Worldwide Partners seeks more allies

With requests for market research and advertising work for the Indian market going up by 50 per cent in the past year, WPI plans to partner with more agencies here to do specialised work.

Mumbai-based Pressman Advertising and Marketing, with annual billings of about $63 million, had tied up with WPI in December last.

Termed as "Reverse Omnicom", the WPI network follows a unique partnership policy. Each advertising agency it partners with gets a share in WPI. In this way, every member agency becomes a part-owner of the network unlike in other organisations where network owns its member agencies.

WPI, formed in 1938, has strongest presence in the US, where it has 38 member agencies. It has only two partner agencies in India but its clients are increasingly seeking more work to be done from India. Its total capitalised billings globally for last year was $4.1 billion.

"Since we function as one network, the member agencies act as a resource pool for other agencies around the globe. So when a client requests for a project to be implemented in another country, local agencies from that region work for the lead agency. In India, clients based in other countries have requested for work to be done in here and some Indian clients are now looking at spreading their reach outside the country. In this scenario, we would be looking at agencies that could do specialised work for us," said Lisa Kettman Kervinen, director, WPI, on her recent trip to India. Some of WPI's clients include Novartis, Wal-Mart, Lehman Brothers and Avon.

Agrees Niren Suchanti, chairman and chief executive, Pressman, "We have a strong print advertising and public relation division, but we would be open to working with agencies that can provide event management, celebrity management etc. If not always as partners, we would definitely want to work in association with agencies which could service the specialised needs of our clients."

The advertising industry in the past one year has witnessed consolidation of several big agencies into subsidiaries of big networks.

For example, Lintas India became a wholly owned subsidiary of Lowe Worldwide, Interpublic Group (IPG) network last year. Since then, it has become an integral part of Lowe for its works in India.

However, there are several mid-sized agencies which need more resources and tools to serve their clients without giving up ownership.

For them, WPI offers a way of partnership without ownership. In its 70 years of existence, WPI claims to be the ninth largest communication network with 92 member agencies in 51 countries. It is now hoping to scale up its operations in India and other emerging markets such as China.