Bengaluru: Media veteran, Industry thought leader and WPP’s India Country Manager, CVL Srinivas graced Medianews4u’s Bangalore edition of “Leaderspeak 2019” to deliver the all-important keynote address where he discussed the future of Agencies and the models that they should follow to not only become a creative solutions provider but also to become a successful business partner and service a client for its entire customer journey.
Srinivas asked and answered one important question of how can agencies remain relevant in the ever-changing and evolving media landscape with disruptions across the consumer, market, technology and business processes.
Redefine their Role and Purpose
Reminding agencies about one important question Srinivas said, “Agencies first and foremost need to go back and redefine their role and purpose and ask one question to themselves… Why do they really exist?”
Srinivas explained how the days of being an intermediary are gone. He said, “In most sectors, there’s no room for brokers or middlemen or agents or agencies, you should aspire to be your client’s marketing transformation partner. I think that’s really the purpose or the role for which an agency needs to exist.”
On why agencies need to rework cost structures Srinivas said, “Over the years agencies have been built with teams and people providing services for an analogue world, a traditional media world and all of that has changed.”
“Agencies need to free up resources to invest in areas like CX, Commerce, Tech Consulting. This means they need to be totally rewired for the new era”
On Clients’ expectation from agencies, Srinivas said, “the clients expect agencies to partner them through the entire customer journey. So agencies need to do that by investing in automation, technology and data.”
Future Ready Talent
Enlightening the audience about making talent management a core principle for agencies, Srinivas said, “Ultimately, it’s the people who create the magic. Earlier it was a straightforward mix of creative talent, media planners, buyers and account managers. Today agencies need to hire data scientists, platform specialists and commerce experts as well. It’s not just hiring people from the outside but it’s also giving them the freedom to change the fortunes of the company.”
Sharing an anecdote from an employee program Srinivas initiated at GroupM, he said, “I want call out a couple of initiatives, which we kicked off in GroupM, which helped us. We created a program called the New Me, because we said if the organization has to transform, each and every person in the company needs to start looking at a new me of themselves.”
The New Me program had several legs to it one of which was to develop partnerships outside of traditional media companies. Srinivas said, “One of the areas in which we drove a lot of change was in terms of partnerships. We were very good with all the traditional media partners, how could we start building partnerships with the data and technology players in the market? So it led to some breakthrough partnerships with the likes of Google, Facebook, Hotstar and many start-ups in Data, Content, Technology.”
Speaking about harnessing the talent that resides at the junior levels of the organisation, Srinivas spoke about GroupM’s YCO program.. “The senior leadership team or Exco had 12 members representing all the agencies and specialist units at GroupM, we created the YCO as a pressure group, which had high potential talent in their 20s, mirroring the Exco. This helped us cut through the hierarchy and get to know what our future leaders want and how they can contribute to changing the organisation.”
Client Centric Agencies
Srinivas said, “Agencies exist because of clients. When media de-bundled from the creative agency in the mid-90s and post that for the next 10 to 15 years, we went through an era of specialization and super specialization, the agency, which was once an integrated team, got fragmented, creating 15 to 20 different verticals. It eventually became difficult to drive integrated client solutions because each one was looking at a client’s problem from a different lens.”
“If agencies have to stay strong in business, they have to go back and be a lot more client-centric. Anchor the specialists around the client. And build in performance measures for the team to deliver to a common goal. By joining up and delivering value to the client end to end, agencies have the opportunity to move up the value chain and go from being execution partners to driving strategy and business growth.”
Leverage Partner Ecosystem
Talking about how agencies must leverage the partner ecosystem, Srinivas said, “In the last 10-15 years there have been a wide variety of players who’ve gotten into this space. From start-ups to big tech companies, consultants etc, It is time for agencies to embrace these partners, not look at them as competition but approach them with an open mind to co-create solutions for clients. We recently signed an exciting partnership with Inmobi and we work with several of the leading tech companies globally and in India”.
Creativity at the Center
Speaking about the key differentiator, Srinivas said, “Ultimately the true differentiator is Creativity and that needs to be at the center. It is the power of the idea that ultimately moves the needle on business. Building a strong creative culture is the key to an agency’s success”.
Summing up his presentation, Srinivas said “Is the future tense? Is it all doom and gloom for agencies? Absolutely not! In fact, there is probably no better time than now to be in the business, if you’re willing to reinvent yourself. Because clients need more help than before, across many more elements of their marketing value chain. And agencies by doing all the right things can be their most valuable business partner.”
