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Triton Group acquires Mumbai agency

Purvita Chatterjee

MUMBAI, Sept. 18

THE Rs 250-crore Triton Group has acquired a local ad agency, the Mumbai-based Metaphor Ltd, to take care of its conflicting accounts within a particular industry. Positioning Metaphor as a `creative boutique', the acquired agency will include upmarket b rands like Benzer in its portfolio.

According to Mr Ali Merchant, Director, Triton Communications Pvt Ltd, ``It will be a purely creative agency handling some of our high-profile brands.'' For instance, Triton, which does the creatives for Shaw Wallace's Haywards beer, has offloaded its co mpetitor's (Millennium AlcoBev) beer brand of Zingaro to Metaphor.

Targeting a turnover of Rs 10 crore over the next one year, Metaphor has big names in creativity like Rafeeq Ellias (its former owner) and Mangesh Rane working in it. Hitherto a small agency with turnover of Rs 1.5 crore, the takeover by Triton, should s ee its turnover surging.

Though it had Indian clients like Benzer earlier, it had also been undertaking adhoc project-based assignments abroad.

Adds Mr Merchant, ``Unlike an agency which charges a commission on its ads released, Metaphor will have a combination of both fixed fees as well as commission, depending on the client it is working for.''

In the recent past, the Group has floated its interactive company -- Tritonet. It is expected to offer its clients services in not only Web designing and Web advertising, but also incorporate e-commerce, software development, networking, virtual private networks, interactive multimedia Web sites, business process re-engineering, intranets, multimedia Cds and presentations.

Adds Mr Merchant, ``Though we know that online advertising can never take over conventional media, we still want to be ready with our services.'' Tritonet has clients like Eureka Forbes, Kiwi Footwear and NRB Bearings under its fold.

Meanwhile, the group's flagship company -- the Rs 140-crore Triton Communications -- is beefing up its rural communications division. The one-year-old division is offering services like video vans, haat shows, mela sponsorships, folk theatre promotions, wall paintings, outdoor hoardings, wall paintings, village signages and sponsorships and door-to-door promotions.

Unlike bigger agencies like Lintas (Linterland) and Ogilvy & Mather (O&M Rural), who have floated their own rural divisions through the backing of its biggest FMCG account-holder, Hindustan Lever Ltd, Triton is a solitary Indian advertising agency which is steadily expanding its range of rural services in spite of no major MNC support.

In fact, today most corporates fulfill their rural communications needs and the need for `specialists' in this area is just emerging.

``We are targeting a turnover of Rs 15 crores from this division and intend spinning it off as a separate company in the future,'' says Mr Merchant, who wants to emerge as the top three rural communications service providers in the country.

He adds, ``Communications activities are constrained by the existing distribution set within companies. Triton will be looking at this distribution chain and enhancing it, making it a thrust area in its marketing strategy.''

For instance, it has bagged Tata Tea as a client and undertaken door-to-door sampling and conversion from other competitive brands to Tata tea. ``We have achieved conversion of 25 per cent in all markets, with 48 per cent conversion in Kerala. This is th e highest performance achieved for any door-to-door campaign for Tata Tea, says Mr Merchant. It has also undertaken product sampling and spot-selling at tea shops in 10,000 plus population villages through van operations.

Triton Rural will focus on villages with population ranging between 1,000 to 5,000, constituting nearly 55.54 per cent of the total population. Today, its current portfolio of rural clients include Tata Tea, Shell Renewables, Tempo Tractors, Du Pont, esc orts, Yamaha, Novino Batteries and TI cycles.

There are statistics which reveal that rural markets comprise 48 crore adults as against 18 crore adults in urban pockets.

Highlights Mr Merchant, ``The rural markets are still relatively untapped. It is expected to be worth Rs 8,000 crore in terms of communication services.'' Although HLL has been active in rural markets along with smaller companies dealing in agro products , it is recently that a communications package has been put together and implemented professionally, with agencies taking responsibility for its implementation and feedback.

Triton's other group companies include Drachma Direct (for telemarketing and direct sales), Viking Video (marketing and production of television software) and Abacus(for public Relations).