BBH an UK based advertising agency will be opening its Mumbai office in India on Thursday. The company which clocked $1.75 billion (about Rs8,697.5 crore) in global billings this year is opening this office shrugging aside headwinds buffeting the economy.
BBH has had a history of starting businesses when the economy wasn’t in the best of health, said co-founder and worldwide creative director John Hegarty, who is in Bombay for the opening along with CEO Simon Sherwood
He also went on to say, “We started BBH in 1982, and there was a dreadful recession that time as well. When we started in New York, in 1999, within a year, the dotcom boom had crashed. Economic slowdown helps focus the agency on the values it is bringing to the marketplace, and it also keeps costs low, enforcing discipline in time for the return of better times.
The Publicis Groupe holds 49% of BBH, some members of its global team share stakes in the remaining 51%. The Indian management team of Subhash Kamath, Partha Sinhaand Priti Nair Chakravarthy will have equal minority stakes in the local agency, which will be an independent set-up.
UK operations director Paul Ward will move here to take charge of the business, which should be sailing smoothly from 1 January once the rest of the team is hired. BBH India is expected to tap Publicis Groupe’s media specialists such as Starcom Mediavest Group and Zenith Optimedia Pvt. Ltd to handle its media buying and planning.