The New CEOs

With new leaders at the helm of several Indian media and creative agencies, the spotlight is on improving the client-agency partnership, strategic thinking, planning and on scaling up to become future-ready

- Christina Moniz

Several media and creative agencies in India saw new top executives take charge in the last one year. With this new leadership in place, expectations run high as the industry is right now grappling with a dynamic market and rapidly evolving ecosystem. While agencies across the creative and media spectrum continue to produce outstanding work, the new leaders at the helm believe a lot needs to be done in the area of client-agency partnerships, strategic thinking, planning and in scaling up to become future-ready. Here, we explore the agenda before the new leaders who assumed office between August 2017 to July 2017, the challenges they face and zero in on the changes they wish to drive across the industry and in the agency business model.

BETTER AGENCY-CLIENT TIES

The Indian media agency business is at the crossroads where many agencies are looking for growth but are facing severe margin pressures. If agencies are going to focus on growing on the back of new businesses while keeping their rates low, then the industry will struggle to sustain itself, believes Kartik Sharma, CEO, South Asia, Wavemaker. He explains, “Growth is only possible when agencies make a reasonable margin and not the way business is conducted currently at the back of lower rates/ costs year on year. If the current way of business continues in a few years, it will not be a sustainable model and good talent will not come to this industry. Clients too need to understand this and compensate agencies accordingly. Some of the progressive clients are already moving in this direction. Rather than worrying obsessively about costs, the conversations are moving towards growing their business. We need more of these conversations, going forward.”