For long, marketing and communications holding company Omnicom Inc has been regarded as a sleeping giant in India, because of its slow start in the country. Today, that story no longer holds true?and it reflects in the case of its media operations. The company with $3.49 billion global revenues is looking to beef up its presence in India, through its media operations arm Omnicom Media Group (OMG). OMG may have had a late start, but has more than made up for it with the number of businesses it has bagged over the years. It has drawn up ambitious plans for this turbo market, especially in the area of specialised communications.

OMG flagged off its media agency OMD in India, in year 2007, under the stewardship of its current chief executive Jasmin Sohrabji. She was joined later by Harish Shriyan who took over the reins of the company as its chief operating officer. Today, the group has noteworthy accounts under its wing, such as Hindustan Unilever Ltd’s digital business, SC Johnson, Hewlett Packard (HP), Intel and Henkel and has just announced the launch of its second media agency brand in India called PHD. PHD will be a sibling brand to OMD here and will steer conflicting businesses. Globally, the agency PHD came into existence in the year 1990 and has been touted by the group as the world’s first planning led agency. OMD, on the other hand, is known for its strategic integration and creative innovation and was noted as the most creative media agency by the prestigious Gunn Report for six consecutive years. Apart from launching PHD as a standalone operation, the group has also announced a strategic partnership with digital creative agency Glitch and plans to bring in OMG global offerings Accuen (online trading) and Airwave (mobile marketing) into India. It has already brought in its global analytics practice Annalect and branded entertainment company Fuse. Fuse particularly could benefit from advertising cap on mainline television networks, which could swing more business its way. The group is looking for larger play in content ? where it can invest directly in programming on video platforms.

Jasmin Sohrabji, chief executive of OMG?India and South East Asia says that it has been operating as PHD for more than a year now, but the launch has only now been formalised. The group bagged Hindustan Unilever?s digital business in India in a hotly contested pitch. Globally, Levers is a PHD client. ?We have announced the launch of our first standalone office for PHD in Mumbai. Jyoti Bansal is heading the agency. This will be followed by a Delhi office. In Mumbai, a key account for PHD is the Unilever digital business. In Delhi, we have three businesses which we have been operating as part of OMG but which are really globally PHD aligned businesses. That?s HP, HTC and SC Johnson. These will be moved to PHD as we go along,? says Sohrabji.

OMG will push for globally aligned business, while leveraging local contacts and relationships. Scale is important for Sohrabji, but her skyline doesn?t end there. ?There will be those who want you for your scale, but there will be others who will want you for your innovative thinking. It is important that we have the best-in-class offer on every parameter,? she says.

Harish Shriyan, group chief operating officer (COO), recounts how OMD grew from scratch. It was not scale, so much as experience that swung things in their favour when it came to establishing the group?s operations.

?We went for a Johnson & Johnson pitch and we won that business. We had handled the company in our previous innings. We didn?t have the size and scale when we went for the pitch, but we had the experience. And they had the confidence in us.?

A big chunk of growth for the group is expected to come from digital. ?We will bring in OMG global offerings (companies) to India. We have already started out by launching Fuse which is around branded content. It can work in sports avenues as well. We have set up an analytics practice in the form of Annalect. The plan for next year would be to focus on digital companies and platforms. One is Airwave (mobile marketing) and the second is Accuen (digital trading platform). Accuen has successfully travelled to other markets, and its success rate is indicative of its prospects in India,? remarks Sohrabji.

Accuen?s launch is particularly interesting because it combines technology and strategy, and allows marketers to buy into online audiences, at the most efficient rate. This is the future because the media inventory is infinite. Shriyan adds that the time was perfectly right for the launch of Fuse and some of these other specialised units in the context of the advertising cap on mainline television networks, mandated by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). ?There are various solutions that can come in handy for advertisers, when TV inventory is limited. In India, digital is growing at a high momentum. Digital spends are increasing each year by 30-40%. There will be enough opportunities going forward,? points out Shriyan.

Will the current economic slowdown limit the growth for advertising? Shriyan believes that it is short term and the Indian advertising market will bounce back. ?During this time, people are holding back on investments. Input costs have gone up. But I believe that this is all temporary. With our kind of domestic consumption, any kind of slowdown will not stay for long,? he says.

Mergers and acquisitions

The Omnicom Media Group will acquire in India, but is also open to partnerships. ?The requirements of our clients cannot wait,? said Shriyan. In particular, the group is interested in agencies that specialise in digital and mobile.

Sohrabji talks about an alliance with digital creative agency Glitch. ?We have done a strategic alliance with a very strong digital creative partner called Glitch. The thing with acquisitions is that they take time. Not everyone is sitting around, waiting to be acquired. Even if you identify potential partners, the deal is not going to happen overnight. We don?t want time to limit us. If we believe that we can provide a compelling offering with digital creative, then we are we are not going to wait until we find the right partner to buy. We may go in for a strategic partnership instead.?

Opportunities in content

WPP?s media brand GroupM commissions and invests in programming by tying up with independent producers in countries such as the UK. Sohrabji says that Omnicom also invests in programming in many of the European countries. On and off, such opportunities in content emerge in India as well and she is open to them. ?We are exploring such opportunities, but this is all at a very nascent stage. And we are not necessarily viewing content from a television perspective. We see a great future for video on digital platforms. The idea is to create customised content,? she says.

?Once the content is created, you could put it up on television or any other platform. The digital medium is so powerful and offers so many opportunities. The demand for content on digital platforms is only increasing and you are not restricted to a format. You can produce documentaries or advertiser funded programming or any other form of content. The point I am trying to make is that in digital, life is not so compartmentalised,? Sohrabji says. Shriyan points out that a lot of content producers are emerging who cater to the online medium. There are a number of entertainment channels germinating on platforms like YouTube. A lot of this content will also be synchronised with direct-to-home platforms, he says.

OMD recently hosted an event in the US called ?The Final Front? where blue-chip clients such as PepsiCo, FedEx, State Farm, Toys R Us, Intel and JCPenney came and bid for original content ideas. The event was held in an auction style format and it brought together the content producers and the advertisers. Will such an initiative work in India?

?I would like to think that we are heading in that direction,? says Sohrabji, ?But we don?t see decisions happening that quickly on content formats. Then again, it is nice to test the waters. Everything is moving ahead and getting more evolved. The adoption rates in India to trends in Asian markets or the western world is far higher now, than in the past. We are so much more connected now with our aligned businesses.?

A lot of OMG?s ideas in India have travelled overseas. While some have been executed, others are in the process of being adapted to other markets. Hindustan Unilever?s Missed Call campaign for Wheel, executed by OMD, was targeted at rural customers. A toll free number was given and all that the consumer had to do was to give a missed call. It would immediately result in an outbound call that had humorous content. Nearly 1.3 million consumers engaged 28 million times, making this the biggest viral campaign in Asia. ?The missed call had never been used as a medium before.? said Sohrabji.

Shriyan recounts another example of outstanding work done for Tourism Australia where the cast and the crew of Balaji show Bade Acche Lagte Hain had been flown to the country. ?The idea was to promote Australia as a honeymoon destination. A lot of India people did not consider it to be a honeymoon spot. What was devised initially for a few episodes went on for 26 episodes. It was built into the storyline,? The Intel Chasers campaign done by OMD has also been widely acclaimed in the media and marketing circles.

Sohrabji states that there is a lot of sharing of ideas and experiences across markets. ?When one market experiences a good thing, the case study is exchanged with the others. And it?s easier to roll it out if there are similarities in the markets involved,? she remarks.

Multiple agency brands

Multinational marketing and communication groups have been known to launch multiple agency brands in India, with intent to steer conflicts. In the media buying business, these agencies significantly increase a group?s negotiating clout. WPP?s GroupM India which controls the majority of the ad spends, in the R40,000-crore plus estimated advertising market in India, has multiple brands such as Mindshare, Maxus, Motivator, MEC and MediaCom (in a joint venture with Madison.) WPP was one of the early movers in this market, and has reaped dividends in terms of scale and negotiating clout.?The Aegis group launched Vizeum in India, a second agency to media planning and buying company Carat in 2009. The same year saw the launch of media specialist MediaVest by the Starcom MediaVest Group. IPG Mediabrands has rolled out its third media agency network in India in 2012, under the LMG umbrella called BPN (Brand Programming Network) in India.

Many of these second and third agency brands have failed to establish a standalone personality and a distinct offering for the Indian market, says Meenakshi Madhvani, founder and chairperson of media audit company Spatial Access. ?There is very little differentiation in terms of what they offer — 99% of the time, they all do similar work. The difference may only be 10%,? she says. Some of the newer launches have failed to establish themselves successfully in this market as they are used as a catchment for conflicting businesses and their success depends on the performance of the main agency brand. Some of them wind up being mere shadows of their siblings, agrees Madhvani. She is however bullish about OMG?s prospects. ?They are doing well. They?ve won a good set of clients and their clients always have positive feedback to share about them. They seem to be servicing them well.?

Ashish Bhasin, chairman India and chief executive South East Asia, Aegis Group Plc., said that the group had launched second media agency brand Vizeum in India, not with the intent to steer client conflicts, but because there was a genuine requirement for a differentiated media product. ??Carat is more focused on north and western India, while Vizeum is dominant in the south. Carat is about scale and muscle, while Vizeum offers more of a consultancy type of approach. Vizeum attracts more of the entrepreneurial sort of clients. Our intent for launching Vizeum was not just to steer conflicts, but because there was a different kind of a client requirement. We have big plans for expansion for Aegis Media in 2014 and will be looking to expand to eastern India as well.?

On whether other media networks had been successful in their attempts to flag off multiple agency brands, Bhasin said, ?Some have been successful in their approach. Some have not. Such agencies should ideally have a different character and a different play. The operations should have their own flavour, management style and approach or the agency winds up being just a name plate.?

On OMG flagging off PHD in this market, Bhasin agrees that PHD is a good brand globally. Its success would depend on the factors listed above, but OMG has had a good steady start in the market. ?A lot of the success depends on how a media combine leverages resources to get better clout.? As per Bhasin, OMD and Mudra?s media operations could have synergies, but Mudra?s media operations had so far been kept separate. ?How OMG performs in the future will depend on how they bring it all together. It will also be interesting how the Publicis-Omnicom merger will play out in India in the future,? he says.

Santosh Desai, managing director and chief executive of Future Brands said that the Omnicom group as a whole was in a far more secure spot than a few years back. ?They have not had the best of agency brands in their portfolio and they started out late and with a significant disadvantage. But over time, they consolidated operations and took ownership of Mudra. Overall, their growth rate is good – if not spectacular,? said Desai. He added that things may be clearer once the Omnicom-Publicis merger takes shape.

OMG declined to comment on billings or market share, as also the Omnicom-Publicis merger.