After working with advertising agency JWT India, part of global ad network WPP Plc., for two decades, when managing partner Rohit Ohri put in his papers to spearhead rival agency Dentsu India Group, part of the Tokyo-headquartered Dentsu Inc., as its executive chairman, it marked the end of a long search for a position where he could realize his ambitions. Ohri, who joined JWT Kolkata in April 1990, played an integral role in JWT Delhi, which is one of the largest JWT offices in the network today. During his career with JWT, he headed many client relationships, on some of the largest brands in India including Airtel, Pepsi, Nokia and Ford. Sources within JWT confirmed how he was looking for a better role. In fact, recently CEO Colvyn Harris went on record in a TV interview with ET Now to say how Ohri wanted to be a CEO.

This is apparently the latest in a long list of instances when an ad professional, after investing a long part of his career in building an agency, has decided to quit because he was looking for something that could not be found in the silos of a network agency. By default, the whole process of determining who deserves what post and the remuneration and power that comes along with it in advertising agencies is in the hands of Westerners heading every global network and a few senior Indian professionals. Dig deep into the career paths of several leading Indian advertising professionals and you will surely find similar stories of those who were hemmed in at a time when they were looking for new challenges. Concepts like talent management still do not ring a bell in many agencies in India . ?Today most of the network agencies are following a reactive talent management system where you wait for the employee to approach you with a problem before addressing it. We need proactive talent management and this will be my focus area at Dentsu. Also, I will work towards better systems within the agency structure to achieve efficiency,? says Ohri.

Well that?s just a sneak peep at Ohri?s to-do list as he pulls up his socks to join the agency in August. There is a lot to be done. We are talking about the agency that has just seen an exodus at the senior levels. In February, soon after Dentsu Inc. bought out the 26 per cent equity stake held by Mogae Consultants? Sandeep Goyal in Dentsu?s India operations, Ruchira Raina, head of Dentsu Communications, left the organisation. April saw the likes of Gullu Sen, executive vice-chairman and chief creative officer, Dentsu India , and Nitin Suri, national creative director, Dentsu Marcom and president, Dentsu India putting in their papers. Also, in December last year, Naresh Gupta, the then director, strategy and planning, Dentsu Marcom had left the agency to join Cheil Worldwide as national head, planning.

Largely, there are two ways to deal with the ambitions of professionals in ad agencies?you either stuff their pockets with more money or give them the role they desire with a marginal increase in salary. Both Dentsu and Cheil are known in the industry to offer attractive pay packages. When asked why so many senior professionals left the agency around the same time, Yuzuru Kato, senior vice-president, Dentsu Inc., Tokyo , says, ?I cannot speak on their behalf. I am certain they have their own reasons. They have been part of our team and have done some great work. We thank them for their contribution to the growth and success of Dentsu India Group and wish them the very best for their future endeavours.?

Remembering the time spent at the agency, Naresh Gupta shares how Japanese organisations operate in a logic-driven culture. ?In other network agencies, you are prone to creative flights of fancy sometimes. At Dentsu, the output was seen from a technology point of view and the business was seldom run by feel only. The agency has always been very client-focussed, right from the time of its entry in India ,? he says.

Deepesh Jha, who recently quit Lowe Delhi as executive creative director to join Ogilvy Africa, is an example of an adman who looks at the West for exposure. According to him, markets are cyclic and it is going take a few years for the global financial fallout to clear up. ?A lot of creative people move out of India , but the migration has mostly been to the Middle East , either for money or in the hope of awards,? he says.

Also, some have moved to South East Asia and a handful to Western markets, primarily because till a few years back there weren?t many creative people in India with the right kind of international awards. ?And this is an extremely important criteria while looking for an international assignment. This has changed to an extent with India winning metals at international award shows. Lately we have entered double digits at festivals,? adds Jha.

Today, sound human resource (HR) practices in agencies are unheard of. Taking a trip down memory lane, adman Pratap Suthan, chief creative officer at iYogi, and chief explorer, The Advisory, remembers Mudra Communications of 1987 for its employee-friendly HR practices. His batch comprised advertising geniuses like R Balakrishnan, the chairman and chief creative officer of Lowe Lintas, and Ramki D Ramakrishna, founder of Cartwheel Creative Consultancy, among others. Dr Nagananda Kumar, the then head of HR, was single-handedly responsible for getting the best talent on board including Madhukar Kamath (now group CEO and managing director, Mudra Group,), Shailendra Pratap and R Sridhar (now founder, Brand-comm). ?Most of us stayed with the same agency for many years. HR in Mudra was for fermenting and fostering the growth of people. The agency you see today has been built on great human beings,? says Suthan.

Cut to 2011. If you do not come across as the right candidate, the agency may plot against you. ?Country CEOs of global networks do anything they can to be seen in a positive light. People who are on top want to stay there forever. Ideas are the only capital in advertising and they do not stay in threatening places,? says a senior creative on the condition of anonymity.

Most agencies in India , save for the top few, operate on ?here and now?, leaving talent to fend for themselves. Or in some cases, personal relationships tend to steady the ship and hold talent. Agreeing to the thought, Jitender Dabas, senior vice-president and head of planning, McCann Erickson, points out that advertising is a ?people?s industry? and a lot happens on the basis of relationships.

?There?s a dearth of quality professionals today. Earlier one would become a vice-president in an agency after 21 years of experience. Now you have professionals with 9 and 12 years of experience becoming assistant vice-presidents and vice-presidents, respectively. At times, the agencies are unable to bear the cost of such professionals who end up being a burden in the long run if they fail to deliver consistently,? he says. Prior to joining McCann, Dabas was associated with JWT as executive planning director and vice-president handling a major chunk of the agency?s business. Though he refused to talk about why he quit, sources in JWT say that he had searchedfor a national role within the agency before looking for options outside.

Apparently, all these issues show a lack of career planning across agencies in India . Many professionals BrandWagon spoke to, also confessed that many times they had considered offers to move to the client?s side to be a part of better HR practices.

?In my experience, human resource is more a recruitment arm than a retention plan across agencies. Nor have I seen anyone being guided or nurtured in the right way,? adds Jha. Nirvik Singh, chairman & CEO of Grey Group Asia Pacific, agrees on the lack of adequate training in networks after the recession. ?Communication is not just about churning out TVCs anymore. Online and digital is gaining importance and we need to learn how to use these to our client?s advantage.?

Dheeraj Sinha of Bates 141 who was recently promoted to the position of regional planning director, chooses to differ. ?I do think that most agencies are good at keeping the talent motivated by stirring up the right cause, even though they may not have set processes for it. To my mind, the culture is the bigger weapon of talent management than money and promotions, and the presence or lack of it is self-evident in an agency and its fortunes,? he says. Sinha agrees that network offices outside India offer more organised quality training sessions because of the access to the right kind of talent. Especially in the space of digital and social media, the quality of resources available outside is of a very high calibre.

Network placements in India, specifically international transfers, are rare. But yes, within cities and branches transfers happen very easily. The only prerequisite being that the agency wants to retain a professional. To put it simply, after rising to a national profile (national creative director, head of planning or CEO) one moves to a South Asia profile followed by an APAC role. At the fag end, one gets to be a global head of any network agency.

But this has not happened for any advertising professional in India so far. In November last year, Prasoon Joshi, executive chairperson, McCann Worldgroup India and regional creative director, McCann Asia Pacific came close to that dream as he was appointed chairperson of the newly formed McCann Worldgroup Creative Leadership Council.

For Joshi, this entails a global mandate to look at the creative product and creative policies for the group across its more than 250 offices around the globe. At the time of this development, he made it clear that McCann Worldgroup doesn?t possess the format of having a worldwide creative director, so this new position becomes significant in the scheme of things and is equivalent to the post of worldwide creative director. For McCann Worldgroup, this is the first time an Asian has been selected for this position.

?A regional role allows one to impact the way a network thinks and positions itself. This is a big learning experience because there are multiple markets, which are in a growth phase. Each of these markets has its own set of strengths and challenges, which need representation into the way an agency is positioned. This pushes you to grow up very quickly, to be able to understand issues across cultures and markets,? says Sinha.

To some extent, network agencies? incompetency in talent management has led to the rise of independent agencies. These agencies are thriving on the principle of a ?modular creative process?. With clients willing to go to different agencies to cater to various aspects of communication, the idea of a one-stop shop seems to be fading out. For instance, some companies in the US and other European markets have set up creative departments in-house with a media buyer and a planner. So they need to look out for good scripts (ideas) only.

Industry insiders consider Pepsi?s recent ?Change the Game? campaign as the ideal example of a client achieving a customised creative output. While Agnello Dias and Santosh Padhi?s creative hot-shop TapRoot India did ideation for the commercials, JWT (Pepsi?s AOR for over two decades) provided back-end support for amplification across other mediums. Also, today most big network agencies do not have the money to support good senior talent for long.

The bottom line is: if you have a certain level of equity in the market, you can start on your own with a few accounts and make the kind of money you always wanted to. Today, Suthan spends ?three and a half? days in a week as chief creative officer of iYogi, a direct-to-consumer tech support company. He has an army of 10 advertising professionals who call themselves ?Bang in the middle? and are responsible for evolving and building iYogi into a global brand under his leadership. Suthan invests rest of the time at The Advisory, a boutique creative agency started by him. ?After 20 years, I can?t have just Rs 5 lakh in my bank account. Give me the money I deserve and I shall give you my heart,? he says. It will be interesting to see how Ohri builds Dentsu and takes the agency to new heights. ?I remember how we all used to joke at JWT by saying how the agency is like a well-oiled machine. In case the captain of the ship abandons it, nobody will notice,? he says on a lighthearted note.

Hope someone?s listening!