Named Cannes Lions media network of the year in 2022, Omnicom’s media agency OMD is celebrating 25 years in media and advertising. Anisha Iyer, CEO of OMD India, talks to Christina Moniz about the agency’s transformation journey in the past year and the current advertiser sentiment in the country. Edited excerpts:
We have seen a relatively bleak advertiser sentiment so far this year, even for big spending events like IPL. Do you expect advertising to see revival in the second half of 2023?
There is a cautiously optimistic sentiment among advertisers at the moment. However, looking at Q1 of this calendar year, I would say it is not as gloomy as people believe. You have to remember that advertisers are still reeling from the pandemic blow. Even now, Covid cases are rising and you cannot blame marketers for being cautious. Too many grave things have happened during the pandemic years, with loss of revenues and loss of lives. In my view, it is incorrect to say that revival hasn’t happened. It is just that the revival is not taking place as quickly as we would like.
Clients have been slightly more cautious than pre-pandemic times, but things are now definitely looking better than the last couple of years. One notable change we have seen over the past few years is the growing importance of business metrics over brand metrics. Earlier, the conversations used to be around awareness scores and brand love scores but marketers are now concerned with increasing their market shares and sales. This is an industry-wide change and therefore a lot of the upskilling in the industry has happened in the direction of delivering business results.
How important is the Indian market to OMD on the global scale?
India is one of the 11 focus markets for OMD worldwide in terms of the growth agenda. We are a key growth market at a time when the growth rate in many developed markets has slowed down. We saw double-digit growth last year and expect to continue that momentum during this year too.
On the new business front, we have seen at least six new business wins and two major account retentions since January last year. The retention of the Nivea account was a big standout moment for us. This was a nine-year relationship and we’re now continuing that into a decade. We also retained the Mercedes account at the start of last year and picked up the media mandate for McDonald’s India (North & East) this year too. This shows that whatever efforts we have made from a transformation standpoint are definitely paying off. Going forward, I would like OMD India to be seen as an audacious agency in the decisions we make on talent, clients, campaigns and business growth.
OMD India has been working to transform itself as a media agency since 2022, just ahead of its 25th anniversary. What exactly are you doing differently now?
Most of the last year was spent on a massive transformation journey. The people side of our business is extremely critical, so team transformation was one of the things we did last year. We have a significantly young team from a tenure standpoint, with a long term vision of 5-7 years. To my mind, the alignment of a person’s vibe with the agency culture matters a lot more than the skill sets. Skills can be taught unlike work ethic and vibe. Another thing we have recognised is that beyond a point, location does not matter. If we have someone really good for a certain business but based in a different location, it should not matter as long as they are delivering results.
Product transformation is one of the other things we did. We have spent a disproportionate amount of time in OMD India inducting products that have matured and delivered well in the Western markets. We now have a notable elevation in our product offerings, which has helped us make a real impact in areas like commerce, content and performance marketing. So across skill sets, product level and services level, we’ve made some big strides in the last year.
What growth have services like performance marketing and e-commerce delivered in the past year?
Between last year and this year, these services have grown fourfold. I’ll refrain from disclosing their share of the revenue pie, but can safely say that they are growing at a healthy double-digit rate.
When you speak of growth, are you betting big on new account wins or growing with existing accounts?
They are both equally important. It would be short-sighted for us to prioritise one over the other. Importantly, we do not have a new business team, which specialises only in pitches and winning new accounts. Everyone in the organisation is involved in some way when it comes to business pitches. Having said that, we don’t participate in every media pitch. We are choosy about which businesses we want to go after and the kind of mandate we want.
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