“It’s been another year of bringing forth the agenda of being an integrated agency which talks about end to end comms and the entire consumer journey. That’s helped us in winning accounts like Skoda, Cera, Mahindra One, Sun Pharma, CoinDCX, Manyawar, to name a few. There are three to four big account wins before the end of the year,” says Shamsuddin Jasani (Shams), CEO, Wunderman Thompson South Asia.
The former Isobar Group MD was speaking with MediaNews4u.com on his completion of a year as CEO at the WPP outfit.
He states, “It’s been an honour for me to take over an agency which has pretty much touched every part of advertising in India for the past nine decades. The journey has been something of taking those amazing legacies, those foundations, and over the past one year building on top of that to make it even more strategic and relevant to a lot of our clients in today’s age. And we have been quite successful in making the transformation. We continue to make those transformations as we go into 2023.”
According to Jasani, the South and East are strongholds for Wunderman Thompson (WT) ‘unlike a lot of other agencies’. While Mumbai and Delhi have traditionally been big, a lot of growth has come from Kolkata and South markets as well – he credits it to the way Wunderman Thompson is structured. It is one of the very few agencies having equal strength in Mumbai, Delhi, the South and the East, he underlines.
KitKat – Thalam (2022)
While it was a period of consolidation and several account wins, the agency also lost the Pepsi account due to global realignment.
On the move from a digital agency to a creative agency, the CEO remarks, “I think at the end of the day it’s about working with great people. Work is a byproduct of amazing talent that you have in the company. The scale of operations within WT is much bigger (than Isobar) so the idea was how I can harness the talent that exists within the agency. The big change that has happened is also the understanding of sheer talent in brand experience that a creative agency brings and the more strategic nature of work that we do versus most digital agencies which are mostly great at understanding technology and execution.”
Jasani notes that bringing together brand experience, traditional media advertising and digital-first work has been a steep learning curve for him professionally. “I am really enjoying getting this integrated working within the company to happen,” he adds.
While the CEO has changed and there have been exits and entries, the creative leadership remains unchanged under CCO Senthil Kumar. Jasani underlines that Wunderman Thompson is adding a lot more technology focus, with the realisation that in areas like Web 3.0 there is a need for a new breed of people.
Gearing up for 2023
Jasani points out that when he joined, the target was to double growth in three years. If 2022 was about getting everything integrated and all the products aligned, 2023 will be about the growth agenda. The agency is also looking to work with clients along the entire consumer value chain – how it can use creative, technology and commerce to drive a solution-based agenda. This is already happening, notes the CEO.
“The vision is very clear. We are an agency here to provide an end–to-end solution to our clients. They want us to partner with them on the entire consumer journey. The clients are also looking forward to us to giving them more strategic solutions,” he adds.
Focus areas include the post purchase journey, marketing automation services and commerce. WT Commerce has 600 people at the outfit’s Gurgaon operations, reveals Jasani.
While all that happens, Wunderman Thompson will not lose its ‘creative bravery’, underlines Jasani.
The agency, which has won laurels at the highest levels in the past for its campaigns for Nike, The Times of India and Lux, among others, believes that there is some good work that can go on to win at international awards in 2023.
Nike – Make Every Yard Count (2014)
“In the agency we are enjoying what we are doing right now. The work that is coming out now is of a certain level, that’s why I am so gung ho about our prospects in all the award shows. It is an output of all the hard work, of people working together and pushing the agenda of great creativity forward. There’s a new wave of excitement that is building for WT and 2023 is something I am looking at with bated breath, especially for our team and showcasing the talent that we have to the industry at large,” he surmises.
