Newly ensconced in his role as MindShare's Asia-Pacific chief executive officer, Ashutosh Srivastava is not about to get too comfortable just yet. While his agency dominates many of the region's markets, including his home turf in India, Srivastava is adamant that the network can afford to take nothing for granted, amid cut-throat competition and a rapidly fragmenting media landscape.
After several years in India heading MindShare and — more recently — GroupM South Asia, Srivastava has become the latest Indian to make the jump to the regional ranks. His succession of departing CEO Nick Waters smacks of common sense. After all, GroupM casts a long shadow over the Indian market, accounting for approximately 40 per cent of media spend, and rolling out a range of successful high-margin diversified services considered imperative if media agencies are to break the stereotype of being little more than volume discount merchants.
Indeed, Srivastava believes that the agency's key challenge comes from taking these diversified services — which include branded content, events, specialist media modeling unit ATG and digital — to a successful regional level.
"The challenge is to scale up these capabilities across more markets and clients," he explains. "We see diversified services growing to over 30 per cent of our business over the next three to four years in all the key markets. So, to give you an example, with clients who today work with MindShare only for planning and buying of traditional media, we would look at providing branded entertainment, online and mobile channels and so on."
In this regard, Srivastava's experience in the large and complex Indian market will hold him in good stead. He points out that the diversified services unit already accounts for almost 30 per cent of the agency's India business, and is growing above the industry average. Specialist units such as ATG and Broadmind, for example, are expected to lead the overseas charge. "I already see many of our regional and global clients working a lot more with ATG going forward with the scaling of our capabilities this year," he points out. "In content, we will work towards creating a 'script to screening' business model like we did with Broadmind in India, which encompasses everything from content creation to marketing and promotions, to consulting, to celebrity management, to being the media agency for content marketers."
Accordingly, he points to four key areas that will see greater investment from MindShare — interaction, content, analytics and consumer insights. Critically, he notes, media agencies must embrace consumer interaction with content, or risk becoming obsolete. "This is one of the big outcomes of the impact of technology on consumer behaviour," states Srivastava. "While different parts of the region are at different levels of evolution on this curve, I fear that unless media agencies respond to this development now, they will soon become dinosaurs, as technology is going to create huge disruption in the way we plan and implement interaction of brands with consumers."
With this in mind, MindShare is aiming to develop better expertise in terms of content. "Media agencies like us have a natural advantage in content, as we already have strong relationships with content distributors which we leverage well," says Srivastava.
The mantle of creativity does not always sit easily on media agency shoulders, but he is unruffled by this view. If anything, he appears to embrace the departure from the norm, describing it as a "very simple" approach to the business. "What keeps me going is a continuous, restless state of dissatisfaction, no matter how good we may have become in some things," he explains. "I can't claim to be an expert on everything to do with our business. But I make it my business to engage in conversations with other people, and work along with them to stretch my own capabilities."
A team ethic honed in the cauldron of GroupM, which now houses no fewer that four separate media agencies, cannot fail to help. Srivastava disputes the assertion that MindShare competes with its GroupM peers, but does admit that the agency is a little different, given its size and portfolio of regional and global clients. Ensuring that the two names are not interchangeable remains a concern. "It is a concern in a few markets, especially for the other GroupM agencies that are yet to be developed to a stage where they start building their own equity," he says. "But we are moving in the right direction and I can share the example of India, where three years ago, MindShare and GroupM were interchangeable names. Now all the GroupM agencies are recognised in their own right and separately from GroupM."
