After two bad years of lost accounts, defecting people, et al., Anthem is back on track. Or is it?

By Shamni Pande

Just when it looks like things can't get any better, they usually go bad. Murphy didn't say that. Nor did a gentleman who goes by the name Kariath George John. But the 54-year old whose business card reads Chairman & Managing Director Anthem/TBWA could well have.

April, 1998, and Anthem was a happening ad agency. Its billings for the year 1997-98 had touched Rs 60 crore, making it the 20th largest agency in India's then Rs 6,000-crore advertising industry. And its rise from relative obscurity didn't go unnoticed. In August, 1998, TBWA Worldwide, part of the $26-billion advertising conglomerate Omnicom, picked up a 51 per cent stake in it.

March, 2001, and things are far from well at the agency. Its estimated billings for 2000-2001 are Rs 105 crore (billings for 1999-2000: Rs 85 crore), and it is three years behind its articulated objective of touching Rs 100 crore in billings. Worse, Anthem/TBWA has lost accounts like Sony, PSI, and HBO in the past year; some of its best and brightest have defected to other agencies; and John looks a tired man.

The inability to find a good number 2 to John has been one of the agency's failings. In November, 1999, its then Chief Executive Navroze Dhondy moved to Percept as Chief Executive Officer. Then Madhukar Kamath, who was supposed to join it in February, 1999, as President & CEO, was snapped up by Bates India. ''Then,'' rues John, ''we hired Sanjay Nayak in June, 1999, as President & CEO, but he didn't fit into our work culture'' Admits Nayak, now heading McCann-Erickson, Delhi: ''I agree that I did not fit into the work culture at Anthem/TBWA.''

That told on Anthem/TBWA's ability to retain clients. Like Electrolux, whose account it lost in December, 2000. ''We told the agency we were unhappy with the work they were doing on the Electrolux brand, but things reached a stage where despite repeated communication no results were visible,'' explains Anand Bhardwaj, Executive Vice-President, Marketing, Electrolux-Voltas, who's quick to give the agency credit for the work it did on the Allwyn brand.

Circa 2001, the agency may have discovered the ideal first mate in Kurien Mathews, who will now head Anthem/TBWA's two biggest branches, Delhi and Mumbai. The move seems to have worked: the agency is now speaking of billings of Rs 140 crore in 2001-02. And both John and Mathew are counting on the interactive division (estimated contribution to billings in 2000-01: Rs 11 crore) to make things better. ''This division,'' boasts Mathews, ''will serve as a sort of backend internet factory for the rest of our offices.'' Its reputation within the TBWA Worldwide family enhanced by the Swire Group (a HK-based business conglomerate, this includes Cathay Pacific and premium shopping malls) account it won in October, 2000, the division could do just that.

Still, by elevating Mathews, one of the founders of Anthem to the post, John may have only found a temporary respite to the agency's people problems. He himself is due to retire by 2003, and wants to ''put a decent succession plan in place before that''. What that plan is, John refuses to say (although the ad-industry grapevine is abuzz that it will be Mathews): ''Every time I talk, things go wrong.'' Maybe, this time they won't.

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