Global media agency network Mindshare is helping marketers make collaborative and adaptive decisions across their paid, owned and earned marketing. As the CEO points out, in today’s adaptive world, everything begins and ends in media.
Media buying agency Mindshare is part of GroupM, which oversees the media buying sector for WPP.
Speaking to
Much of the innovation happens in India, Emery says.
“India is the fourth-biggest market for Mindshare, behind the US, China and the UK. China is second despite coronavirus,” says the CEO, with the fallout possibly notching a temporary shift in media spends.
Though Mindshare is evolving globally, India and its market is the centre of innovation. “Whenever we are looking for a new idea, we always consult the team in India at the very beginning of the process. We have such a great legacy of people in India, and most of the experts, quite often, are involved in everything we develop,” he adds.
As for what drives the new business agenda at Mindshare, the CEO says, “Every 10 years, the industry used to change radically and start again. That is also the time most governments and most companies become bureaucratic. Now, change happens every quarter, instead of 10 years.”
Because things are changing so often, “and what clients want is so dynamic”, the CEO says it is difficult to “respond to that level of change unless there is a pretty fluid organisation that works as one team”.
Mindshare has had a “pretty good last year, with new business wins and growth. Group companies also won several awards. It has been a great year for India too, but one continues to be restless,” adds Emery.
For a marketer, analysing a market like India, “which has 29 states and 22 different languages is pretty complicated. In one state, digital penetration goes from 6 per cent to 76 per cent. However, the 800 people who work for Mindshare India know exactly how to translate that,” says Emery, insisting, “Nine times out of 10, the work from India is better than any other market. We then share that with the UK or Germany, France, Mexico or Argentina and say, this is how it is working in India, despite the 29 states and the mass variation.”
India is the fourth-biggest market and one of the biggest economies in the world, says the CEO, but the challenges India faces are broadly the same challenges that every other country still faces. “It all comes down to execution,” he adds.
The CEO maintains “it is the ingenuity in how the Indian team harmonises data to come up with an eclectic mix of campaigns, and the complexity of the (India) market that forces a level of ingenuity and possibly, some crazy solutions, is what inspires the other markets.”
Top ranking
Mindshare was ranked numero uno in Warc’s Media 100 list, released on March 11. Mindshare India was recognised as the No 4 agency in the world.
The Warc report, the successor to the Gunn report, provides the annual ranking of the world’s most awarded and recognised marketing campaigns and companies.
Mindshare India has had strong showings on several forums where it bagged awards. The highlight in Warc’s list was the work done for Lifebuoy, “The Adaptive Data Lighthouse” which was rated the No 3 campaign globally. This was also the only Indian campaign in the top 50.
MA Parthasarathy (Maps), CEO of Mindshare South Asia, termed it a great honour to see “homegrown and India-focused solutions win on the global stage. The data and content landscape in India is highly dynamic, throwing up both challenges and opportunities that are unique. Leveraging this complexity effectively has helped us.”