On April 30, we received a communique from an executive at Ketchum Sampark for a financial services major. The signature in the email said that agency was the winner of PRWeek’s Best Places to Work survey in 2022. For, since then it appears to be a downward slide for the agency that Bela Rajan founded in 1994 and husband N S Rajan joined her to take it to dizzying heights.
Earlier this week, the teams were told that the agency will shut shop, a majority of the team would need to leave, and a few key folks will service clients as they merge with the network’s PR agency FleishmanHillard (FH). FH doesn’t really have much of a footprint in India, and when last heard some of the staff and clients of Ketchum Sampark were looking elsewhere.
In its heydays, Sampark was counted among the Top 5 communication consultancies in the country, and in the Top 2/3 in financial and crisis communications. Some of the biggest names in the financial sector were clients of the Rajans. Even corporates like Bajaj Auto swore by Sampark and the Rajans.
Little wonder that when Omnicom’s Ketchum was looking for a partner in India, the obvious choice was Sampark. In an interview with MxMIndia in December 2011, a few months after acquisition, Rajan told MxMIndia: “We have been working with Ketchum for more than three years now so this tie-up is actually a formalisation of our relationship. We have been very comfortable with the cultural match. I think philosophically, Ketchum and Sampark have always had the same focus in terms of client deliveries, choice of clients, etc so there were a lot of similarities between us.”
The Rajans quit the agency in 2021, after 27 years of spearheading it. In August, a month-odd before their final goodbye, NS Rajan addressed his teams in a mail: ““Bela and I will surely watch from far and cheer the success of Ketchum Sampark and each one of you.” On Tuesday, when many of his team members were shocked to learn of the inevitable, Bela and NS were on a holiday in distant Scotland. We are sure the evening would’ve ended in a stiff drink to rue the state of their loved one.
At the time of publication, there has been no communication from Ketchum Sampark, Ketchum or Omnicom. So we don’t really know how the developments are going to be projected and/or dressed up.
Staff, we hear, have been asked to report to work, and that it will be business as usual for another two months.