India: St Luke's staffs up as new Bangalore branch launches

MUMBAI: St Luke's India has taken on Porus Jose and Manish Kosambia as a creative team from Rediffusion DYR, and is opening its first branch office in Bangalore. The team from Rediffusion has worked on brands such as Colgate and Axe deodorant, and have 20 years of experience with agencies that include Saatchi & Saatchi, Lowe and J. Walter Thompson.

The development is seen as something of a turnaround in St Luke's fortunes in India, whose operations to a small extent mirrored the turbulence faced by the agency internationally; while the London office saw the ouster of founder Andy Law and creative director Kate Stanners, a large part of St Luke's creative team in India walked out on the agency about a year ago.

However, St Luke's India CEO Praveen Kenneth downplayed the rough patch the agency had gone through: "I think it is inappropriate to say we lost a large part of our creative team, as we were still a very small bunch of people then. Today, we are a 52-member team of which creatives comprise a staff of 20, with nine being mid-level creative people and four are creative directors."

The Bangalore office will pursue what Kenneth called the "substantial enquiries and opportunities in the market".

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