Madurai: Mohit Joshi, Managing Director of Havas Media Group presented a keynote on role of retail agencies with retail clients at a summit in Madurai that focused on “Changing Media Landscape in Tamil Nadu 2020” which was held on the 27th February, in which he articulated challenges and opportunities for Retail clients and agencies in the age of data technology-driven Media Marketing.
“The retail industry has been exploding and we know this that it’s just not been exploding in Tamil Nadu but also across the country and it’s not just retail but it’s online retail also which is exploded. If I look at Tamil Nadu I can say this is a huge retail market.” setting the context Joshi said.
“I represent Havas Media and I respect retail agencies and local retail agencies because they understand certain things, they have certain learning’s that we at the national level don’t have. However, it’s always a mix of both national and retail and I think they understand the local retail business far better than the National Agency”
“I think there are certain things that the national agencies bring to the table, which can complement retail agencies and retail agencies specifically have their own USP’s, which national agencies don’t have, they can provide better strategic thinking because they have learnings from other markets and domains. They can provide learnings from other categories and markets,” said Joshi
Talking about the retail clients and the challenges faced with retail agencies, to which Joshi said, “Retail clients and retail agencies would have certain challenges and some of them are being tackled with time but some of them might still be relevant. We have a lot of data, third party researchers that we use, many times these kinds of databases are not so readily available with a retail agency or a local agency, because obviously it’s a function of cost.”
“We are a global agency and we get the efficiency of a lot of learning’s and research that’s happening globally and we can take that learning’s for our Indian clients and use it for their benefit, which a local agency might find difficult.”
“When you’re looking at a local level, you’re looking at today and tomorrow, but we at Havas as a national agency might be looking at year one or two because the focus or the perspective will be very different from the way we look at the marketing and the business, then a local agency would,” said Joshi.
Highlighting on how sales is the ultimate objective for a retail client, Joshi said, “Sales is that the most important thing for all brands, In Havas, we have a very different philosophy when we work for our clients, whether it is the local client, national client or international client, we have to build meaningful brands.”
“At Havas, we do research called ‘Meaningful brands’ and it’s a global research, which was done in India as well which helps us to build and understand how we can inspire meaningful connections between people and brands, which generate business results,” says Joshi.
Elaborating with an example on what meaningful brands are Joshi said, “If I asked you is this brand meaningful to you, you’ll evaluate the brand on three parameters, the functional parameters, whether it’s doing the stuff that it is supposed to do, if it’s a car, where it’s taking me from point A to point B, then there are personal benefits of a brand which are more around whether it’s making life easier whether it is giving me the sense of pride and then a collective benefits.”
“So I think, in my view, role of retail agencies with retail clients is also meaningful to brands, not just to give them the best rates on that matter, any location, but also to build meaningful brand and it’s not just that the meaningful brands can only be built by national agencies, these are things that can be done at the local level as well,” Joshi concluded.
Mohit was nostalgic about his connections with Madurai City 25 years ago, wherein he started his career with Madura Coats.
