Kirloskar Oil Engines has been working with Centrick almost since the agency launched back in 2020. However, Gauri Kirloskar, managing director, Kirloskar Oil Engines, and Roy Menezes, partner and chief creative officer, Centrick, first met a year before the launch.

Six years ago, during a multi-agency pitch for the brand refresh, she learned something extremely important regarding how agencies work.

“While the pitches usually have the senior leaders with impressive portfolios, the ones who work on the brand finally aren’t the same team members. I met many people there and Roy stood out just because of his passion,” she said.

She added that this passion would continue across presentations in the future and would be the basis of her relationship with Centrick.

“His ideas were creative and out of the box then and remain the same now. I knew he was someone to watch. And then the pandemic hit,” she said.

“This was around the time we had started building up our social media presence. That’s when I called Roy. I congratulated him for launching Centrick and asked him if he’d want to work on this account as I was eager that we continue our association albeit with him starting a new firm,” she said.

Applauding the agency’s enthusiasm while working for an engineering group, she added, “Yash (Chauhan, head - aesthetics) and Malavika (Shah, chief operating officer) have always been super involved and passionate to work with a group that’s not all glitz and glamour,” she stated.

“The way Centrick translates a lot of the technical conversations to content that is interesting and universally applicable is a great skill. I’m also not too easy to work with and I’m picky in terms of grammar and other bits, but Malavika has been amazing. I have found very few people who can live up to my attention to detail, grammar and writing, but Malavika has done just that,” said Gauri.

Expanding the scope of work

What began with Centrick handling one company, quickly escalated into managing a much-wider scope of work, managing a total of eight companies, three of which are listed.

Explaining how this has happened, Gauri said, “They would come and showcase ideas with passion and a huge amount of background work. They were exciting and so we wanted to sign up for a lot more with Centrick. After the brand was refreshed, we had the opportunity to explore much more deeper and meaningful, business driven campaigns.”

_{Better Power Campaign: "They translated complex technical information into two beautiful words that simply articulated what had to be said."}

_{May the power always be with you: "We are seen as an old, engineering company that doesn't do cool things. This campaign and message was trendy yet relevant to what we do. It had empathy and modernity in equal measure."} 

_{Kirloskar Vasundhara website: "This was just next-level. The ideation of the website and the way it was executed was beautiful. It was a complete transformation. It was the most spectacular piece of work Centrick has created for us."}

Centrick’s differentiator

What differentiates Centrick according to her is the consistency and enthusiasm of work coming from the agency.

She also stated that because they have worked together for five years, some of the other vendor work is also approved by Menezes and his team at Centrick.

“After moving to my current role which is in operations, I don’t have the same focus on the brand side. Campaigns are now executed based on the processes set. There are certain campaigns that we go to Centrick for and other bits of communication can be from vendors. We trust Centrick to follow the brand guidelines and have the tone of voice intact and it goes through his team, even if someone else has designed or created it. Centrick gives the final approval,” stated Gauri.

The consistency also comes because of how Centrick has retained almost all its team members who have worked on the brand.

“The fact that they are a lean team and retain what they stood for five years ago works. What’s special about them is that you get the same experience because you’re working with the same people. The first piece of work that comes in is a high-quality piece of work,” she stated, adding that her high expectations are usually matched.

“And if they are not, we have that comfort to share honest feedback versus whispering something to a team member,” she added.

She hinted that the key ingredient in this successful relationship is time.

“They have taken the trouble to understand the brand. There are processes we have to follow which aren’t easy to get approvals. They are involved across every step of the way and we hold each other’s hand, which is important for any partnership,” she surmised.

This article was first published in our January issue part of a special focus on Centrick. Click here to get your copy!