In January 2012, Patrick Rona, who was earlier president of digital agency Tribal DDB Worldwide Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and chief digital officer of DDB Group EMEA, was relocated to Singapore as Tribal DDB Asia Pacific’s new president. Rona had joined Tribal DDB from OgilvyOne, where he ran the global Unilever digital marketing account. Before this, he was at Digitas in London. Payal Khandelwal of FE caught up with Rona during his recent trip to India to know more about his experiences in the Asian market, the challenges that are unique to India and expected trends in mobile and social media. Edited excerpts:

What are some of the unique challenges that you have seen in India so far?

The number one challenge is to elevate digital up the agenda within the clients? organisations. Ultimately, we have to put digital in boardrooms. And this is a challenge in every market. In my job in Europe , only for the last two years have I been consistently meeting CMOs and CEOs of our major clients. So, in Europe, digital is now finally in the boardrooms.

Here in Asia, the conversations we are having with our major clients are not about digital, they are about the fundamentals of their business, the brand and business dynamic. This shows that digital has reached the right level. Because clients have stopped talking about tactics, and have started talking about strategy. We have to continue to get the digital agenda into the boardroom.

How are you helping the traditional planners in understanding digital?

The richness of the information that these mediums offer is phenomenal. Once you open a good planner?s eyes to these insights, the planner’s job is to translate consumer behaviour and market dynamics into a strategy for the client. I think the other aspect is that, in groups such as DDB, we don?t have this huge separation between media and creative. This way you can combine the whole picture about what consumers are doing, and how they are interacting with brands. Good strategic planners would get this instantly.

Are marketers in India doing enough to leverage the ever-growing mobile medium?

Doing enough is not the criteria; it depends on the category. The perception of India as this land of massive opportunity means that you have to do things on scale. While mobile is growing rapidly, traditional media still gives you instant access, whether its wide or not, its different. So I can understand why major clients are not yet using mobile as a key channel to engage with consumers yet, but I do think that clients will start aggressively going towards this medium. The device explosion is going to happen. Look at the growth of internet and mobile access. The numbers on Facebook itself are a significant portion of your active internet user base. And most people are accessing Facebook from their mobiles.

When it comes to social media, what are clients talking about? What are the issues/demands they come up with?

I am having the same conversations with clients from around the world about digital. I think senior marketers are still grappling with what to do with social media. The number one thing is that we have to show them that participating in social media gives them the insight into what consumers are thinking and saying about them. Having realised that, they will think that may be there is an opportunity to drive their brand engagement in a different way , moving from pushing messages to engaging with consumers. The big shift is getting clients to move from campaign thinking to a model of always being on and having a full budgeting in the creative process.

Most clients use push campaigns on Facebook, they acquire 30-40-50,000 fans in a short period of time and then do nothing with them. Six months later, they do another campaign with the same objective and then come back to the agency and ask why they don?t have a million or two million fans on Facebook. You have to have a strategy in cultivating and engaging those fans. You also have to know what kind of fans you want to get and how you are going to get them.

How difficult is it to convince the client about a sufficient budget allocation for digital?

I have not been at the point where I have been talking about the allocation of money. I think it is a bigger conversation. We, as an agency, not just Tribal but the DDB Group, have the responsibility to show clients what the strategic and creative opportunities are. We have to expand the canvas in which we make our clients think about our ideas. The moment we show clients what the creative opportunities are in the context of a beautiful idea executed well across multiple touch-points including social media, it will give them confidence that we are equally worried about their brand.

A senior client launched a product in India last year almost exclusively on digital and social media. I think we are seeing examples where clients are willing to take either the product launch or a part of their marketing initiatives portfolio exclusively on digital. The more this happens we can prove value of the medium and more money is going to shift there.

What are the interesting trends that we can expect in digital in Apac in the next one year?

Asia Pacific will leapfrog in the usage of mobile. It just has to happen because of the way we access the internet. Although we are seeing larger tablet formats, even in the small format, due to the nature of where people are and how they are using these devices, there will be a whole new behaviour. So Asia will drive that and the West will learn from Asia.

The second big trend is mobile wallet or mobile commerce. I am not sure about India, but for the rest of the Asia, mobile wallets will take on quickly. You can combine that with social (Facebook) and you start getting social commerce. Mobility combined with the uptake of social media in Asia will revolutionise engagement.