Telenor Pakistan has named Ogilvy as its creative agency in Pakistan, following a lengthy creative review that started in April 2020.
As reported by Profit, by August 2020 the creative review had shortlisted Adcom Leo Burnett and IAL Saatchi & Saatchi to potentially take over its communication design, interactive design, and concepts. Ogilvy first won Telenor Pakistan as a client in 2017 after it had been under Adcom Leo Burnett for nearly a decade.
“We feel proud, more than happy, that we have achieved and won, with God’s will, another opportunity to work, learn, and grow with Telenor Pakistan,” said Asim Naqvi, CEO of Ogilvy in Pakistan, in a statement to Profit.
Sources at Telenor told Profit that Ogilvy will be expected to help the Norwegian multinational telecommunications company maintain the leadership position in Pakistan while strengthening the current positioning even further and building deeper connections with end consumers.
Telenor Pakistan also named IAL Saatchi & Saatchi as its boutique agency for undertaking a share of the creative scope of work pertaining to smaller-scale projects.
“We are feeling blue and we couldn’t be happier’, said Imtisal Abbasi, managing partner at IAL Saatchi & Saatchi. “And we are ready to hit the ground running.”
Sources told Profit that Telenor held a boutique agency pitch that ran parallel to the creative review, which Ogilvy did not participate in. As the boutique agency, IAL Saatchi & Saatchi will be expected to help Telenor with smaller projects that are outside the scope of Ogilvy.
“This is a big win for us and we are excited to start working with the incredibly dynamic marketing team at Telenor who have chosen us to partner with them on the journey ahead,” said Nida Haider, partner at IAL Saatchi & Saatchi.
She told Profit that Telenor has appointed IAL Saatchi & Saatchi as one of the strategic and creative partners for their corporate, commercial, and strategic challenges, adding that agency services will be utilized at their discretion as with any other client.
Ogilvy has been serving Telenor for three years to date and was named the most effective agency network in the Asia Pacific region according to the 2020 Effie Index from Effie Worldwide. WPP, the parent company of Ogilvy, was named the most effective worldwide marketer for the fourth year in a row.
In Pakistan, Ogilvy won 12 awards at the Effie Pakistan awards, for its work across Nestle, Shan Foods, Bank Alfalah, Telenor Pakistan, and Coca-Cola Pakistan, to name a few. It was also named agency of the year while Telenor Pakistan was named marketer of the year.
As the winning creative agency, Ogilvy will continue to work with brand & media teams at Telenor Pakistan along with Brainchild Communications Pakistan (BCP), the media agency of record. A subsidiary of Z2C Limited, BCP is better known for being the media agency that helped PTI win the 2018 elections.
The mobile data and digital services provider reportedly took a hit on the back of the C19 outbreak, with an 11pc decrease in subscriptions and traffic revenues for the second quarter of 2020. As reported by Profit, the company’s quarterly revenues stood at Rs24.2 billion, as compared to Rs26.2 billion during the same period last year.
