Glenn Osaki is the president of MSL Group Asia and is also a member of Publicis Groupe’s China management board. Before moving to Shanghai in January 2005, he was managing director of MSL Group’s Los Angeles office for six years. He has been with MSL for about 24 years. MSL Group and its three companies in India (20:20 MSL, Hanmer MSL and 20:20 Social), which were formed in 2009, underwent a brand identity change. In an exclusive chat with BrandWagon?s Payal Khandelwal, Osaki talks about how the shift in brand identity, which was done to bring in the maximum strength of the global network, shaped up. He also talks about the challenges for the PR industry in Asia Pacific (Apac), whether clients still consider PR a tactical function and also why ad agencies managed to win most PR Cannes Lions last year.
Edited excerpts.
What are the challenges for the public relations industry in Apac?
The challenges are different across the region. Geographically, we have a region collectively called Apac but markets such as Japan and India probably couldn’t be any more different. China and India are often grouped together because of their size and being the most important growing large markets. However, if there is one area that I think is a common theme across the region it is talent. What we have been doing is focus on having a new training and people development function across the region to specifically address this particular challenge.
The brand identity of each MSL company in India was changed in the last two years to maximise the benefits of the global network. How has that shaped up?
MSL Group as a company is only a couple of years old and about a year ago, we developed a new brand. So all these agencies which are part of the MSL Group, took on a new graphic identity. There was some re-branding that went on.
When Hanmer & Partners joined MSL, they became Hanmer MSL. When 20:20 joined MSL, they became 20:20 MSL. So there was re-branding that was done for those companies. As a result what we have is a very strong business with two separate brands that are able to go to market very effectively. And this makes the larger MSL group India entity the largest in the market.
At last year’s Cannes Festival of Creativity, most of the PR Lions were scooped up by advertising agencies. Why is this happening?
I think this is a concern for our entire industry. I don’t believe that ad agencies are doing better PR work. It is just that they are much more effective at packaging their entries. They are skilled and talented in developing award entries and programmes with the fact in mind that these can be award winning programmes. Thus, they will invest the time and work with clients to create programmes that they know will be strong and award worthy.
In the PR industry, we have been less adept at doing that. If we are not careful, these awards will continue to go to ad agencies, which is a shame. We are definitely going to look at the way we are going to package our results, the way we create more videos, etc. We will look at ways to present programmes in a compelling manner. I have every ambition that in the next year or two, we will have our share of Cannes Lions, including in India. That will definitely be one of our goals for our
team in India, to win one of those global awards.