Agency watch. For Dentsu Creative, the big focus is on digital-plus-plus

It’s a mixed bag. There are certain categories which are spending quite a good amount. There are certain categories, possibly not as much. I would assume that it is going better than last year.

Yeah. Also this year we had IPL, the T20 Cricket World Cup and elections — lots more moments during the year for brands to leverage and spend on. Considering that, I would say it’s not been bad. Is it path-breaking? No, not really. There have been challenges globally and India cannot be isolated.

Yet, I feel we’re doing well. We have a list of top 20 growth accounts, for example, and in the first nine months we’ve seen growth there. If you look at the new business part, we’ve won some 52-odd new businesses, small and big included.

It’s a mix there. Since Harsha (Razdan — the CEO of Dentsu) has come in, we’ve figured out a way of operating with a cluster of brands together and focusing on those brands. The growth is not just creative growth now, but we are looking at an integrated growth.

If they need media, if they need CX, if they need creative, if they need creative tech or PR, we have everything together and now we truly are behaving like an integrated agency.

Some are projects, some would be retainers — it’s a mixed bag. There are quite a few PR.

We had created Dentsu Creative then, at an overall level, for a specific reason that we had seven different agencies and we could not, at that point in time, leverage them. There was an innovation lab in one, there was creative tech sitting in one, there was ORM (online reputation management) capabilities sitting somewhere.

The seven agencies were not talking to each other. So, we created this one single group because then we had everything under one roof and the capabilities could be used, wherever, whenever a brand would require them. That was the whole intention of making Dentsu Creative. It is still the parent brand — now we’ve created three brands, which are Webchutney Dentsu, Isobar, and Dentsu Creative PR.

Isobar and Webchutney are both creative-first brands. The difference is that while Webchutney is out-and-out creative, online as well as offline, when it comes to Isobar, it is the creative unit with a huge focus on digital-plus-plus.

Digital would be 40-50 per cent of our revenue. It’s actually that side of the business that would be growing over 20 per cent for us. And the growth itself is quite enticing, because that is the side which will see us being much more relevant in the future.

We never really disinvested from the South, unlike most other agencies, we’ve always kept our presence. We are there in Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Hyderabad. And we’ve kept growing in the South, year on year.

Even Bangalore is squeezing, if you look. Many offices of many of the brands are either becoming smaller or shutting down. But for us it’s a significant market and a growing market. And it is not just for southern brands. The beauty is that even the national brands want specific communication for the South.

Very recently, the Nescafe Sunrise Campaign, which celebrated coffee farmers. There are multiple examples of brands trying to connect in the South the most authentic way.

There are two aspects to it. I don’t think the erstwhile creative is good enough now to operate alone in. The world’s changing very fast and so should creative agencies, because the team of art and copy is no longer enough. You need a videographer, a graphic designer, a creative tech person as a part of the creative team. So the creative team itself has expanded. I think the good part with Dentsu on the creative side was that we already had a lot of digital-first agencies. We kept moving with time and made sure that everything that we’re doing is digital-plus-plus. The creative tech is an integral part, and that tech sits within Dentsu. It’s not outsourced.

At Dentsu Creative, we are very clear that we will keep evolving with time. Every three months, we look at ourselves and ask what we are missing, and what else we need.

We’ve made creative tech very strong internally. There are newer technologies that we are adding. We are making our influencer team stronger. We’re making sure all new recruits that we hire have that X factor. We’re looking at tech institutes for hiring. We have never looked at that earlier.

My take is simple. You cannot just be a creative agency and expect to be a partner. There are different challenges the brands are facing. If you partner them on all challenges, only then are you the true growth partner.

The whole integration people need to start walking the talk and actually integrating with media and with the CX side of things. I’m not saying we are absolutely 100 per cent doing it, but I think we’re doing it much, much better than most others.