Today, agencies need to be capable across all media: Abraham Varughese, Digitas India

When Abraham Varughese moved to Digitas India as its Chief Creative Officer earlier this year, he was most excited about the sheer scale of opportunity in this burgeoning market. The industry veteran of 20 years moved to Digitas from Publicis Groupe Malaysia where he was the Chief Creative Officer and was responsible for integrating the holding company’s agencies to deliver the value of “Power of One” for clients like Samsung, Maxis Telecom, McDonald’s and Mondelez.

“Digitas India was an easy choice, as it is one of the few agencies I know that has multiple capabilities on the same floor. A significant part of Digtitas is the global delivery business, which does the backend part, and then there is the agency business. And within that agency business, there are all these capabilities in-built,” says Varughese.

“So, if you need to know how, for example, the Google backend or other application works and could impact your idea, it’s one of the few places where you can just turn around and ask someone. You have everything you need to follow through from idea to execution to performance, and that’s what we offer clients,” he adds, noting that earlier in his career if you were doing anything in digital, you usually had to seek outside help.

“At other agencies, you have to work in tandem with vendors, DSPs and so many other players, but at Digitas we have all the services required under one roof,” says Varughese.

“I’ve spent most of my career working abroad, and seeing it from outside, like so many of my peers, I always wondered why India had taken so long to move towards digital. And of course, now that we see that shift happening here, I was excited to return and be a part of it all,” says Varughese, adding that in his opinion, one of the reasons for this glacial pace was the sheer size of the market.

“India has such vast numbers, and so much space for the mainline media of print and television. Earlier, agencies didn’t see the need to shift towards digital as they already had so much revenue coming in from mainline, and so the idea was either you invest in digital, or you let smaller, specialized agencies handle digital,” he says, observing that that strategy doesn’t work anymore. “Today, successful agencies need to be capable across all media, there’s no more mainline part and digital part.”

And indeed, with hundreds of millions of first-time internet users in India set to come online over the next few years, digital is still being landscaped. Noting that while Digitas doesn’t have an exact blueprint ready to share for the next few years, Varughese says that the agency sees many opportunities coming up, and has identified several ways in which we can serve clients better than other agencies. 

For instance, bottom of the funnel marketing doesn’t have a lot of creative thinking or ideas, which is something we are looking to offer. Agencies like to push all their thinking towards top of the funnel. However, there is a lack of creativity at the bottom of the funnel, especially with all the automation. And that's where we hope to offer a distinct advantage.”

Another area Varughese is hoping to concentrate on is content, and how to drive opportunities for social commerce. Citing the example of Li Jiaqi, a Chinese content streamer also known as Lipstick Brother, sold an astounding $1.9 billion worth of goods in a single day on Alibaba's Taobao online marketplace during a mega-sale event last winter.

“When we talk about the next big audiences coming in, there are so many opportunities for us to help our clients reach out to them. Social commerce is going to be extremely important in engaging with audiences going forward and that is a space where we plan to provide our clients the means they need to provide it.”