Karmarama

Karmarama is an independently owned creative British advertising agency founded in 2000.

History

Karmarama was launched by creative partners Naresh Ramchandani and Dave Buonaguidi in May 2000. Previous to Karmarama they had worked together at HHCL and were creative directors of the London office of Chiat/Day before launching the first advertising agency co-operative St.Luke’s. There they created work for Boots No7, Midland/HSBC Bank and the Chuck Out The Chintz campaign for IKEA.

Dave then left to be the Creative Director of Channel 4 and got valuable experience as a client before teaming up with Naresh again two years later to launch Karmarama. They created famous campaigns for Selfridges Tokyo Life before merging with Outfit Communications and Ben Bilboul whom they knew from his role as IKEA account director at St.Luke’s. This lead to the renewed relationship with the IKEA account. The agency produced three years of work, the most prominent being the Van den Puup campaign that also helped them secure clients such as Unilever-owned Colman's sauces and Heineken's Amstel brand. On top of this the agency made the headlines with their own ‘Make Tea not War’ placard for the Anti war March in 2003. The poster which featured Tony Blair with a tea cup on his head and a gun in hand is now exhibited in the Victoria and Albert museum and the Museum of Modern Art in Trento, Italy. This year also saw the agency create campaigns for the Belmont Mini Market, Opodo and MTV and VH1.

2005 saw the departure of the IKEA business and Ramchandani. However, in 2006 with a line up of Bilboul and Buonaguidi and the newly appointed Sid McGrath as planning partner the agency won 14 out of 18 pitches and added clients such as The History Channel, the Conservative Party, Pipex, Pomegreat and Costa Coffee to its roster.

In 2007 the agency was appointed to handle the UK advertising of [Nintendo] as well working with Coca Cola on the European product launch of their energy drink Burn. Most recently [Nicola Mendelsohn] formerly of Grey and BBH has joined the agency as chairman and the fourth partner with an ambition to drive new business and increase the company’s profile.

Ping-Pong

Founded on the love of ping-pong, Karmarama are the only advertising agency to have a team entered into the London league and continue to hold an open competition every year at their offices. They have consistently been the worst team in the lowest division in London until the 2007/8 season when they finished a highly creditable 3rd. From bottom.

External links

[http://www.karmarama.com www.Karmarama.com]