Vol. 3 :: No. 1 December, 2000 (Mangsir-poush)

Corporate

Welcome Ad Welcome MNCs

At a time when e-commerce and e-business are buzz words, advertising agencies need to go into e-publicity. You must be Internet based or you will not survive." This is what Nirmal Paudel, CEO of Welcome Advertising and Marketing Pvt. Ltd. thinks should be the future course of action for the ad agencies.

The ever-growing significance of electronics in business and commerce, and even our daily life, is only too obvious. With the Kantipur Online, a media house (Kantipur Publications) has already made inroads into the e-side of things. But so far no ad agency has been able to take any lead in the field, states Paudel. Which is a bit of a surprise considering that Kantipur Publications has already established tariffs regarding publicity through its web site.

Paudel however claims that his ad agency, Welcome, is equipped with the expertise and skilled manpower to go into e-marketing should any of his clients so demand. After being present in the field for some ten years, Welcome boasts of a manpower team of fair quality. And perhaps where the agency scores over other ad agencies is that it does almost all publicity related activities in-house. This not only includes releasing advertisements and coming up with concepts of commercials for print and electronic media, but also producing animated ads. "Welcome is in fact the only ad agency in Nepal that is equipped to handle all these various activities in-house. Not even multinational agencies can boast of that", says Paudel.

As far as animated commercials go, the Lion Battery and Lion King Battery campaigns are two of Welcome’s success stories. Then there is also the Ramba noodles’ ad, which, in relation to the cost incurred in making the ad, is a very good one and has been well appreciated.

What Welcome has also been doing is trying to make Nepali companies see the benefit and need of advertising, says the agency’s CEO. As things stand today – or a few years ago – Nepali companies do not understand the concept, idea or importance of brand advertising, and so they had no budget allocation for publicity and media activities. " And so we proposed a number of such companies to advertise and pay for it only after witnessing the response it creates," relates Paudel. Fortunately, he adds, all the projects Welcome undertook this way have been successful.

Paudel:Not afraid of MNCs

Paudel is, in fact, not satisfied with the culture of the ad world that exists in Nepal. He views that companies should project publicity campaigns to ad agencies as challenges, promising them a certain percentage of the profit the product advertised secures. " Welcome is ready to take that kind of project, invest money and mobilize manpower to ensure market success of any product we handle, " claims he. That is the way things work in Europe and even in India. But according to Paudel, no company has ever tried such a strategy in Nepal. On the contrary, companies here are more concerned about finding ways of cheap publicity of their products, Paudel comments.

And most of the time, this strategy comes down to bargaining with ad agencies to forsake certain percentage of the commission they derive from the media on releasing the advertisement. And he admits that the ploy does work on most occasions because the company can easily find a second ad agency which is ready to offer as much as 10 or 12 percentage discount from its 15 percentage ad release commission. Paudel relates the Sarada Group’s Super Rambo Soap story where, according to him, he had come up with the concept for the ad, shot the clips and was ready to release the ad. The company, however, wanted a discount from the release fee, thus leading to Welcome’s withdrawal from the campaign.

Another prominent success for Welcome has been the triangular Bill Board dorning the top of Kantipur Publications’ Complex. Welcome was selected to do the job from a horde of other ad agencies. "And, of course, we had to go through a lot of difficulties in completing the work, which makes the success even sweeter," says Paudel. Cutting a long story short, Paudel explains how he had to contact the parent Bill Board Company, MMT, which further led to getting in touch with the company’s subsidiaries in Australia and Malaysia. The dealership of MMT was just given to a firm in Calcutta to which Welcome was filally referred to. " We went there only to find that the firm there was still in preparation for business," he recalls. "So it was up to us to initiate the project on our own. But we did it successfully, " says Paudel with pride

For an establishment that began with no investment or expert manpower, Welcome has come a long way. With its own sister concerns to look after hoarding boards, production activities and so on, the agency is almost self – sufficient and on par with any multinational agency operating here. If anything, we can now only do better, states the agency’s CEO confidently.

Contrary to the complaints that many of the other ad agencies existing in Nepal have about the entry of multinational ad agencies, Welcome Ad welcomes the MNCs. "They have been setting standards of various ad related jobs and the rates, and the local ad agencies have been benefiting from that", he views. According to him, the MNCs have been promoting the concept across the business establishments that advertisement pays. So there is nothing to fear from the entry of MNCs, Paudel thinks. As the tendency goes among the advertisers here, they prefer the MNCs just because they feel that the MNCs are able to give international quality ad.

"But we in Welcome have established that we can offer similar international standard ads". To prove his point, Paudel gives the example of King’s Pride whiskey’s ad featuring foreigners as models. Looking at the ad, very few people believe that it was entirely produced within Nepal itself. "We assure all our clients that similar quality and standards, including the models and all, await for them at Welcome", concludes Welcome Ad CEO.

Prismark into IT

Previously functional as only direct marketing agency under the shadow of Prisma Ad, Prismark marketing has been revived and is now all ready to serve its client as a full fledged advertising agency. Its promoters (Pawan Pradhan and Rajendra Singh) now enter also into the IT sector as a V-SAT provider and ISP. With its core base still in advertising, the IT cum ad agency network is to be run as a holding company under the name Namche Networks, according to the company’s Managing Director Pawan Pradhan. In a horde of some 200 players (some put the figure at 300 plus), it is necessary that ad agencies introduce new ideas and schemes all the time.

Pradhan claims that his ad agency was among the first to introduce direct marketing in Nepal. If client portfolio can be taken as the parameter for success, Prisma can be said to be quite successful since it boasts of such companies and brands as Johnson & Johnson, Perfetti, Kodak, Merico Industries, Elder Pharmaceuticals, Agriculture Inputs Corporation, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Election Commission, Sumy Distillery, NFCC (PSS/N) and Nepal CRS Company as its clients.

The IT venture is another novel move, claims Pradhan. He reveals that the new venture called for an investment of about Rs. 30 million. Apart from purchasing the basic infrastructure for the establishment (which has mostly come from USA), the company was also required to pay some Rs. 2.5 million to the government to acquire the V-SAT provider’s licence.

Operating as an ISP will not be very easy, admits Pradhan. There are some 16 Internet service providers already doing business, and some have even stretched their arms outside the capital. This will mean that a new entrant will have to come in with something extra. V-SAT will do that for his company, Pradhan thinks. Pradhan points out that although all ISPs do need a V-SAT network, only about six have the network as of now. With Namche being one of them, the advantage is obviously there.

Moreover, Pradhan points out, Namche’s strategy also focuses on the international market with plans to go into web-hosting and web designing. "So although it might take time, we are confident that we will be successful," he says.

Figures reveal that India exported some US$ 40 billion worth of IT business to the United States last year. And even if the Nepali company obtains a small percentage of that business, it will mean big money. And prospects appear bright for Namche since its principle financier, promoter and Chairman is a US-based IT engineer, Manish Lal Pradhan. There are in fact companies in USA showing interest in financing Namche, says Pradhan and adds that negotiations in the direction are going on.

With dual service business of information technology and advertising agency, Namche also looks to engage itself in such activities as promoting Nepal abroad. Although the company is primarily looking at banking institutions and other private sector institutions as its targeted market, Pradhan says that in future, he will also explore ways to introduce IT in the education sector with special attention to schools and colleges outside Kathmandu valley.

Pradhan feels that although the ad agency business has got a face-lift due to the entry of multi-national companies in the last two or three years, the sector is still stagnant. And because advertising is also about information and communication, he hopes that his new venture will create new avenues for the whole market.

Established in 1995, Prismark was being run jointly by Pradhan and his friends Ranjit Acharya and Rajendra Singh. Meanwhile, Singh went Philippines for further studies and upon return joined Thompson Nepal, a multinational ad agency, as its Director (Strategic Planning). Over the period Acharya got separated and it so happened that Prisma Ad went to Acharya. Resultantly, Singh left Thompson and in partnership with Pradhan started reviving Prismark and set on foot the new venture called Namche Networks.

Corporate | Cover Features | Opinion Poll | Economy & Policy | Inner-view | Entertainment | Management | Sectoral | Marketing | Health | Business News | Stock Market | Recent Launches | World Brief | Last Word | Main | Column |