Textile brand moves $7m brief to BBDO

RK Swamy/BBDO Advertising will work on Raymond's retail and corporate advertising, and the work will focus on the brand's suit collection, including Lineage Line and Renaissance. The brand's suit range is targeted at the upper class segment of the market.

Bcom3's Ambience D'Arcy Advertising will continue to handle Raymond India's other business, the retailing of apparel brands Park Avenue and Parx.

Raymond's total advertising budget is estimated to be worth more than US$9.3 million.

Details of the multi-agency pitch were not disclosed. However, it is known that the pitch process took almost half-a-year to complete.

"Raymond is a brilliant company and a great brand,

said Sangeetha Shetty, executive vice-president of RK Swamy/BBDO.

The assignment is far from simple as Raymond, launched in 1925, has been successfully built over the years by Enterprise Nexus.

Enterprise had worked on the flagship account by stressing the quality of the fabrics, the threads of which are so fine that just one kilogram of wool from the famed Merino sheep yields more than 140,000 metres of yarn.

Raymond India has adopted a successful positioning statement - 'The Complete Man' - for more than a decade. But it is not known if this positioning will change with the change of agency.

The company has traditionally used celebrities such as top-ranked chess grand master Vishwanathan Anand and the world's leading billiards player Geet Sethi as its brand ambassadors.