It was in November 2001 that Mindshare was christened, calling itelf the 'House of Media'. In its second year, Mindshare figured that to up the game further, it had to widen its scope as a media agency by growing its 'house of media' offering. And hence came into being the series of specialized units, the exploration of some serious talent and the development of sound backend infrastructure.
Over the last three and a half years, Mindshare has grown at a swift pace. Undoubtedly, despite Mindshare's rich inheritance, the agency has burnt the midnight oil to grab and navigate its destiny in the Indian market. From being the media departments of O&M & JWT, Mindshare managed to have separate contracts, exclusive arrangements with its clients and its own P&L. As of today, Mindshare boasts of a high majority of its business via media-only contracts.
Post that, by the virtue of the agency's size, there came a need to open more shops to handle conflicting businesses, which led to the birth of Maximize - now called Maxus. With WPP's acquisition of Cordiant, Zenith (Bates' media arm) came into the fold. Another agency that WPP owned was called Mediaedge:cia (MEC) which came through a past acquisition. After WPP's take over of Zenith, Group M could not retain Zenith's name in India due to contractual agreements. And hence Zenith in India was formed as MEC.
That apart, WPP's recent acquisition of Grey Worldwide saw Mediacom (Grey's buying arm) also come into Group M's fold. Mediacom, which is currently not under the control of WPP, will come into the Group M fold in 2006.
Group M has several divisions under its umbrella, offering services related to almost every aspect of the communications space. Among these are Broadmind (headed by M.Suku), ATG (headed by Balasubramnium), the CTG (headed by Lakshmi Narasimhan), and D'Mart. These cover the digital, direct, retail, infilm branding, volume purchases of free commercial time and print space, and what have you.
The WPP media agencies can dip into this pool of services and meet any client need - if and when it arises. A crucial cutting edge advantage which other agencies would do anything to possess.
