Would love for India to be powerhouse for IPG globally: Jarrod Martin

“A tech-driven performance agency delivering real intelligence that moves you forward,” is how KINESSO – part of IPG Mediabrands and known in India as Interactive Avenues – describes itself.

In 2023, IPG Mediabrands merged Kinesso, Reprise and Matterkind into one performance marketing unit Kinesso.  Sharing his viewpoint, Jarrod Martin, Global CEO, KINESSO says, “The (merger) was long overdue. We are trying to simplify our operations and connect better our digital data and tech offering.

Martin spoke to e4m on the sidelines of Cannes Lions 2024 about creating a more seamless experience for the clients. 

"Historically, we were splinted by programmatic versus search and social and by combing the two groups together we have been able to create a more seamless experience for our clients and more opportunities for growth for our employees…..now on the other side of it, we are a much stronger business overall.” He adds, “We are looking to remove complexity where it is possible and improve the client experience by greater simplicity and access to a broader range of services….what we are trying to achieve is to simply the data and tech world, Our competitors may try to complicate things sometimes and we really want to talk a language clients can understand and give them solutions that are really meaningful and drive impact for them.”

Within the IPG Mediabrand network, Kinesso plays two roles – first a client-facing brand where the effort is to bring in performance-based clients and clients that are strong in the data and tech space. The second crucial part is as an ingredient brand that helps to power the rest of IPG to provide the tech and data muscle to help clients achieve better business results against the campaign they run.

Says Martin, “Our job is to bring data and technology at scale inside the group. So creating technology that powers strategy, media planning, media buying, measurement and optimization.” He adds, “We are really the wind beneath the wings at the agencies at IPG using technology to give access to data at scale, reducing the manual effort required to perform repetitive tasks and giving them better access to better data to make business decisions.”

Commenting on Scalability, Martin says that the biggest challenge for scalability and technology is process and adherence to process. To streamline processes, Kinesso created a process, a couple of years ago and this has resulted in adoption of technology at a greater scale than before. Additionally, the consoles have been aligned within the technology platform to different users.”

Looking at the APAC region, Kinesso has built a global capability center network with hubs providing essential services with the hub markets service markets globally. Martin says, “India is our single biggest hub market that services other markets around the world. We have an office in Mumbai and we are launching a new market in Pune which in July this year, that will be a big office that is centered around powering the rest of IPG.  The second one is what is the strategic importance of those markets. We are trying to service clients in APAC and India is a key market for us; it is one of our top 10 markets.” He continues, “Outside of India we are looking to invest in areas like China, Japan to improve our offerings in those locations.”

Speaking about India, Martin says, “I would love, in a couple of years, for India to be the powerhouse for IPG globally, not just for media but all of IPG where India helps us to power up anything from media services to creative to production to CRM. It will be the backbone of our global network, that’s where we can get to over time.” He adds, “India for us has always been really strong, and it continues to be strong this year and we expect it to be strong next year. India outperforms our global average and definitely outperforms the rest of APAC.”