Talking about the benefits of an integrated entity, Chopra said: “There is considerable benefit that can be provided to the client with creative and media capability residing within the same organisation. This is especially true in the digital space where the divide is getting blurred. Media agencies do creative work and creative agencies do media work.

This is a future-facing decision according to what we can see happening in mature markets. In the advice that we give to clients as a creative agency, we welcome the fact that media and access to media data are within the same agency. There may be merit in looking at them as separate functions, but the end-consumer of advertising is concerned he/she experiences the media-creative strategy and execution all at one time. It will help immensely in the quality that we provide by bringing the two together. The client is beginning to think one-stop shop again.” Clearly, we haven’t heard the last on this one.

By arrangement with MxMIndia.com

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