Ogilvy plans to kick off B2B services in Mumbai

Ogilvy Business Network, Ogilvy India's business-to-business practice, is all set to roll out the next phase in Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai.

Ogilvy Business Network was launched two years ago in India at Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Shenaz Bapoorji, vice-president and practice group leader, Ogilvy Business Network, who was heading the Bangalore operations, will head the rest of India, too.

Ogilvy B2B is a specialist practice dedicated to business-to-business communications. The unit focuses on understanding B2B branding. The unit will aim at harnessing the existing strengths of the agency to provide clients with solutions on the B2B front.

Present at the launch was Bill Merrick, B2B practice group leader and director Asia Pacific, IBM Brand Services. In his introductory address titled, Are the Right People Making Your Marketing Decisions?, Merrick dealt with various reasons for agencies not using B2B solutions for their clients.

"There are some root causes for this. For one, people are not trained to make the right decisions in these areas. The learning and

data points are too few and the results of the same were not scrutinised. Hence mistakes will be repeated. Also, people don't spend wisely on B2B services because they can't," he said.

Explaining Ogilvy's B2B focus, Merrick said, "This will be the focus for Ogilvy in the coming months and we have established suitable resources and finalised investments to support its growth. I am also happy to announce that from our launch in Bangalore we have already recorded business wins in B2B in the last few months."

It was stated the influx of foreign direct investment has had a huge impact on the growth of B2B in the country in the last few years.

Also, B2B, as an area, has been neglected by agencies at large. The launch of this unit is a deliberate attempt by Ogilvy to fill in that gap.

Ogilvy Business Network will service Ogilvy clients such as Hutch, which may have B2B requirements as well as non-Ogilvy clients.

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