Coca Cola hires MSLGroup for India PR mandate

 1st July 2015    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

After a six-month long pitching process which included outgoing agency Perfect Relations, Coca Cola India has taken on MSLGroup India to handle its PR mandate.

In a blog post, Kamlesh Kumar Sharma, director, corporate communications for Coca-Cola India and south west Asia said, “ Six months ago, we had invited a selection of key communication agencies in India, including our existing agency to bring their best thinking to Coca-Cola. The idea was to brainstorm, so that we were better equipped to create the kind of content that our stakeholders and consumers have come to expect of us. We wanted to harness the thinking of some of the best agency minds. We were open to all ideas! As it turned out, the best idea came from outside our current system. We have decided to take it ahead.”

Sharma goes to say that, “As we take a pause in our relationship with Perfect Relations - our current PR Agency on record, it is with excitement and anticipation that we welcome MSLGroup India into our fold. MSL Group, Publicis and their affiliates already work for us in India and many parts of the world and hence neither of us are strangers to each other. But then, any beginning is a first!”
 

Praising Perfect Relations for its past work, Sharma says, “It will take us some time to get used to not having the Perfect Relations staff around, arguing passionately, pitching ideas, provoking reactions, challenging our theories and assumptions. But I hope that they continue to keep us on the edge, even if it is from beyond the fence, much the same way as over the last decade.”