MUMBAI: Percept Advertising has launched a new division - Percept Customer Lifecycle Management (PCLM).

Harsh Vardhan will be heading PCLM, which will have customer relationship management (CRM), direct marketing, database storage mining and database storage analysis under its ambit.

PCLM is one of the initiatives that Percept Advertising CEO Rajesh Pant has undertaken in the continuing makeover of the business he has been instituting since taking charge eight months ago.

According to the former Sony Entertainment Number 2: "Today nobody is looking for ad agencies, they are looking for complete solution providers."

To further his stated aim of taking Percept into the Top Ten in the next five years, Pant has just hired Elvis Sequiera from Lowe India as his new national creative director. In the recent past, among Sequiera's noted campaigns are the ones he did for Bajaj and ICICI, Pant says.

Pant says that both in the south as well as in the north, Percept has been adding to its business. NEC Micron in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Power Corporation and the Ambition motorcycle account in Delhi among them he says.

On the company structure side as well, there have been significant developments. Percept concluded a deal two weeks ago wherein its JV with Hakuhodo, Japan's second largest agency and the ninth largest in the world, was expanded. It is now a 50 per cent equity partner in all of Percept's agency business under the Hakuhodo-Percept name. These include Percept Advertising, Image Ads, AMO Communications and Percept Gulf, Pant said.

Hakuhodo-Percept was in the news in September when it clinched the estimated Rs 120-150 million advertising accounts of Maruti’s flagship brand Maruti 800 and Zen from Rediffusion DY&R, Delhi. The "Japanese connection" has helped in getting the Epsom and Sharp accounts as well.

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Rajesh Pant takes charge as Percept CEO