Draftfcb Ulka commemorates 50 years of existence with coffee-table book

The agency has released 'Building Brandwealth', a coffee table book for existing and potential clients, agencies, vendors, and stakeholders to celebrate the brand building philosophy that it stands for.

Draftfcb Ulka completed 50 years of existence in 2011, and the celebrations seem to be continuing. The agency has unveiled a coffee-table book for existing and potential clients, the agency's global counterparts, vendors that the agency deals with regularly, and other stakeholders. The book, which is titled 'Building Brandwealth - without hiding behind excuses', is a collection of some of the agency's best pieces of work over the last 50 years.

Spanning eight chapters, the book delves a little into the agency's history in India, and touches upon some iconic campaign cases for brands such as Amul, Tata Motors, Ceat, Zandu Balm, Nerolac, Sundrop, and Tata Docomo. There is also a chapter on the agency's varied offerings, including its media counterpart Lodestar Media.

The book is the creation of the Draftfcb Ulka team, headed by M G Parameswaran, executive director and chief executive officer, Draftfcb Ulka, and the agency's national creative director, K S Chakravarthy. Chax opines, "Ulka has a rich history of making brands famous. The book is full of stories of how we have created brandwealth for clients, and hence, the book's name." The philosophy of the book is based on the thought 'Making clients rich, making brands famous'.

Parameswaran tells afaqs!, "This is a book that can be referred to by generations to come. The colourful book showcases what we have done, and how we do it. This is just a selective glimpse of the things we have done; the entire volume of our work would run into hundreds and hundreds of pages!"

The chapters are varied; while one chapter deals with 'consistency' and staying with a proposition over years (with a little tweaking), another chapter talks of cases where 'discontinuous branding' is the order of the day, where going against the grain is the requirement to make noise in a category.

Another chapter is on insights, and Naukri.com's 'Hari Sadu' is a commercial that fits here, with the 'people leave bosses, not jobs' insight. There is also a chapter on tools and techniques devised by the agency, while another one deals with the Draftfcb Ulka family.

The 'excuses' bit in the title of the book is to affirm the agency's thinking that there is always an excuse for not doing things, and agencies land up becoming risk-averse. "But, the book deals with how we have created brandwealth without hiding behind excuses," says Haresh Moorjani, group creative director, Draftfcb Ulka, who has devised the copy of the book. The artwork, which is a mix of bright colours and gives the book a less serious, more cheerful feel, has been conceptualised by Mehul Patil.

"No two pages in the book look alike, and we have added elements such as humorous stickers, posters, and bookmarks, to make the book even more intriguing," says Moorjani.