Andrew Swinand , President, Global Operations, Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG)
I have been meeting a lot of CMO's and CEO's, in the past year, I have been to 27 countries and visited about 35 plus offices- the thing which I find is the universal truth- it is complexities. Clients have more choices for media, more and more of data and information, digital is more, everything is more. And what we see as an over emerging need in the market place is basically someone to make sense of it all. Someone who can basically tell me what matters and what I should do about it, what is important, how should I respond
Though the nature of media and communications changes drastically every day, Andrew Swinand has proven his ability to stay five steps ahead of the competition on behalf of marketers inventing new solutions for the industry by reinventing his role within the advertising media business. These days, as president of global operations for worldwide media agency network Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), he applies his passion for innovation across continents, product categories and cultures creating unprecedented service and results by reexamining the question of what an agency can and should do for its clients and for people. Swinand's SMG role adopted in August 2008 entails a focus on building stronger connection infrastructures that continue to advance the company's presence within critical growth markets across the globe. Specifically, Swinand works with the network's regional CEOs across Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Europe/Middle East/Africa to fortify SMG offerings and strengthen its client proposition, leveraging assets and building on the strong momentum of these regions.
Along with regional management responsibilities, his role includes the creation of new client-facing service models across the network and the expansion of its successful technology practice. Further, he is charged with working alongside SMG Global CEO Laura Desmond to align and position the network to take advantage of the digital resources that the Publicis Groupe media brands now have access to as part of the recently launched VivaKi operating model including its Talent Operation and digital Nerve Center resources.
Most recently, Swinand was at Denuo, the media futures consultancy within Publicis Groupe. Prior to his role at Denuo, he was a president at Starcom Worldwide, where he helped secure the Samsung business as well as build a global technology practice. He was also responsible for developing proprietary accountability metrics to measure Return-on-Objective (ROO) across all client investments, supported by Starcom's extensive media research team, and he pioneered the service models Starcom delivers to Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Swinand will continue to oversee the Nintendo business across Starcom Worldwide and Leo Burnett.
Q. But in India you have not had any big win in 2010?Q. Can you give us examples of what may have come across as work for other titles?
Sure, the best example I think is the work we had done for Samsung. Samsung is obviously a huge global firm. We always are looking for ways to differentiate our products, the TV space is a clutter. But we actually found the new daypart and we call it the day after the night before. What they were saying is that the idea of digital photography in taking pictures with your mobile phones is quite huge; there is a whole daypart where we actually found that people are spending 3 to 5 hours on Saturdays and Sundays going out andThursdays and Fridays posting photographs, sharing them, tagging them, talking about them and what we found was that day after the night before was actually a huge daypart where one actually utilizing mobile phones and mobile phone images. And what we found was we could actually create them into media vendors- the yahoos of the world and facebooks. What mattered was how we could basically incorporate product Samsung into this environment and on that daypart. And again I think what we are able to do with clients such as Diageo is interesting because one of the things everyone talks about is social media but there are very few applications for it. The reason I think this is so because it is a big amorphous bubble. Here I think the specific client insights, the specific usage that was valid to the target and basically allowed to incorporate the product was a way to create point of difference.
Q. Does it help to have so many different units to look after everything in that much of a specialized manner? Does that help?
For diversified services I think you need to have specialists for certain areas. If you look at expands in rural marketing in emerging markets I believe it is a special area. If you take markets like India or China, where you don't have the footprint, you need a unique approach. My feeling is that to have an Expanse or a Navia which allows us to get into these markets through theatre, through out of home, through distribution if necessary, because the traditional media approach is not as effective. So I do believe it needs a special skill set.
Q. Another area in digital is social media now it starts and ends with Facebook and some bit of Twitter. Isnt it?
Q. Do you do a comparison with other media agencies and where they stand in terms of their market share?
Q. Not just Vivaki or Publicis Group but every other group is doing a lot of stuff in market such as India. OMD has grown quite well, PHD is expected to launch soon, GroupM has consolidated its operations very well and so has IPG group whether it is Lintas or Lodestar UM. In fact Lodestar Um just got the Coke business with them. Competition is also very active and very awake in India and of course I am more aware about India I don�t know in how many other markets you are getting the same problems but while it is good for competition to be there, more the merrier and all of that. Obviously it brings a challenge on to whatever your growth targets have been? What is the kind of challenge it has posed?
Q. You spoke about how clients are consolidating their businesses. But clients are also calling for a lot of pitches, it may be because of the slowdown. 2009 I think it showed the way to everyone or it was an excuse of sorts. But we saw a lot of pitches, India alone had some 3000 crore worth pitches- if you include the Unilever pitch. Is that good?
You know what I think 2009 was financial crisis, 2010 was the innovation crisis. A lot of people kept their heads down, looking at the numbers in 2009, once they put their heads up and looked at the product and basically said- it can get better ...
Q. You have called it the human experience network. Why 'network'?
The thing that we have done is made investments to basically simplify human understanding. The one thing that is to be talked about is the money and we have actually created an online panel. It is there in India as well as Russia, China, US, Mexico and UK and the idea behind it is we talked about it as a attention response network where we actually have people as the part of the paid community who we chose based on their online usage and they basically work with us to test concepts and we can talk about products, advertising concepts, ideas with them. The idea is basically to have a community where they allow us to sense what is going on in the marketplace and we respond to it directly. So I think when we talk about human experience network it's twofold. First is how do we have the ability for the people to be closer to the human experience to understand what is going on; Second is the component of social listening. We basically allow our planners to have access to social listening to see what the key trends are within the product or within the market of a particular category. Also we created an 'Itunes' of insights; we created a human experience portal and within that portal we actually have a network of human experience strategists who actually are publishing key trends, key insights- some within the company some of them externally amongst key demographics, key targets, key categories, key products; and again the whole idea is how do we simplify human understanding for human experience closer to our planning and product so that we have advertising for our clients which is more relevant more effective and more impactful.
Q. Mike is active in India, China, Russia, the US and Mexico. Even in the US Otherwise it would have been only in the markets that you had once identified as your growth markets? Has that helped in the last year and a half?
Most definitely. From the business standpoint of SMG, we are having a great year, we are growing globally. Our global business is strong. I can't get into exact numbers but we have had a double digit growth and we have had a great year. Our digital product is approaching a quarter of our total revenues we have done great job in terms of investing in digital, growing digital, we have won awards for digital products and we have really invested in research and a lot of differentiation , we talked about our access on emerging markets. We have had great success in terms of growing the emerging markets, we continue dominate in Russia, Middle East and China this year picked up new businesses.
Q. You said you have had a double digit growth globally. Where did India stand what was India�s contribution like?
For India we have had a good year. I think we have work to do in terms of accelerating our growth here. I feel for India we are on the cusp of greatness. Actually I am going to be in India 3-4 times by the end of the year. We want to really focus on India in terms of driving the Human Experience and accelerating our growth.
Q. Apart from HEN what are the other areas you want to focus on in the India operations?
I think from the simplicity standpoint there are a lot of best practices in terms of process. I think our market here in India is a market which is basically maturing. I remember the first time I came to Delhi 8 - 9 years ago; it was a small road from the airport, I took the highway when I got here, no traffic till my hotel. I think that analogy applies to our business here and I think we want to bring a lot of atomization of technology here; we want to simplify work processes and basically continue to push and advance the operations to help our clients get better work faster.
Q. Last year Mediavest as a brand became active in India. How has that contributed?
Mediavest has actually done great for us. Last we spoke of Mediavest now in 33 markets; Mediavest is the seventh largest global brand in terms of media. If you look at Mediavest globally it has gone great guns for us. We have done well with it in India so mediavest as a brand continues to thrive. For Starcom Mediavest Group globally, it has been a strong second brand.
Q. It has been what 6 -7 months since this has been in place?
About a year, we have been working on it for a year and its really last 6 - 7 months that we actually started rolling our products for it.
Q. These are all the various things you are doing to put together your HEN?
It is simplified human understanding is where it starts and the second thing is to deliver meaningful brand experiences. The other key point of emphasis is how we measure and optimize our campaigns and our work based on relevance as meaning. So I think that if you look at media as a whole, the industry was basically built on efficiency, the bigger and the cheaper. My belief is while that was great to see and basically drove consolidation, we are now approaching points of diminishing returns. If you look at SMG we are number 2 globally and you know it is coming down to the top 4 players, dividing market shares, I think something like 89 per cent of all media. Point being- we have consolidated, what I think the next phase of our industry is going to be is all about relevance and meaning and how we will use all of that behavioral data how we use and understand human experience to increase the relevance and the effectiveness of advertising as opposed to just what can get the cheaper option. I think cheaper is a good thing but it has a point of diminishing return. I think what we are seeing more and more is how do we simplify human understanding, use that behavioral data to create and understand who are the best prospects, who are the best targets and also then how to send information; to understand what is relevant to them and what is important to them and how to use it to prove our messaging. We have been investing in actual dashboards to track and measure and help us understand how relevant advertising is to consumers so we can optimise based on that context. The last piece is 'real time'. The world is getting cluttered, we have Samsung in 76 markets, we have invested in Yammer and other work portals to help link our global network so that we can share ideas faster. It certainly applies to make the world smaller and have better real time information better real time understanding to allow us to basically improve. We talk about Mike and the human experience portal, how does real time information and inspiration for our planners help. Basically if we have an award winning work in India or another market, how do we share that across the network? In the past a lot of the networks were basically individual countries, much more of a lose confederacy as opposed to unified republic. We are working to become a more unified republic so that we can share a benefactor.
Q. About Mike again, did you have to educate your clients on what you are doing with this whole HEN way forward?
You know when we talk about Human Experience we kind of have this simplified purpose; we talk about simplified human understanding to deliver meaningful brand experiences in real time. When we are talking about clients we really see there are three components. The first of that being simplicity. I have been meeting a lot of CMO's and CEO's, in the past year, I have been to 27 countries and visited about 35 plus offices- the thing which I find is the universal truth- it is complexities. Clients have more choices for media, more and more of data and information, digital is more, everything is more. And what we see as an over emerging need in the market place is basically someone to make sense of it all. Someone who can basically tell me what matters and what I should do about it, what is important, how should I respond. So the first component is simplified human understanding and I think the Mike and human experience portal all a play into that.
Q. Does it help in things like new business wins?
The fact that we are growing it should be an indicative of a yes. The thing I found is what we tell our clients, how would you like the work be simplified? How would you like your advertising to be more meaningful and relevant? How would you like your information you are putting feature in real time? There is a very few people who would say no.
Q. Slowdown must have impacted whatever targets you may have tried to reach out in 2009. Did you redo them when 2010 happened, are things looking good after that?
Definitely, as I said, we have had a great year in terms of growth. 2010 would be the best year SMG has ever had.
Q. From an India viewpoint?
Best year we have ever had across the board.
Q. How many of Starcom clients have upped their spent in digital?
Q. In digital there are things like DTH which is digital television or in radio there is satellite radio, internet radio, in print we are talking about epaper. There is digital version of traditional media so when the advertiser engages with the digital version of traditional media where is his budget getting allocated is it in digital or is it in traditional ?
Q. On Starcom you have already explained to me that focus on India would be so much that we will see you come here 3 or 4 times this year in the rest of four months left. Also you have said from the HEN point of view there is a lot you are clear that you are going to focus in India and the three points that you had mentioned. Apart from that what are some of the other things that we can expect from you in India? What are some of the new initiatives?
Q. Two years and one month since you have been in this role. How are you finding it especially because it was a special role and not something which system already had?
Q. Last year Vivaki got a lot of importance, IMX got renamed; Vivaki as an umbrella became a little more prominent and also Mr. Shastri was appointed as the country chair for that. Now does a development like that have any bearing on something like media assets?
Huge. Vivaki is the future for Publicis Group and Starcom Mediavest Group. In some respects when I talked earlier about our ability to focus on human experience, what allows us do that is the creation of Vivaki. Through Vivaki by combining ZenithOptimedia, Starcom MediaVest Group and Digitas buying it makes us number 1 or number 2 in almost every market that we are in. So, it creates scale unprecedented. It allows us to basically sit down with the clients and say you are going to get the best rates bar none. So you know for me Vivaki as a strategic initiative, all of our back office, finance, technology and buying, all of those big scale operations become more efficient. Allowing us to pass on more savings to clients, allowing us to do it better faster and cheaper way, which allows Starcom Mediavest to focus on human experience, on insights, on strategy, on relevance and meaning. Vivaki, I think is what really allows us to be competitive in all the markets by continuing to be efficient which allows one to invest money for clients to be more effective.
Q. There have been a lot of conversations about procurement not that procurement is new to media service brands but it is just that since 2009 to now there is a lot of harping on procurement, unlike once upon a time when the marketing functions could decide all of the agency at its pitch. Now probably 80 per cent control of it is procurement. Do media agencies also have a procurement division of their own?
Q. So procurement pressures are manageable?
Q. How it would it impact agency relationships with media supplier and vendor relations. Because I remember in a recent interview that was in Valencia a few clients were talking about how they are concerned that agencies are not completely transparent with clients when it comes to their vendor relationship. Recently, three four months back a very renowned respectable client had called for a pitch with some really bizarre terms one of which was we will not pay you commission and you take it from the channel guys and you give it to us. So that was one of the clauses of that overall pitch. So media vendor and media agency relationship over the years it appears to have deteriorated rather than becoming partners, if that is the concern clients are talking about which they are?
Q. Everybody talks about the digital growth everybody talks about mobile the mass medium. Mobile as a mass medium hasn�t even taken off internationally. People are still figuring when will the day of the mobile come we still talk about it though. Are you really expecting mobile to take off and why hasn�t it taken off yet?
Q. Do you think the newer forms of technology, they have created a lot of interest but do you think people are already thinking on how an iPad can be used for communication exercises?
Q. People in the US are now spending money on applications, they are talking about augmented reality, India has got no clue about augmented reality?
Q. Any other brands that you are thinking of bringing in India soon. I think you have enough of media assets but in terms of diversified services?
India has long been a leader in diversified services. We have been exporting more than importing in terms of diversified services.
Q. You are saying it from the client's side not the best practice to put everything on procurement...?
