R K Swamy BBDO bags creative duties of MagicBricks.com

The property portal will launch a new campaign soon.

MagicBricks.com, the property portal of The Times Group, has appointed R K Swamy BBDO to handle its creative mandate. The agency won the account after intense competition from other agencies in a pitch that lasted for two months. Interestingly, this is the first time the brand has initiated a formal agency pitch.

MagicBricks' creative duties were earlier serviced by Kolkata-based agency Genesis Advertising.

Sudhir Pai, business head, MagicBricks.com, says that R K Swamy BBDO came closest to the marketing goals and the brief given for the brand. "We decided to hold a formal pitch because we wanted an agency which will provide the entire end to end creative solution for us. We expected the agency to carry out market research, define the brand's position, and then execute a communication strategy," says Pai.

The brand intends to launch its new campaign soon.

Sunil Kukreti, senior partner, R K Swamy BBDO, says, "This is an interesting category with a huge canvas available for creativity. We will make the most of this opportunity by creating interesting clutter-breaking work for MagicBricks."

MagicBricks.com was set up in 2006 and offers information regarding buying, renting and selling of real estate projects and properties and has customised features and tools to help users in making the right decision when buying a property. According to a comScore report last year, MagicBricks.com topped the property portal chart on the basis of traffic reported on the site. The brand launched its second multi-media campaign after this, which introduced the brand's mascot, Rajan.

This integrated communication campaign was launched after a gap of four years and focused on the maximum property options or listings MagicBricks offered. The earlier campaign 'Ghar baithe, ghar dhoondo' stressed on convenience and ease of looking for property online. The brand's core target customer is males aged 26 and above living across 20-30 top cities of India.

Although online property portals have been around for the last six-seven years, the category has seen most growth in the last two to three years. Pai adds that the category is showing robust growth of 40-50 per cent per annum.