The battle is outside, not within

Bhadkamkar tells Viveat Susan Pinto what his priorities are as the ad industry grapples with a slowdown

What is Slingshot, launched by DAN recently?

The creative agencies need an arm to think digital. While you may argue that we have all the necessary digital capabilities within our digital agencies so why the launch of another digital unit, the point here is that creative agencies require assistance on digital strategy. Digital agencies tend to be very outcomefocused and are champions of their digital skills. Their pace of activity is different from the pace of creative agencies. There was requirement therefore for a digital unit that sat with the creative teams on strategy. That is where Slingshot steps in. It is the digital arm of Dentsu India. Two guys from Flipkart — Kunal Dubey and Lucky Saini — are leading Slingshot and will report to Simi Sabhaney, who is the CEO of Dentsu India.

The general economic slowdown has impacted advertising spends. How long do you see it lasting? Will you continue with acquisitions during this phase?

Acquisitions are something we will continue to look at. However, this will be to either acquire scale, fill a gap or get a new skillset, innovation or technology such as marketing technology. While the current slowdown is challenging for the ad industry, I see the tide turning middle of next year. Ecommerce has also been a bright spot in the midst of this gloom. So I remain optimistic overall.

What would be your agenda for DAN in these tough times?

I plan to stay the course. Digital remains our top priority. Almost 50 per cent of our business is digital and my focus would be to maintain our growth in the area even as we move forward. We acquired a series of businesses in the last few years. So consolidation is another area of focus for me. We are bringing together support functions such as finance and human resources at the network. The number of legal entities we have, thanks to our acquisitions, will also be whittled down in the future. We are optimising office space, moving people from multiple offices into one campus. We have done that in Bengaluru. We propose to do the same in Gurugram by next year. In Mumbai, we are working out a colocation model.

What are you doing to improve your creative credentials. The tag of being a digital agency simply isn't going…

I would describe it as perception, nothing else. The fact is that we've been investing heavily behind our creative product. However, our delivery mechanism will be newage. A classic example of this model is Dentsu Webchutney. It is a digital agency that has done mainstream advertising work as well as digital campaigns. The agency bagged six lions at the Cannes Ad Fest this year. At the Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity, held in Singapore in September, Dentsu Webchutney was the Indian “Agency of the Year”, surpassing mainline ad agencies. We couldn't have achieved this without investing in our creative product.

But what are you doing specifically for your creative agencies within DAN?

We’ve hired senior creative talent across DAN offices in addition to setting up a Creative Council that monitors and guides the creative output of the group. Malvika Mehra (earlier with Ogilvy and Grey) has joined us in Mumbai. She is the chief creative officer of Dentsu India. Mahendra Bhagat has joined Happy mcgarrybowen, another creative agency within the network that services clients such as Flipkart, as national creative director. We have Soumitra Karnik and Titus Upputuru, both senior creative hands, at our Gurugram office. Karnik is the chief creative officer of Dentsu Impact and Happy mcgarrybowen, while Upputuru is the national creative director of Dentsu One, which is the northern office of Taproot Dentsu. Agnello Dias and Santosh Padhi of Taproot Dentsu are of course advertising legends and we are happy to have them in our midst. Dias heads the Creative Council at DAN in addition to being the chief creative officer and co-founder of Taproot Dentsu. I believe our strategy is in place to take our creative agencies forward.

Given that you have 23 agency brands in the market, how do you deal with competition within the group?

The strategy is to be collaborative and meet often to discuss ideas. Apart from the Creative Council, we also have a Digital Council and an India Executive Council that I head. The battle for us is outside, not within. We have to be cognisant of this all the time.