J Walter Thompson bags Sony SIX, Sony ESPN business

The agency has been awarded the mainline and digital duties for both the sports brands

J Walter Thompson, Mumbai, has won the creative mandate for both the mainline and digital duties of Sony SIX, a premier sports entertainment channel, as well as for Sony ESPN. The account was won following a multi-agency pitch led by the agency's chief creative officer Senthil Kumar.

As a part of the pitch process, the agency was required to make the channels synonymous with one of the key sports that the channels broadcast. The approach was an engagement-based plan focussing purely on the passion for the game.

Sharing the development, Rajesh Gangwani, senior vice-president and managing partner, J Walter Thompson, says, "We have a mad bunch of passionate sports fans in our office and in the pitch, we more than brought alive the passion for the game. This was a fun pitch and the fact that we approached it with an engagement lens differentiated it. This makes this win special, as we have not just been awarded the mainline mandate, but also the digital mandate for both brands."

Sony SIX is a premier sports entertainment channel that was launched in 2012 and claims to be the first sports channel owned and operated by Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN). Recently, SPN expanded its sports cluster in collaboration with ESPN to launch the Sony ESPN cluster of channels.

J Walter Thompson claims to be South Asia's leading marketing communications agency that creates solutions that build brands and businesses, across its network in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The group companies that comprise the South Asia network are Geometry Global |Encompass Network for Experiential Marketing, Hungama Digital Services, a digital advertising and promotion marketing agency, Social Wavelength, now, Mirum India, a social media agency, Contract Advertising, an integrated and independent communications company that specialises in advertising, consulting, design and digital, and ADK Fortune, also an independent agency, that is an equal partnership between Asatsu-DK of Japan and the WPP Group.