To supplement his skills, Raj joined a small advtg. Agency where he learned the basics of advertising, handling clients like Crompton, Khaitan, Kelvinator among others.

Then came the big break, Raj was selected to join the The Times of India group, at Bangalore where he spent the next seven years of his working life. At The Times of India, Raj had the unique distinction of being promoted every year from an entry level executive to a Manager, the youngest at the time. The business also grew from a mere Rs.39 L annually, in ’90 to over Rs.16 crores in ’95. Along the way, Raj was also awarded the ‘Best Manager’ in 1994 for growing the business by over a 100% in a single year.

Raj decided to go back to his roots, that of creating and building brands when advertising itself was going through a momentous phase. He joined Fountainhead Communications as an Account Group Manager and continuously rose to become the business head in Chennai. During this time, clients like DishnetDSL, Aircel and Nutrine aligned more business with the agency helping it grow by a phenomenal 150%. Almost every single brand that was handled by Fountainhead at that time grew despite stiff competition from MNCs including Hindustan Lever.

Raj’s category knowledge spans shampoos and soaps to beauty products in the FMCG sector, high-end software, ISPs in the broadband business and consumer durables like furniture and pumps. Raj believes that this experience of actual selling combined with the soft skills of branding and strategy implementation will help derive genuinely workable solutions for clients.

Raj has been the primary driver of Brand Portrait and the agency’s foray into the digital space with Brand Portrait Digital. Here the company adopts a unique model where it charges clients only for results and not mere visibility. This means that the agency has to be spot on in its analysis of what will elicit a response and provoke action. Brand Portrait Digital has already worked with clients as diverse as HDFC Forex and HDFC Securities, GetFriday (A concierge service), MPINGI (Broadband Telephony), Polaris (recruitment) and Dupont (Signage and Cookware) etc. and procured impressive results.

The smaller the budget, the bigger the challenge. Venu has worked on launching everything from a pair of jeans (Trigger) to bicycles with shock absorbers (Rockshox) to a Malayalam satellite channel (Asianet) to pens (Reynolds Bold).

He has worked with a wide variety of clients and from businesses as ancient as fragrances (Bush Boake Allen) to the broadband Internet (Dishnet DSL). Every client has been an education and every campaign an adventure. Possibly the most renowned success has come with Fairever, a fairness cream pitted against the mighty brand from HLL, Fair & Lovely. In one short year, Fairever rose to become the second largest fairness cream with a 14% market share. That this success was achieved with a fraction of the category leader’s budget was a matter of great satisfaction.

The establishment of Brand Portrait as an agency to be reckoned with has proved to be a source of quiet satisfaction. A vindication of the belief that agencies need to be accountable to their clients and their craft. This is reflected in the fact that almost all of Brand Portrait’s new businesses have come from referrals by existing clients. Whether it was recruiting thousands for Verizon Data Services India or building the MPINGI brand among Indians in the US, the agency has found the clients it was dreaming about.

Venu believes that advertising is going through a sea change today. The old formulae are not working anymore and clients are demanding results of a much higher order in a much shorter span.

The other belief is that agencies get the clients they deserve, not the other way around. If clients have never seen their advertising get results, they have no reason to believe anything that agencies say. They will continue to believe that it is a mystery art practiced by some smooth talking shamans.

On the other hand, when advertising works, clients tend to believe agencies that say less and do more. Trust is a quality that is neither easy to get or to retain.