Job fizz in cola advertising wars

NEW DELHI: The ad industry is abuzz with news of a high-level defection in the cola advertising campaign war. Prasoon Joshi, creative director at McCann-Erickson India—and the brain behind Coca-Cola’s commercials—has been approached by Hindustan Thompson Associates, Pepsi Food’s official agency.
According to industry sources, HTA chief Mike Khanna and PepsiCo chief Rajiv Bakshi approached Joshi to join HTA and handle the national ad campaigns of Pepsi Foods.And, Joshi is expected to sign on the dotted line soon.
When contacted, Joshi admitted that HTA has approached him to join the agency as a national creative head. However, he maintained that nothing has been finalised. “HTA is looking for a creative head and these meetings are normal in the advertising world. At present, I am working with McCann Erickson,� said Joshi, who has also been a lyricist with Silk Route and Shubha Mudgal. However, industry sources said that it’s almost certain that Joshi is joining HTA to handle mainly the Pepsi account.
For Coca-Cola, losing Joshi would be a setback as the latter has been the driving force behind its recent Thanda matlab Coca-Cola campaign. Coke has been pushing this campaign and is planning a follow-up series in view of its popularity. Industry observers maintained that this campaign has been able to take spotlight away from Pepsi’s campaigns and even from Coke’s own main Life ho to aisi campaign. There has been a re-thinking in Coke on whether to give priority to thanda campaign over the other one.
Meanwhile, if Joshi were to join HTA, he would definitely be working on Pepsi’s push for the cricket world cup.