Tata Salt meets creative agencies

Leo Burnett is the incumbent on the account.

Tata Salt has initiated a creative pitch and is in conversation with a few leading ad agencies. The agency currently handling the account is Leo Burnett India.

The pitch process began a few weeks back. Highly placed industry sources have confirmed the news to afaqs!.

Recall that Tata Salt was one of the brand names associated with this year's post-Goafest controversy. Leo Burnett, the agency with both, the highest number of awards and golds, as per the original awards tally, withdrew two of its winning entries for Tata Salt Lite, several days after the awards ceremony.

The withdrawal came in the wake of a debate within the Goafest Awards Governing Council (AGC) regarding the nature of these entries; some were of the opinion that these ads were created 'proactively' and entered in the competition in a dubious manner. The agency withdrew the winning entries in a move to avoid such unwanted insinuations.

This move to recant the entries brought the agency's overall awards tally down from 71 to 67.The two withdrawn ads were titled 'Office' and 'Society' and had won two gold and two silver awards in the Radio and Radio Craft categories.

Sources claim the brand's decision to initiate a creative pitch was motivated, in part, by this incident.

For the record, Tata Salt was launched in 1983 as India's first branded iodised salt. Though the brand has had several taglines since its launch, the most memorable one remains 'Desh ka Namak'. Products within the Tata Salt portfolio include regular Tata Salt, Tata Salt Lite, Tata Salt Flavoritz and Tata Salt Plus.