DB Corp’s Girish Agarwal, Group M’s CVL Srinivas, Madison’s Sam Balsara, Mindshare’s Ashutosh Srivastava and Omnicom’s Jasmin Sohrabji express their views on the need to smash silos for marketing effectiveness ahead of the exchange4media Conclave 2014. The conclave will address this, along with other critical issues that plague the media and communication industry today
By Team Impact
The term ‘silo mentality’ has been the bone of contention in advertising circles for quite a while now. The explosion of integrated communication strategy aided largely by technology has compelled agencies to break out of their silo modes and adopt a holistic approach for campaign effectiveness.
But are agencies today really smashing their silos, adopting an innovative stance that pushes them ahead of competition and re-inventing newer, collaborative models of marketing?
exchange4media Conclave 2014 will address this along with a horde of other critical questions that plague the media and communication industry now. The theme for the Mumbai leg of the Conclave is ‘Marketing: The Future is Technology’.
Talking about the fragmentation that pervades today in the advertising domain, CVL Srinivas, CEO, GroupM South Asia said, “The agency eco-system is so fragmented today, that some clients end up dealing with 25 or more different agencies for all their marketing communication needs. This has definitely affected the thinking on brands. Media agencies are well placed to integrate their services given their natural ability to understand data, brands, consumers and media platforms. Agencies that can do this at scale will quickly move up the value chain.”
In a diverse, dynamic and demanding world of marketing, agencies are constantly adapting to meet client needs, says Jasmin Sohrabji, CEO, SEA & India, Omnicom Media Group. “It’s not that the agencies are operating in silos. It depends on what kinds of brands and opportunities you have. There are some categories, brands and clients who have adopted integration at a higher pace because of the nature of their business. There will be others which are much more traditional, very heavily TV-driven and therefore the opportunities are limited. It’s not whether clients are adopting or their agencies are adopting technology in the media and marketing space, it’s about different brands, different requirements and we are just suggesting solutions as per client need and adapting to our clients as best as possible,” says Sohrabji.
The silo style of operating is rapidly diminishing in a traditional sector like Print also. Girish Agarwal, Promoter-Director, DB Corp believes the advent and proliferation of technology has positively transformed the Print industry. He says, “There are three-four areas of technology use; one is production where Print is doing a pretty good job, second is the technology used in news gathering or dissemination of news. In the last three years, Print has become very aggressive in that. Also, there is the Internet version of newspapers, in our case, we have almost 350-500 million page views in a month. That number has gone up threefold in the last 2-3 years.”
Ashutosh Srivastava, Chairman & CEO, APAC & Emerging Markets, Mindshare believes the task is still largely undone. “It requires a significant change in mindsets. It is an interesting opportunity because you have the ad agencies which create big ideas and the media agencies which track consumer behaviour and capture all the data, and in theory if you get the two to work together, the level of impact on consumers can be huge. It will take time for these silos to break down,” he says.
Putting in a word of caution and advising against pitting one medium against another, Sam Balsara, Chairman and MD, Madison World says, “Media agencies deal with vast sums of advertisers’ money. Therefore, both the advertisers and the media agency have to be responsible in the way they use the money. While it is very tempting and makes you appear fashionable, while spending a lot of money on new technology, you have to be careful because at the end of the day we all want good ROI. New technologies do not always work, maybe one in 10 might. It is unfair to criticize the media agency for not adopting new technologies fast enough. Mobile is slowly coming into its own. It is not as if when a new medium appears, the old ones like TV and Print will go away and everything will become mobile. Today, after 10 years, Digital gets 10% of ad spends and Digital alone is higher than or equal to Outdoor and Cinema together. Every new phenomenon takes a bit of time to reach scale.”
The exchange4media Conclave, being held on September 30, 2014, at Trident BKC, Mumbai, will become an ideal platform for global leaders to talk about innovative approaches being adopted the world over that are helping agencies overcome the silo mentality.
The stellar line-up of speakers includes Tim Andree, Executive Chairman, Dentsu Aegis Network & Executive Vice President, Member of The Board, Dentsu Inc, who will be the Keynote Speaker this year; Geetu Verma, Executive Director, Foods & Refreshment, Hindustan Unilever, John Sheehy, President, Global Operations, Starcom Mediavest, Michael Wall, Global CEO, Lowe & Partners, Mike Cooper, Worldwide CEO, PHD, Vikram Sakhuja, Global CEO, Maxus and Vishnu Mohan, CEO, APAC Havas Media.