Rajdeepak’s new role is all about elevating the Groupe’s creative agenda: Anupriya Acharya

Anupriya Acharya, South Asia CEO of Publicis Groupe, and Rajdeepak Das, Chief Creative Officer, Publicis Groupe South Asia, and Chairman Leo Burnett, South Asia, in an exclusive interview with exchange4media, spoke about Rajdeepak's plan to elevate the agency's creative agenda. Anupriya also shared highlights of yet another successful year for the company, key account expansions, awards, and their commitment to being future-ready, with an emphasis on talent retention and purpose-driven work. Below are edited excerpts: -

Congratulations, Raj, on your well-deserved promotion and the new position. Anupriya, could you please provide more insights into Raj's new role and the responsibilities that come with it?

Anupriya: Raj’s new role is all about elevating the Groupe’s creative agenda. On one hand, it will raise the bar on connected creativity, which in turn, fuels marketing transformation for clients. Meaning, it will systematically use data, intelligence and technology to provide holistic, more innovative solutions for business, brand, media and communication requirements. This is something that we are uniquely positioned for, through our country model and heavy investments in future-ready capabilities in the area of commerce, content, production underpinned by data intelligence and AI.

On the other hand, the role will also focus on inspiring our talent to go beyond the current. And also craft solutions that build long-term, enduring relationships between brands & consumers, and companies & consumers, through modern, progressive, purpose-led work that shapes communities and the world at large and brings in powerful enduring change. We believe that marketing and advertising can play a very powerful role at the intersection of purpose and innovation that drives sustainable growth. We would like to play our part in it.

Under Raj’s leadership, I have seen a lot of such work come out in the last 3-4 years, and so he has been handpicked for this role!

Raj: We are one of the biggest media houses, and what Anupriya has done very beautifully is stringing all the agencies in a thread and has made a beautiful necklace. Every company has a different culture, different structure, different way of seeing a problem and how you get them all together with a beautiful one string as a creative will be the fun and the challenge for me. I need to work on bringing the strengths together. So, when this role happened, I suddenly felt like a kid in the candy store.

How has the year 2023 been for Publicis Groupe? Could you share the key focus areas for Publicis in India and highlight the achievements or challenges faced in 2023 as an agency?

Anupriya: I am happy to report that despite the macro-economic uncertainty, we have been able to show strong double-digit growth in 2023 too. If you remember, 2022 was a year of massive wins for us with PepsiCo, Meta, Abbott and the like. We have been able to continue the momentum with wins such as P&G Digital, Ikea, Audi, AU Bank, ABI, Birla Paints, Mondelez Production, HDFC Ergo, amongst others.

We also saw expansion on our existing key accounts that are themselves performing very well, be it Nestle, Hero, HDFC Bank, Airtel, Haleon, PepsiCo, Axis Bank. As we have sharpened our services across Commerce, Creative Tech, Performance Marketing, Content, Production, Experiential and Shopper Marketing, we also saw good growth on uptake of our services across our clients.

It has been another great year on awards and medals. In the Abby One Show awards in May this year, LB and LKSS topped the charts as No 1 and No 2 agencies. Leo Burnett India has sealed its position as the top shop in the market being the Asia-Pacific Agency of The Year at Spikes Asia 2023 and the most awarded Indian agency at Cannes Lions 2023, etc.

Many of our agencies, such as MSL, Indigo, Publicis Global Delivery (PGD), continue to be Great Place to Work certified. Here, I would like to particularly talk about PGD which caters to international markets on the full spectrum of digital, data, and technology services. PGD India is a top center for the Groupe and has one of the largest pools of certified employees on various global platforms. We again invested very heavily in L&D with sharp attention to specialist capabilities for the connected world. Our focus remains on client centricity and being future-ready with the right capabilities. Through the right components of data, technology and automation, we are bringing in scalable solutions for clients to help them with their marketing transformation. Last but not least, we are embracing AI-fication of operations both for ourselves as well as for our work. These are exciting times.

Anupriya, you are a veteran when it comes to the media business, how actively are you involved with the creative team?

Anupriya: My role is that of an enabler at a group level. At a group level, I enable all our lines of businesses, whether media, creative, PR, data technology, etc. I look at ensuring how each of our agencies is more successful. What are the things that we can provide to them in terms of talent or capabilities that can augment them to do better. We believe that technology is going to shape everything; it will shape creative, media, PR, everything. So, we've invested in that. Similarly, the way we acquire talent and train talent has been totally redesigned in the last three, four years.

This is the way that we are able to make our creative shops really cutting edge in the market, with the type of work that you see coming out. I am not saying it wouldn’t have happened without that, but I think it makes it easier and quicker and faster and more agile for them. And it is the same thing for media as well. We've invested heavily in capabilities, and hence we are able to stand out.

A lot of people think the power of ‘one’ is some integrated solutions. It's a buzzword that is useless. There is no such thing as integrated solutions. In today's complex work, you have to have very strong specialization in everything.

For example, with the PepsiCo, it was pitched separately. They didn't come to us as a group. They came and pitched for creative separately, media separately, digital separately; they made it clear that you will have to win each independently. First, the creative won, then the digital won, then media. I believe that the power of one can come only if each individual is as powerful. A powerful player brings a lot of things to the table as compared to a lot of weak guys together.

Raj: It's not like she doesn't understand creative; she is one of the champions for a lot of our work. Think of it, none of the groups ever have a creative person as the Group CCO ever. And that's what she saw; she saw the strength of creativity and how we can infuse creativity and the way of thinking into every product we have, to make it creative.

Talking of creative, Anupriya, which is your favourite work of Raj?

Anupriya: ‘The Whisper - Missing Chapter’ really stands out. The reason I say so, for me, advertising has a lot of power, and hence a lot of responsibility. And I do believe that as leaders in this industry, it is important that we shape the narratives, we shape societies and shape communities. And Raj has not articulated that, but I must articulate it for Raj that a lot of work that Raj does is in that area.

This year I was also on the jury at Cannes. And I can definitely say that it's extremely important for advertising and leaders in advertising to take the responsibility to create modern, purposeful work that really shapes societies and changes them for the better. A lot of people feel that movies have that power, or media and entertainment have that power, I think advertising does. And a lot of work that Raj does is in that area.

At Cannes, they got the Grand Prix for sustainability for the Whisper campaign. This piece of work, as a lady said, is not only about keeping girls in school, it also means that so many years later, you will have so many more women joining the workforce, and hence a tangible change to your economy, which I thought was extremely powerful. Sometimes we are so close to the work that we don't realize the impact that it can create.

We proactively nurture a culture of creativity and innovation. And I think one of the key things is technology. We have a chief technology officer, and his role is to actively shape and read the shape of the roadmap and read what's ahead in this field. So, we are doing a lot of work in everything new that is happening, whether it is in AI, metaverse or Web3. But not every technology shapes the human world. Some of them are just like sparks, and then they go away. And some are really changing the way we work. We keep an active eye on that. Our people are proactively trained on that because we want to open their minds as much as we can and make them more experimental.

Raj, you head many diverse markets. As a creative person, how do you plan to adapt to the challenges of embracing different cultures?

Raj - You know what is more powerful than culture? Human emotions, human needs.

That's why one of the most powerful works was ‘Thank you Mom’. Doesn't matter whichever part of the world you are – a mom is a mom. India itself is so diverse; every state is a country. Of course, it's about culture, but also, it's about human emotion.

Every time we think how we can impact people's lives. And when you are thinking about people's life, you have to think people are not consumers, people are mother, father, daughter, grandfather, friends, sister, brother, all these things come together. And then you're creating things or creating a technology or service and all your platforms for them.

So, when you create those stories, it doesn't matter what language it is; it just passes through. That's why I keep on seeing the fastest growing language is not English, not French, not Spanish, it's emojis, think of it.

Anupriya, you are completing three decades in the advertising industry, how has advertising changed or evolved over the years?

Anupriya- In our new world, everything's connected, people are more aware, the internet is everywhere, and people can see everything, it has also become a more transparent place. And it's not about what you are telling in advertising or in a narrative about your brand or what you're trying to sell; people know it all that is behind that because there's always a behind-the-scenes. People read what companies are doing to see why people are boycotting things. That is essentially because we're staying in a very connected world today. And hence, that brings the lines between what you're trying to advertise viz-a-viz what is your corporate governance viz-a-viz what is your approach to CSR viz-a-viz what is your approach to D&I; all of these are very connected now; you cannot put sort of silos to each one of these.

Hence companies have to think in that fashion and not in silos. Those days are gone when companies thought, but in our office, we are going to behave differently. It doesn't matter whether you're sitting in a metro, you're sitting in the hinterland, you're sitting in any part of the world, people have a point of view on everything because there is awareness.

The shift announced its reach in say the last 15-20 years, with the social revolution. And so, purpose is extremely important for companies, it's important for brands, it's important for people, it's important even today for people joining the workforce. They want to know the larger purpose because everybody does a job, and they want to know whether they are part of a larger cause. This is what inspires people.

Raj – Twenty years back, we were not exposed to so much advertising, not so much communication. So many products also. So, today, when you get up in the morning, you choose what brush to use, what band to wear, what shoes to put on, what app to use to get the next vehicle or which social media to watch. If you look at it, hundreds of brands are catching us every single day. So, we just wanted to help people to choose the right one.

Do you think it has become difficult for advertisers to work with brands in a polarised environment where brands are expected to have view on a social or political matters?

Anupriya - I'm not commenting on political image, but brands having a point of view on what's happening is important. You cannot be disconnected with it. You have to be connected to it. If I was to reflect on it, I wouldn’t say it is easy or difficult. I would say it's the way it was. Say 20 years back when we did business, it was the way it was. For example, I joined the industry when television was happening. There were so many channels; people had choices, and suddenly TV took off. The thing is, it wasn't like was it more difficult? I mean, for people who were in the era before, maybe it was very difficult to sort of get used to it.

It's just the way it is, and so today, you have to be aware it's not right or wrong or correct or incorrect or whatever; it is the way it is, and everything has to be contextual. So, the work that people do today should be in the context of the consumers today.

Everything is evolving, our content and our context have to evolve with that.

What has been the impact of the international market plateauing and the funding winter on the Indian market from the perspective of advertising expenditure (AdEx) and the overall industry?

Anupriya: Despite the macro-economic realities, if you look at the global results, Publicis has performed well among global advertising and marketing holding companies. There is a tech slowdown globally, and in some countries, clients are taking a more conservative approach to capex and have paused their digital transformation projects. In India, however, the dynamics are different. We are projected to be the world’s third-largest consumer market by 2027. Our domestic demand itself keeps us growing, and technologically and infrastructure-wise, we are still building, unlike many developed countries. Within this milieu, our business model with a sharp focus on first-party data management, commerce, and marketing transformation is successful with brands. We haven’t seen as much impact on spends till now. Yes, the startup sector spends did see a decline, but outside of that, other categories are doing well, and clients are continuing to spend.

The festive period has been robust, and as an ad holding company, we’ve clocked greater business this festive period, versus the last. In the first leg of the festive season itself, consumers were spending on cars, smartphones, TVs, and other big-ticket items. Several brands and categories have overtaken last year's total festive period sales. What, of course, gave it the extra push was the fact that 2023’s festive season has coincided with marquee sporting events like Asia Cup, India-Australia series, ICC ODI World Cup, and Asian Games.

How do you address the issue of talent retention? It's been a big challenge for most agencies.

Anupriya: It is true today there are many more opportunities for youngsters. They want to explore more things. Nobody joins a company saying ‘I am going to retire from here only’. They have come there to explore; we better be aware of that, better be acknowledging that. We cannot live in a la-la land. There is definitely a more exploratory nature, but that being said, if you are going to be able to provide people with a larger purpose, a more meaningful workplace, and enough challenge, we believe it makes them stick to the workplace.

We also have a very clear feedback mechanism; we take our talent very seriously. We do regular check-ins with all our people. And then whatever comes out of that, we share it with all people, so we have town halls where we discuss all things coming out of the feedback, where can we do better and what are we going to do about it. So, people understand and appreciate it. We may or may not have done well in a few areas, but at least as leaders, we are acknowledging it and we do something about that.

Raj - Everyone wants to come to the office and do something purposeful. They want to change the world; they want to change behavior, etc. You need to have purpose at the center of it.

Anupriya - We also invest a lot in automation and removing the grunt work because, of course, nobody wants it!