If you read this report a little while back – as the url indicates, we got it wrong. One Source has been known to be a popular WhatsApp-based forum for communication professionals in PR agencies as also amongst corporate communications professionals. We had written that the One Source founders have now turned the platform to launch what they claim as India’s first integrated marketing consultancies. As we now learn, while the name of both – the Whatsapp forum and the consultancy – is the same, the two are actually different. The forum is a not-for-profit and the firm is, we guess, all for profit.
Also, only two of the consultancy firm founders – Sandeep Rao and Srishty Chawla – ran the Whatsapp group. For the firm, industry professionals across branding, films and animation, content marketing, digital marketing and public relations, Sandeep Rao, Srishty Chawla, Anup Kamath and Kunal Rao have joined hands to start the firm. The firm, notes a communique, will bring distinctly different tools and channels of storytelling under one roof, breaking the monopoly of PR firms providing digital services, advertising agencies providing PR services and the like.
Here’s what the four co-founders have had to say:
Sandeep Rao: “Clients’ objectives evolve, challenges change and new threats emerge at an exponential pace in today’s world. For us, it is the end objective that is focal, as we backward integrate a solution, becoming the One Source of marketing solutions for brands.”
Srishty Chawla: “If a brand’s name can be effortlessly replaced in its message house with its competitors’, it runs the risk of coming third in a two-horse race. This is where personalised integrated brand strategy will help brands achieve their business goals.”
Anup Kamath: “Only unique ideas which aren’t products of a cookie-cutter mindset deserve audience’ dwindling attention spans. It takes courage to place the core idea and flawless execution centrestage. That, and abstinence from vanity metrics.”
Kunal Rao: “There are enough and more service line-specialised firms now looking to get into other channels of marketing as these channels grow. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make for expertise. Clients today need media-agnostic solutions by specialists.”