WPP gets future-ready in India

Inks alliance in experiential marketing, brings data-driven marketing solutions firm Data Alliance to India

WPP, the world’s largest advertising and marketing communications group, announced on Wednesday it would bring international experiential marketing company Geometry Global into India through an alliance with Encompass. The latter is the experiential marketing arm of ad agency J Walter Thompson in India, co-founded by TV anchor and celebrity Roshan Abbas and Sukrit Singh.

According to WPP’s chief executive Martin Sorrell, the combined entity called Geometry Global Encompass Network will be the largest in its space in India with around 400 employees and is expected to help brands improve consumer engagement in stores, on-ground and online. Its areas of expertise will include shopper marketing and below-the-line activation. While part of J Walter Thompson South Asia, Geometry Global Encompass will act as a ‘horizontal network’ across the group, Sorrell said, implying its services would be utilised by other WPP group agencies as well.

The firm will also work with WPP's media arm, Group M, through a partnership called Geometry@GroupM. This joint team would use the entity’s proprietary tools and category and channel understanding to deliver shopper-marketing solutions to Group M’s clients.

Sorrell also announced that Data Alliance, a group-level initiative introduced three years ago in North America and the UK, was being launched in India.
 
India is the first market in Asia-Pacific region to see the launch of Data Alliance, bringing together the data mining and data-driven capabilities of different group agencies.

As Sorrell says, Data Alliance supports the WPP group's data business by enhancing access to data and data-driven marketing applications. The long-term objective of this exercise is to deliver a holistic solution to clients, Sorrell said in a press briefing.

In India, Data Alliance will be supported by GroupM, Kantar, Wunderman and Ogilvy, bringing in their expertise in media, research and direct marketing, respectively. Tushar Vyas, chief strategy officer, Group M, says Data Alliance will help form the data ecosystem of the group in India, including setting up data repositories.

The move is critical as India continues to be the key driver of growth for WPP within emerging markets. Sorrell said revenues from India would touch $600 million in the current calendar year from $500 million last year. “India is the leader among BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and as far as we are concerned, it is very important,” Sorrell added.