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Thursday, 31 October 2019 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
From left: M.D. Anushal Dhilanja, a schoolboy; Supun Rangana Abeywickrama, a Project Engineer; Sewwandi Nawarathne, a mother and housewife; Terry and Lilamani Dias Benson, Founders of Lowe LDB and Trevine Fernandopulle, a retired Senior Executive cutting the ribbon to declare open MullenLowe’s new agency LoweLintas and all its verticals at No.3 1/1, Austin Place, Colombo 8 – Pix by Lasantha Kumara
By Charumini de Silva
MullenLowe Group Sri Lanka yesterday launched its sister agency LoweLintas and revealed that it was poised to grow exponentially in spite of downward economic conditions.
MullenLowe and LoweLintas will operate independently of each other. In addition to these verticals, the MullenLowe Group relaunched its brand activation and public relations arms as LoweActive and LowePublic respectively. It also formalised its specialist digital arm as an expert offering with the unveiling of LoweDigital. This yields a total of five independent verticals 
under the MullenLowe Group.
“By opening the new office we will grow exponentially. In just four years, MullenLowe Sri Lanka grew by 20% year-on-year and with our new business, 2019 is slated to be its best year ever,” MullenLowe Group Sri Lanka CEO Thayalan Bartlett told the Daily FT.
He said the company was expected to grow by 29% over 2018 and 7% over its budgeted revenue for this year, countering the downward economic trends experienced by many agencies within the industry.
He added that the company would continue to recruit new talent over the next six months and soon shift some of its existing talent at MullenLowe to LoweLintas. Currently, the agency has over 70 employees within the Mullen Lowe Group and of that 25 will be immediately moved to LoweLintas.
LoweLintas also hopes to break even or exceed the group’s expectation within an ambitious span of two years.
Bartlett noted that in economic conditions such as these, marketers wanted their brands to be brave. He said that as a leading agency, MullenLowe had been eager to respond to this call.
“We have upped our offering by hyper-bundling our areas of expertise to meet the challenges of our times. There is no better time to boldly invest in our beliefs than when the economy is not at its best. This is our small contribution to bringing about optimism with purpose for Sri Lanka and our clients,” he added.
Bartlett declared that while many agencies were struggling to stay in business, MullenLowe had continued to dominate in 80% of the top 10 advertising categories and 50% of the top 20 advertising categories for three consecutive years, making it the single largest creative agency in the country.
“When an economy is down, the private sector is more agile and better placed to respond than the public sector. We want to bravely support this by setting flight to enterprise with the formation of the MullenLowe Group in troubled times, which we feel is a timely decision as we stand poised for an economic revival in 2020,” he said.
He stressed that the company doubled its revenue in four years, largely fuelled by new business wins. “Our survival is strong because we continue to pitch well to attract new businesses,” Bartlett said. He also attributed the success of MullenLowe to the defiant spirit of the team that helped the company rebound fast from the adverse effects of the April terror attacks.
“In hindsight, the terribly unfortunate events also brought out the best in us as a team and I recall the agency’s new business team taking on a new brief a day after 21/4. All this despite 3% of its total revenue getting wiped off following the events of 21/4.”
