TBWA India bags Hughes ad account

TBWA India bags Hughes ad account

NEW DELHI: TBWA India has bagged the creative and media business of Hughes Network Systems (HNS) and its two affiliated companies, Hughes Software Systems (HSS) and Hughes Escorts Communications Limited (HECL). The account has been won by TBWA's Delhi office.

The account is valued at more than Rs 40 million. TBWA India vice president Benny Thomas said, “We won the account after a five-agency pitch, which included McCann Erickson and Mudra Communications. This is for the first time an agency has been allotted both creative and media accounts. Till now, creative was sourced through local shops, and media business was with McCann.”

The mandate includes working on HECL’s enterprise networking, retail services and `DiRECWAY’ global education and retail businesses. “HECL provides end-to-end networking solutions for corporate enterprises in India using state-of-the-art satellite technologies, for clients including Nestle, P&G, Marico, Playwin, Bombay Stock Exchange and leading banks,” said Thomas.

“Retail services is a new concept to be launched in the near future and we are currently working on the brand identity. We will be using TBWA proprietary tool “Connections” to add value to the brand. Our immediate task is to work on a campaign on DiRECWAY global education , which provides satellite based interactive management education programmes. The programmes happen in a 'realtime, realworld' environment from reputed universities via satellite. For instance, if a lecture is on in XLRI Jamshedpur, a real class room atmosphere is created as one can participate in live sessions from the institute,” added Thomas.

HECL has already forged partnerships with the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, XLRI Jamshedpur, Manipal Academy of Higher Education(MAHE), Apollo University Global Education Division of WIU (USA), and DiRECWAY Global Education. HECL has 28 `DiRECWAY’ learning centres in 18 cities including five in Delhi.

HNS is the world's largest provider of broadband satellite network solutions, while HSS is the leading convergent network solutions provider.