2017 in Review: Ad honchos on how Indian advertising fared during the year

Publicis India’s Sudeep Gohil, Tonic Worldwide’s Chetan Asher, Rajiv Dingra of WATConsult, and Ramesh Narayan, do a recap of the year 2017 and the major developments and shifts that took place in Indian advertising, as well as their long-term implications for the industry. 

According to Sudeep Gohil, CSO and Managing Partner, Publicis India, 2017 has been “a pretty good year” for advertising. Gohil, who has worked in Sydney, Australia for quite a few years before joining Publicis India in April 2017, says that it has been interesting working in India. “I think the biggest difference between India and other countries is that it is a growing market, so every year there is more money, more clients, more brands and more consumers than the previous years. So, for a lot of clients, their businesses are going up inspite of what they do. Working in the US, the UK or pretty much everywhere that I have worked, the market is going flat, declining, putting a lot of pressure on us collectively to work better from business point of view, because if you keep doing there the kind of work you were doing, you would have to go back to tourism. However, India is a growing market and this is an interesting place. In a growing market, it does make, I believe, harder to do great work because the incentive is less. The reason some of our great creative work comes out from other countries as that’s what we are up against, we have to come up with great concepts every year and better than the previous year. So this is a big shift I think,” he added. 

Gohil feels that the biggest shift in 2017 is the fact that all the management consultancy firms are buying advertising agencies, which is a huge deal, though not so much in India yet. He further said, “They are the ones with the money, and strong relationships. As the clients start to question how they are spending their money, they start to think how they spend their money. Unfortunately, for a lot of agencies, the management consultancy guys are in there before we are and that’s been a big shift. I think, in some parts of the world, like the UK, the US and Australia, management agencies are paying vast amount of money to buy creative and digital agencies and a whole range of businesses along the way. So agencies that don’t have plan for evolution or revolution depending on which way they look at it, have a potential problem coming up their way.” 

For Chetan Asher, CEO, Tonic Worldwide, the single biggest development that made a significant impact was the influence of technology on advertising. Be it programmatic, chatbots, Jio and broadband penetration, mixed reality or even the ad blockers – all have made the year a defining one for the impact of technology.  

 

 

“2017, I believe, unfortunately got overshadowed by the after-effects of demonetisation on the one hand and the early adjustments that had to be made on account of GST. So, the entire narrative was all about that. Nothing else held actually centre stage at all,” remarked ad veteran Ramesh Narayan, Founder of Canco Advertising. 

 

On a similar note, Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, WATConsult, said that on the business side, the introduction of GST had an impact on client spends in the second half of the year and that did slow down the year. At the same time, he felt that in the long run GST will only benefit the industry. Dingra further said, “The introduction of Jio and ultra competitive data rates have given the biggest boost to digital video consumption, thereby ensuring that digital scales even faster than it has in the last year. I feel OTT players like Hotstar, Netflix, ALTBalaji and others launching premium original content this year was a big game changing move and I do see advertisers looking forward to associate with original, made for digital content in the coming years.” 

While speaking about the ways in which the major developments in advertising during 2017 have impacted this sector, Publicis India’s Gohil remarked, “To be honest, these management firms have been buying creative agencies and tech companies have a much closer relationship with direct clients. This has done a couple of things. It has made creative agencies work much harder on their relationships with their clients to ensure that they are delivering more. This has had impact on the creative work as well, which is the reason why consultancies are interested in creative agencies space. That’s a discipline they were not familiar with, they didn’t have the creative directors, they didn’t have similar kind of skills. Agencies that understand that stuff are in a fortunate place as we all know that we have to look at what we do, how we do it and how we can help our clients to grow their business. I think being on the back foot a little, if you look at it, is a good thing as it forces us to evolve and change.” 

Meanwhile, Asher of Tonic Worldwide feels that technology will continue to make an impact and emerge as a central force that will change the way marketers decide to communicate in the country. “I wouldn’t call this a horrible year nor a wonderful year. This has been a year of shifts. With the data abundance becoming a reality, there are new users getting active on the medium. Digital is no longer a metro phenomenon with the landscape changing. These shifts will open new opportunities in the coming year,” he noted. 

WATConsult’s Dingra, too, remarked that overall, the year was neither horrible nor fabulous. “I feel it was an average year for advertising with many changes,” he concluded.