Profile... Tortoise and hare plot a race-winning strategy

When D. Sriram stepped down from the regional CEO post at Starcom MediaVest Group in March, the company reverted to a management formula it had used before the aviophilic Indian took charge three years previously.

The region was split into two. Paul Maher (pictured right), the CEO of Starcom Hong Kong, Taiwan and South China was to head up North Asia. Ravi Kiran (pictured left), the South Asia head, was given Southeast to run too.

It was, perhaps, a surprisingly smooth changing of the guard. Though Starcom stalwarts will not hear a word of it, some insiders say there was considerable air turbulence during the Sriram years. Jeffrey Seah, Mabel Leung, Paul Corrigan and Jaswinder Kaur were among the big-hitters to leave.

Post-Sriram, in Maher and Kiran Starcom has secured two decades of leadership experience from within. They know the network and they know each other - for 18 months prior to their promotions they worked together under Sriram. The big question, of course, is whether these two very different people can pull Starcom in the same direction without air-cover. And preferably forwards.

Different is quite an understatement. Maher is a beefy ex-rugby playing media man. He has worked in media agencies or for media owners all over the region, starting in his native New Zealand. In Sriram’s words, he is “steady and disciplined”.

By contrast, the diminutive Kiran harboured dreams of being a doctor and an engineer before he was lured as a management trainee into a creative agency (Lintas) in Delhi. He is, notes Sriram, “restlessly ambitious.”

Side by side, it is difficult not to think of the tortoise and the hare. As Maher himself concedes, “I may sound boring compared to him. Ravi is 100mph and I’m more measured in how I think.”

When quizzed on his management style, Maher likes to stick to the party line. “I want us to have strong local leadership, and I want me to be a resource for that leadership,” he says. Asked the same question, Kiran sounds like he’s running for president. “I have a limitless, obsessive belief in what people can do. People are like birds. Birds can fly. They just need to be given a direction,” he declares, before saying something about writing a script, but not a screenplay for his people.

On the job ahead Maher sees China, where Starcom has stagnated at number three in the market (Recma ranks Starcom third in Asia), as a growth priority, building on lynchpin clients Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.

Digital, insights and analytics will also be key as Starcom attempts to diversify its offering, he says, ironically pointing at the business Kiran has built in India - Starcom’s broadest offering in Asia - as a “window into where we see our future.”

He later moves on to Starcom’s much talked-about new positioning around ‘consumer intent’. “Our business cannot be one that is about creating awareness,” he says. “It has to be about creating behavioural change.”

Kiran, too, puts a lot of store in digital, pointing out that Starcom’s regional digital team has grown from 12 to 40 people this year, rising to 180 next year to make up one tenth of the agency’s regional headcount. “I genuinely believe that we’re more future-focused than most. We’re more walk than talk,” he says, words not often associated with Starcom.

But it is their views on the competition that really set Kiran and Maher apart. Maher insists that there are none in the market he fears. Not even the rise of Naked. “In the next three to five years the bulk of our revenue is not going to change dramatically. The challenge is for us is to do what we do better than anyone else,” he says.

Kiran names TBWA and Ogilvy. “They are in the same business as us. Communicating. It’s too easy to say MindShare,” he says. “Who do you think Apple see as their competitors? When Apple dropped the word ‘Computer’ from their name they redefined their competition. We should be thinking like that.”

In this vein, Kiran talks excitedly about an oft-used word in media circles these days: consultancy. “It is a word overused and underdelivered. In 2005, across 11 markets between five to 11 per cent of our revenues came from thinking and recommending - not just doing. Imagine a future when that figures reaches 40 per cent,” he muses.

Maher, however, doesn’t like the word consulting because “it leads people to think we’re trying to be something which we’re not.”

He does say, though, that media agencies need to be remunerated for the IP they bring to a client’s business. “Payment for knowledge,” he calls it.

So should we expect this odd couple to last? “We don’t have to agree on everything. And we don’t,” says Maher. “We fight. We argue. We debate. But the important thing is that we have the same core beliefs.”

Paul Maher’s CV

2008 CEO, North Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG)
2007 CEO, South China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, SMG
2004 CEO, New Zealand, Starcom
2002 CEO, Canada, SMG

Ravi Kiran’s CV

2008 CEO, South East & South Asia, SMG
2007 CEO-South Asia and CEO, Specialist Solutions Asia, SMG
2005 CEO, South Asia, SMG
2003 MD, India-West and South, Starcom