Future game will be about effectiveness, not efficiency: John Zeigler

Interview with chairman and chief executive officer, DDB Group, Asia-Pacific, India & Japan

Last week, John Zeigler, chairman and chief executive officer, DDB Group, Asia-Pacific, India & Japan, made a second trip to the country in seven months. As India gains prominence in Omnicom-owned DDB’s schemes, Ziegler is likely to visit more often, monitoring operations of key agency DDB Mudra. In this interview with Viveat Susan Pinto, he explains the highlights of this second trip to the country. Edited excerpts:

What brings you to India for the second time?

Madhukar (Kamath, group chief CEO at DDB Mundra) and I are looking at the performance of the senior management at the agency, sketching a career development plan for them. Top performers have been identified in a detailed review process. What we are doing now is mapping out a long-term career development plan for them with the agency, as well as looking at their training & development needs.

What is the objective? Will you promote them to larger roles within the region and the globe?

A number of discussions came out in that regard. We talked in detail on the high-performing talent that has the potential to extend their skills into other markets. Also, on what we needed to do to build the skills of our Indian workforce, so that it could be leveraged in the region.

What skill have you identified in Indians that can be leveraged internationally?

The strategic planning ability I see in Indians is amazing. If I leave aside the UK, which has good people in that department, the rest of the world is possibly nowhere next to the depth of talent that I see in India in this area. This can be leveraged globally, definitely in the Asia-Pacific region. One of the challenges, however, for the Indian talent is to take the strategic lead in understanding consumers from Asia.

People here already understand the domestic consumer well. It is said about India that within the country, many different Indias reside. Strategic planners here have this innate ability to understand the varied Indian consumer. The challenge would be take this ability to a larger platform and understand the Asian consumer, so that it can be represented at the global or regional level during exercises such as pitching, which is something agencies do all the time. Without the discussions we are now having with the talent here, we would not be in a position to understand who can do what. Which is why I am here and there are a few people here who can contribute to that plan we have.

Will this increasingly become the model of the future in the agency business — a pan-global team where you borrow skills from different markets for key activities such as pitching?

While some agencies are moving in that direction, it is not easy to do, as budgets are limited. However, within the limitations, you will see agencies work in this direction a lot more. The future game in the agency business will be about effectiveness, not efficiency. The latter is the current sector benchmark, mostly with the media agencies. Clients are used to this: Here is my budget, how much is the reach that you can give me within this amount? Or what is the solution you have to offer me within this budget? That is the approach taken.

In reality, it should be about how effective one's solution is. Are you able to deliver results in the best possible way in view of the brief given by the client? The moment clients and agencies begin to think in this direction, more effort will be put to improve the output, rather than seeing only how cost-effective the solution is.

Is the Indian operation (DDB Mudra) moving in this direction? Are you happy with its output?
 

They have been delivering upto expectations. India is one market where we deal not only in creative, but also media and activation. This gives us scope to achieve better business results thanks to our presence in different areas of marketing communication. I think that is one of the reasons why India has done better than other markets in the (APAC) region. China has just come off the boil. Simgapore and Hong Kong are good markets, but they are small. Indonesia is a high-priority market, but the level of sophistication there is not very high. So the two legs that can help us run the race here in the region are really India and China. We will step up our investments here. It has been a year since we acquired the digital agency 22feet. We are looking at new acquisition targets here.