“Every day sees a new trend,” declares Amit Wadhwa, CEO, South Asia, Dentsu Creative, a self-declared “impatient soul” who craves constant action. Well, the creative industry, which has been transforming hugely, is certainly yielding enough action. Dentsu Creative itself has been re-organising itself. In this conversation with Brandline, Wadhwa explains why. Excerpts:
How is this festival season going for the ad industry and Dentsu personally? Is it a good year or not?
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.
But last year the festival season coincided with IPL, so there was confusion between cricket and festival budgets. This year festive is on its own. So has it still pulled in more money?
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.
These 20 top-growth brands of yours, are these old traditional brands, or do they include start-ups?
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.
These 52 new accounts that you won, which areas are they in?
Some are projects, some would be retainers — it’s a mixed bag. There are quite a few PR.
You recently reorganised the agency — separating Webchutney and Isobar, after first integrating them within the Dentsu fold some years ago. Why was that?
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.
So how much is this “digital-plus-plus” contributing in terms of work and revenue?
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.
You said recently somewhere that Dentsu is betting big on the South.
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.
But Bengaluru has seen a lot of hot advertising action from all agencies.
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.
Can you give me some examples of work for a national brand that you have done in 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.
In terms of work, how are you expanding?
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.
So what’s the latest thing that you’ve added?
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.
There’s also one school of thought frowning at the non-creative work that ad agencies are taking on, at the cost of the older core brand strategy work.
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.