Does Mindshare share as much goodwill amongst the media owners as it does amongst its clients?
Daily News & Analysis (DNA) sales & marketing head Suresh Balakrishnan: Mindshare is an agency that is usually on top of its business and is extremely aggressive on rates. This is one agency that has carried integration forward; while every agency has got its own integration platform, Mindshare has been able to mesh it together in a much more efficient manner.
Overall, their specialized division ATG, under Balu and Suku's Broadmind is doing some exceptional work.
Where they fall short is in the public relations area. The second being their relationship with channels and media owners. By Mindshare's sheer size, it gets better rates, but if it worked on its relationship management it would gallop a lot faster. As market leaders, they may need to take more aggressive steps to defining the market and taking it to the next level.
Prasar Bharati's marketing director Vijayalaxmi Chhabra: From the DD perspective, we find Mindshare very professional. They are good negotiators and they don't use their muscle power. They are the most proactive bunch and are always the first movers for any property. Their personnel are very qualitative driven and probably the best in the industry.
Mindshare are the best pay masters and DD has never faced problems around delayed payments. Although, considering its size and volume the agency might not be able to give enough attention to smaller clients.
What's a negative is the fact that Mindshare planners are a young bunch who are city-bred, hence plans they sketch tend to be C&S skewed.
Zee Network EVP network sales Joy Chakraborthy: They are brilliant negotiators and manage good rates. The biggest advantage that Mindshare enjoys is the fact that it has total control of its clients. The agency also has very approachable and professional personnel who believe in structured planning and not ad hoc incremental buys. This is reflected from the fact that one-off movie premiers or events are never sponsored by Mindshare clients.
On the other hand, the agency is understaffed and usually a last minute mover. As Zee has moved into the network selling mode, Mindshare buyers still seem to work in five separate components hence channel executives do not have not one point contact and have to deal with a host of people.
RED FM COO Abraham Thomas - Mindshare has brought in a certain level of efficiency and transparency into the industry. It has tried to remove the subjectivity out of media buying. While there is internal benchmarking, it has driven home the fact that all clients cannot get the same deals. At one level, they act as independent units and therefore don't apply the same yardsticks across all clients.
Mindshare works as independent business units and not in a uniform and homogeneous manner as they should. Given their size and the scope of their business, in their attempt to commoditise, they're losing out on the qualitative aspects of brand associations and are unable to get premium properties for all their clients.
Eenadu & ETV group marketing head I Venkat - In my opinion Mindshare scores very high on the relationship management front and its back end processes. As a result things run in a smooth manner, which is not seen in other agencies. Also the agency exuberates positively. I would, however, recommend that they look into their current reception area and organise it better as it resembles a railway station.
