Face Off: We’re exporting pitch ideas from India to our other markets says Craig Greenfield

Since 2005, Craig Greenfield’s interest in scaling large client programmes and developing company-wide processes has helped Performics successfully transition into the first truly global performance marketing agency. To deliver more comprehensive solutions, his team cultivates the organisation’s innovation capacity by building processes or systems. In an interview with BrandWagon’s Meghna Sharma, Craig Greenfield of Performics, the digital company under the ZenithOptimedia Group, talks about what makes the company different from the rest and the future of performance marketing.

Written by Meghna Sharma

April 12, 2016 05:24 IST

What would you say is Performics’ strength over other agencies in the digital domain? In a world where it is easy to replicate offerings, would you say Performics has a competitive advantage?

Performics is the performance marketing specialist within Publicis Groupe. We are also an independent global performance marketing AoR. I would say we have a top global footprint amongst performance marketing agencies. We support projects in 50 global offices with various models depending on the business need (central, local and hybrid). In fact, 20% of our clients run multinational campaigns. We are now in 41 countries, the most recent being South Africa, Greece, Indonesia, Argentina and Czech Republic. We continue to be focussed on corporate development through acquisitions, new offices and strategic alliances across countries. Latin America is a region seeing incredible digital growth and it is a market that we are watching closely. Our practice is built upon capturing and converting consumer intent. Our strength is in understanding intent at each decision point to deliver relevant experiences that drive performance. We will continue to grow as a network in APAC to meet client needs, so the focus is to make sure all our markets have a consistent skill set around biddable and actionable media, as well as the capabilities in data insights. There can be no weak link in our network when driving sales for our clients. All markets in APAC have had tremendous growth, and this will continue. In mature markets, we have made strategic acquisitions such as FirstClick Consulting in Australia. ASEAN as a region has done a great job of unifying in the past five years. Performics has taken the same approach, by working as a close network with offices in Singapore, Manila, HCMC, Bangkok and, of course, the recently opened Jakarta office. To come back to your question — what makes us different? It is the unique blend of data, media technology and consumer insights that we bring to the planning process.

What are the challenges as well as advantages that India, which is still digitally evolving, faces when compared to other markets in the APAC region?

Both India and China are now among the top 10 markets in the Performics global network, which was not the case two years ago. So their growth is clear to see and due to size and opportunity, this growth will become even stronger. Both these are leapfrog markets. If you notice how mobile is shaping the environment, you will see a very different view from that in the West. In some other ways, it’s quite similar that the movement happens from search, display, social to more programmatic buying and that is starting to happen here too. However, the mobile landscape evolution will create new paths here that probably don’t exist in the West. We believe the opportunity around e-commerce, especially on mobile in these two markets, will play a key role in Performics’ global growth. India will continue to grow faster than most of the top 10 markets, so it is incredibly important. In fact, some of the approaches in the pitch wins in India are now being utilised in other markets, making India an exporter of great work. There will also be further impetus from the ‘Digital India’ initiative.

What digital trends do you foresee shaping the year 2016?

The next decade will see the rise of new multi-billion dollar industries that will fundamentally change communication and commerce, in an even more profound way than how the smartphone has disrupted business and empowered consumers in the recent past. 2016 will see the Internet of Things (IoT), smart homes, virtual reality, connected vehicles and meaningful wearables become very real consumer offerings. We’ll see the rise of a super-connected consumer journey — your tablet, phone, watch/band, TV, smart home, fridge, car will all connect and interface with each other. This creates a mass of consumer data that can be used to buy and optimise ads or experiences across the journey. This connectivity paves the way for a future marketplace for ad buying that leverages this data and makes it actionable.

What is the potential of performance marketing?

The size and scope of performance marketing will continue to grow. To illustrate, programmatic display spend recently outpaced non-programmatic; and programmatic is expected to be 66% of total display spend by 2020 (in the US). RTB (real time bidding) formats in mobile and video are also quickly closing in on traditional. And the potential of performance marketing is no longer limited to traditional digital channels. For instance, Google recently started testing its double click ad serving technology for out-of-home (OOH) billboards. Performics is making early investments in integrated bid sciences for direct response TV (DRTV). This is performance marketing for TV: ads bought on a biddable basis and customised to specific audiences. Performance marketing’s ability to target relevant audiences at the right moment at the right bid — in addition to leveraging advanced analytics and measurement to power optimisation — makes it very appealing to advertisers, even in channels where it’s not yet widespread, like OOH and TV.

Meghna.Sharma@expressindia.com
@meghna0101

This article was first uploaded on April twelve, twenty sixteen, at twenty-four minutes past five in the morning.