'India one of the fastest-growing large markets for Omnicom in the world'

Post its IPG acquisition, Omnicom is reshaping its India operations, betting on scale, talent continuity and AI as one of its fastest-growing global markets

‘The next 60 to 90 days will be about execution, bringing teams together in their new environments and new leaders, and enabling everyone to get back to work’ 

 

Omnicom Advertising India recently finished its acquisition of IPG globally. In an exclusive interview, Aditya Kanthy, president and managing director, Omnicom Advertising India, talks about the transition and how the Indian market is one of the fastest-growing markets for it globally. Edited excerpts:

 

What are the priorities in India after the acquisition?

 

Our priorities have always been our people and our clients, and that remains at the centre of everything we do.

 

The first phase of this acquisition was about getting the organisational design right — defining the portfolio, identifying leadership, etc. Over the past 60 days, the focus has been on establishing strategic clarity and communicating to our people and clients why we are making these changes, and how they strike the right balance between continuity and change. 

 

The next 60 to 90 days will be about execution, bringing teams together in their new environments and new leaders, and enabling everyone to get back to work.

 

How are your clients viewing this acquisition?

 

Most of our clients are primarily concerned with the teams they value and the people they trust. You can see it reflected in the leadership we’ve put in place across the portfolio and in the agency brands like Lintas, Mudra, or FCB Ulka in the mix.

 

We’ve been deliberate in ensuring that we retain our leadership talent. This signals to the clients that we respect the relations they’ve built with their agency and their teams. We have been transparent with our clients on the structure and explained to them how they are in line with our global structures.

 

Have there been job cuts in India due to the acquisition?

 

In any organisation, 10-15 per cent of the staff is the support staff and that has been restructured or affected. Cost was one of the reasons but that is not the only one. Nor was it the most important one. The approach we’ve taken in India -- and that job is done in the first 60 days -- is to look at, primarily, the non-client facing roles, where there is a lot you can imagine in this combined entity of more than 3,000 people. On the advertising side, we’ve functions that are not client-facing but are important for running an agency. Human resources, administration, finance, information technology, and real estate are support functions, the duplication of which is not of direct value to clients, and those are the areas we have looked at in our cost structures and made the decisions that we needed to. We’ve also looked at ways of working, and finding smarter, better ways to use technology to cut time and resources. We have not cut too close to the bone in places where clients are happy with their agency teams and value the talent that they have across the table with them.  

How important is the Indian market for the company now?

 

I would say it’s one of the fastest-growing large markets in Omnicom. We’re also among well-run profitable companies attractive to talent. All our agencies have a stellar reputation for both client and talent. After the acquisition, even in terms of scale, it is significantly more important because the IPG agencies in India have been historically strong and have long and good partnerships with some of the country’s largest marketers. India is undoubtedly one of Omnicom’s more important markets in terms of being able to compete locally and also to help it win from the country and out of the country in its global ambition. 

 

As a bigger entity, has it become easier for you to lure clients?

 

It is early days. Our focus is on client continuity. We want to ensure that the clients in this new agency structure who have had long relations with us feel comfortable in the new environment. The good news is we have a lot of room for continuity. We want to get that right in the first chapter of our transition. We’re operationalising the new structure. So I think the more important focus area for us has been about client continuity and making our existing clients feel good about their new setup.

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is considerably changing the game for advertising. How do you see this panning out in India?

 

Some of the ways in which it impacts our business will feel less glamorous and flamboyant, but much more fundamental and important to the business. I feel that not enough has been said about the role AI will play in growing the advertising business. I believe it will unlock new opportunities much like what we saw with the rise of search advertising or the power of social platforms in brand building, particularly in the direct-to-consumer space. Those shifts brought a new set of advertisers into the market, and I will be surprised if AI doesn’t do that as well. 

 

There are types of work AI can do smarter and better. If we are disciplined about it and move quickly enough, we should be able to bring in those efficiencies to bear.

 

But equally, I think it will free up time and talent to be able to do some of the other work that is so important to what we do, such as client partnership, business understanding, the designing of brands, and storytelling.