Indian ad for Roman bread

Ogilvy & Mather India, among the best creative hotshops in India, has inked a deal with Italian confectionery giant Perfetti Van Melle to take two of its advertisements for Perfetti India to Italy and create a television commercial for Golia Activ Plus, one of Perfetti's leading confectionary brands in Italy.

In the process, O&M India has become the first Indian advertising agency to produce a commercial for a product which is not even available in India.

It beat some of the top international advertising agencies, which have worked with Perfetti Van Melle in the past.

"This is a great moment for Indian advertising. For years we followed the rule book written in the West, and now it's our turn to give them what we have learned from them. Our ideas like the one for the Fevicol advertisements have a universal appeal, and they have accepted not just our scripts but our characters too," Piyush Pandey, group president and national creative director of O&M India, said.

AK Dhingra, director, marketing and sales, Perfetti Van Melle India, said: "It could not be long before Indian creativity was recognised in the global arena."

The Golia advertisement, in Italian, will be unveiled by the end of October this year.

The advertisement will be produced entirely by the O&M India team.

Meanwhile, Perfetti is waiting for the Indian government to remove restrictions on the production of sugar-free confectionary.

The company will then diversify its product portfolio to incorporate more functional confectionary such as Happydent, a chewing gum meant to reduce dental plaque.