Jun 6, 2012

Mindshare APAC makes 'global to local' shift, promotes Srivastava, Greet and Gowthaman

SINGAPORE - Mindshare Asia-Pacific has restructured its markets into three clusters and promoted Ashutosh Srivastava, R Gowthaman and James Greet to new management roles.

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Ashutosh Srivastava, currently CEO Asia-Pacific, Mindshare, has been appointed chairman and CEO for global emerging markets, and is also Mindshare’s new global leader for products/services and talent development.

Meanwhile, R Gowthaman, currently chief client officer, will take on the role of CEO for South and South East Asia. He will be based in Singapore. And James Greet, currently CEO, Australia, will add Japan, Korea and New Zealand to his responsibilities, and also be the APAC regional leader for talent.

Srivastava will continue to be based in Singapore, and will focus on emerging markets with primary focus on the BRIC countries, in addition to APAC. He will also work closely with global and regional leaders in London and Asia to drive new products and services—and with the agency's talent development community, work to strengthen the agency's talent pool and leadership globally.

Srivastava will continue to oversee the Greater China cluster.

The new structure, created partly based on client-need and partly on market demographics, brings Mindshare Asia-Pacific in line with Mindshare’s operations in Europe, which are also organised around a cluster approach. The aim is to provide a "global to local" approach for the agency built around four core areas: trading, emerging markets, new products/services and talent.

"The majority of our clients have Mindshare as their agency in multiple countries, so we have been a global organization by design since day one," Srivastava told Campaign. "We've grown significantly in scale all over the world and these changes reflect a flatter structure plus a faster go-to-market intent for the new services we develop and roll out."

Srivastava commented that Mindshare's best work is achieved within an interconnected, open-source, collaborative, non-hierarchical structure. "In Europe, we've found this structure effective in terms of creating greater interaction between the clusters and the global team, and speeding up response time," he added.

Similarly, rather than have one person trying to lead all of Asia-Pacific, Mindshare has decided to appoint cluster-leaders who are able to truly focus on their markets and "really make a difference," commented Srivastava.

Gowthaman has been with the agency since it started in India in 2002, and has proven his ability to grow share and develop services across the region. During his past tenure as CEO of Mindshare India, Gowthaman lead the industry in awards, creativity and grew the business consistently while never losing the market leadership position.

Prior to joining Mindshare in 2010, Greet founded and ran top talent recruitment firm The Ladder. Since joining Mindshare, he has successfully turned around its Australian operation, winning major accounts, awards and buildng one of the market's strongest teams. He will continue to be based in Sydney.

In the area of product and services, Srivastava explained that WPP and GroupM have made "significant strategic bets in the area of data and technology platforms. "We want to ensure we use this investment effectively—to help clients make sense of the vast amount of consumer and media data generated."

The agency also aims to help clients master the use of newer media platforms and cut through brand marketing, added Srivastava. "The mandate is to work with our global functional leads and speed up delivery of leading edge products and services to clients."

Source:

Campaign Asia