• WSJ (paid subscription required), Monday, March 6, 2006 11:31 AM

Marketers looking to establish a presence in India won't have far to look for help as U.S. ad agencies are scrambling to open new offices there. In some cases, the agencies handle creative work for clients, while in others they perform back office and computer-intensive marketing chores. Regardless of the agencies' function, their number is growing. Leo Burnett has an office there, pitching creative work to Coca-Cola. Ogilvy & Mather is setting up a base in India to perform production work for its other offices around the world. Already, some work for the company's International Business Machines Corp., Nestlé SA and BP PLC's Castrol accounts has migrated to India. In November, Publicis Group, which owns Burnett, bought direct-marketing agency Solutions India, in part because of its capabilities at database marketing for companies beyond India. In one of the industry's biggest moves, WPP's media agency Mindshare in 2004 shifted to India all of the data analysis it uses to justify buying media for marketers, who increasingly demand proof of return on their investments.

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