'WPP Without Sorrell Is An Adjustment, But We Are Adaptable People'

On his maiden visit to India after the launch of Wavemaker, Global CEO Tim Castree talks of Team India being the best example of what Wavemaker stands for, and how life at WPP goes on without Sir Martin Sorrell

- Naziya Alvi Rahman

A merger can make things unpredictable, but if done with cautious planning and robust strategy, it can result in an agency like Wavemaker which has had a spectacular first quarter in India. From Bisleri, Dream11, Mother Dairy, to Eureka Forbes and Tata Sky - Wavemaker has won and retained a barrage of accounts already. And all of this in less than a year of its birth from the merger of Group M’s erstwhile media agency brands, MEC and Maxus in a global strategy move. On his maiden visit to India after the merger, Wavemaker’s Global CEO, Tim Castree, is all praise for Team India headed by Managing Director Kartik Sharma.

“I think with Kartik and the team in India (people in Italy, Germany, the UK or Australia might disagree), possibly the best expression or best execution of what Wavemaker stands for, is taking place here. Other markets are doing well, but India is doing particularly well,” says a proud Castree.

He also attributes the success in India to the high growth of the Indian market. “The other thing going for them is the incredibly strong market growth rate. So, great execution and the fact that the market itself is growing at 13% gives them an advantage that other markets don’t have,” Castree adds.

However, the biggest factor that not just Castree but everyone at Wavemaker attributes its success to is the agency’s obsession with ‘purchase journey’.

“We started 2018 with 3,80,000 purchase journeys and we had set ourselves a target of reaching 1 million by the end of the year. We are on track to exceeding that target. We are making significant investments in purchase journey research and it has now crossed around 80 categories and 35-40 markets. We have now reached about 4,50,000 purchase journeys and are all set to reach a million by the end of the year. We’re really scaling up these products,” Castree declares.