Revival, resilience, reconstruction – How Indian advertising fared in 2021

There are various industry reports on the growth and performance of India’s advertising industry, and all of them narrate a positive growth story. According to Magna Global Advertising Forecast – December 2021, advertising revenues in India swung back to a healthy growth rate of +14% in 2021, rising from Rs 577 billion to Rs 657 billion. And this growth momentum is expected to continued in 2022 as well, with GroupM’s ‘This Year Next Year’ report predicting India’s advertising industry to grow between 6-8% annually, on average, in 2022.

Even as India, along with the world, is keeping a sharp eye on the rising cases of Omicron COVID variant, the massive vaccination drive, waning fear of the virus among the people, opening up of economic activity, offices switching to pre-COVID-19 working mode, return to one’s favourite leisure activities have led to positive consumer and business sentiments.

The festive season this year has been a huge indicator of this positive sentiments as advertisers increased their spends to pre-COVID levels and even exceeding them; besides consumers returned to shopping at offline retail outlets, even as e-commerce continued to see heightened activity.

As the year draws to a close, Adgully looks back at some of the major developments in the Advertising industry in the year gone by in its REWIND 2021 series.

The major agency networks saw some consolidation and restructure during the year, there were some key acquisitions seen, along with several top management movement. Dentsu’s restructure and its key people leaving the organisation dominated conversations this year.

Let’s take a look at what happened in the biggest agency networks in 2021...

WPP

The year started for WPP with the appointment of Rob Reilly as Global Chief Creative Officer. WPP also saw a slew of acquisitions throughout the year. In March, it acquired NN4M, a leading mobile commerce partner for global brands. In August, it acquired leading AI technology company Satalia. In November, WPP acquired UK-based tech company Cloud Commerce Group, while in December, it has acquired a majority stake in branding & design agency Made Thought.

WPP also entered into strategic partnerships during the year. In February, WPP and TikTok announced an innovative global partnership to enable WPP agencies and clients to tap into the culture-shaping impact and reach of the platform. In May, WPP and Microsoft Corp announced a partnership to transform creative content production, beginning with the launch of an innovative cloud platform – Cloud Studio. October saw WPP and Snap Inc. entering into a global partnership to help brands build and deliver immersive experiences for consumers using Augmented Reality.

The group launched a new global data company Choreograph in April to help clients realise the value of their first-party data.

There were some major wins too. Google consolidates entire global media business with WPP’s Essence; the Coca-Cola Company named WPP as Global Marketing Network Partner; WPP's MediaCom won Bayer’s global account.

Dentsu

2021 has been quite a roller-coaster year for Dentsu India. The agency saw a massive reconstruction drive and several of its key long-term top leaders moving out of the agency. There was a major consolidation of Dentsu’s operations, and some senior level hires and elevations as well.

The year started with Dentsu India merging all its commerce capabilities under its Total Commerce offering. ‘Total Commerce’ unites all of the conglomerate’s commerce capabilities under a single umbrella, encapsulating every aspect of e-commerce, last-mile delivery as well as retail radius communication.

In April, Divya Karani was elevated to CEO - Media, South Asia, while Kartik Iyer joined the network’s market leadership team as its COO. In August, dentsu announced the launch of a unified Merkle-led CXM proposition in the market, bringing together Data Transformation, Digital Transformation, and CX Consulting into one unit to create the most specialised CX practice in India under brand Merkle.

As the agency underwent further internal restructuring, former Co-founder and CCO of Taproot Dentsu, Agnello Dias, quit Dentsu as a Consultant in September. Close on the heels of Dias’ exit, Taproot Dentsu Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer Santosh Padhi also moved on from the agency.

In November, Ashish Bhasin, CEO - APAC and Chairman India, dentsu international, retired from the group after a tenure of a little over 13 and a half years.

iProspect from the Dentsu stable saw the departure of its India CEO, Rubeena Singh, in August after a stint of 4 years. She has since joined VerSe Innovation’s short-video app Josh as Country Manager.

Middle of the year saw a swap of sorts of two top leaders of Dentsu and GroupM’s Mindshare. Isobar’s COO, Gopa Menon, quit the agency after 12 years. He has taken charge of the position vacated by Vinod Thadani, who quit as the Chief Digital Officer of Mindshare - South Asia. Menon Thadani joined dentsu international as Chief Digital Growth Officer for India and has got the additional charge of CEO of iProspect India.

Just after Sahil Arora and Euan Jarvie stepped down from Dentsu, Haresh Nayak, President, Posterscope APAC and COO, Dentsu International, also quit in September after 13 years with the agency. Nayak has now turned entrepreneur with his new independent venture – Connect Network.

GroupM

GroupM merits a standalone look. In April, GroupM India promoted Vinit Karnik to Head – Sports, Esports and Entertainment, GroupM South Asia, while Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer for Wavemaker India, took on the additional responsibility of Head of Branded Content, GroupM India. During the year, Vinod Thadani, Chief Digital Officer, Mindshare South Asia, stepped down from his position. Meanwhile, Priti Murthy was roped in as President, GroupM Services India.

GroupM along with Amazon Advertising India launched their first ever Search Advertising playbook ‘Decoding the shift in consumer behaviour to win on search’ in June. In September, MMA, GroupM and Amazon Advertising launched the ‘Decoding Consumer Behavior and Winning the 2021 Festive season’ Playbook, a handbook for marketers on expected consumer sentiment along with recommended strategies for Diwali this year.

In November, GroupM India restructured its media buying function - Central Trading Group - to bring in bring new leadership with a fresh outlook and thought leadership.

Publicis Groupe

During the year, Publicis Groupe, too, underwent changes in its leadership team as well as acquisitions and partnerships.

Publicis Groupe launched PubHub, a comprehensive ecosystem to create bespoke marketing transformation solutions at scale. Publicis Groupe India also designed a holistic and first of its kind health and wellness programme for its 4,000+ workforce called PubFit. Another measure that the group has taken for the benefit of its employees is allowing them to work anywhere in the world for up to six weeks every year. This is part of Publicis Groupe’s ‘Work Your World’ global employee-first program for Marcel.

Anupriya Acharya, CEO - South Asia division at Publicis Groupe, was re-elected by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) as President. GroupM India CEO Prasanth Kumar was re-elected as Vice President of AAAI.

Havas

Havas Group started the year with a change in its top leaderships when Vishnu Mohan quit the Group as Chairman and CEO Southeast Asia, India and North Asia after spending 25 years with the company. The group is ending the year with the restructure of Havas Worldwide leadership. Havas Group India has elevated Arindam Sengupta and Prashant Tekwani to new profiles. In November, Manas Lahiri was elevated to the role of Managing Director, while Ravinder Siwach was promoted to Executive Director and National Creative Director of Havas Worldwide (Creative) India.

Following the strategic restructuring of Havas Media Group India’s senior management earlier this year, the agency’s Mumbai office has reported a growth of 150% in 2020-2021, on the back of 15+ new account wins.

In the third quarter of 2021, Havas Media Group India added new businesses worth Rs 750+ crore, including Ambuja Cement, Bira91, Campus Shoes, De Beers Forevermark, Dr. Reddy’s, and Realme.

In February, Havas Group India brought branding and design group Conran to Mumbai. During the year, the company also launched initiatives such as HI-CRICKET, Meaningful Marketplaces, CONVERGED, Havas Studios.

Other agencies

In May, Diwan Arun Nanda and Ajit Balakrishnan, the founders of Rediffusion, decided to step back from the day-to-day management of the 48-year-old ad agency. Sandeep Goyal, a past President of Rediffusion (1997-2001), has been brought on board as Managing Director.

ASCI evolves with the times

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) took some definitive steps to strengthen its presence in the digital space. ASCI’s guidelines for influencer marketing came into play this year, following which, IPLIX Media reported in its pan India survey that included metros and Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities across 200+ influencers, that ~89.5% of influencers witnessed a dip in engagement on their content since ASCI guidelines went live. However, over 56.7% of the influencers said that they found the ASCI guidelines to be helpful and 35.3% admitted that it needs more structure and transparency. 43.3% of influencers were unsure about the penalties or the repercussions they may face for not adhering to the guidelines.

Fresh from a series of new initiatives such as the Influencer Guidelines, asci.social, and the Guidelines for Online Real Money Gaming, in August, ASCI unveiled its new brand identity to reflect the agenda of becoming future-facing and more inclusive.

When AI met Ads

Though the ad industry in India is just beginning to consider using AI tech, there were two standout campaigns seen this year. Cadbury rolled out its festive season ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan, titled ‘Not just a Cadbury Ad’, wherein the brand sought to convey through the commercial that they used machine learning to recreate Shah Rukh Khan’s face and voice to take the local store names in the ad.

Colors joined hands with Rephrase.ai, a synthetic media production platform that principally uses Artificial Intelligence for video personalisation, for the high decibel promotion of its new property – ‘The Big Picture’. The show has Bollywood Superstar Ranveer Singh making his debut as host. Rephrase.ai cloned and created a digital avatar of actor Ranveer Singh and used it to send out personalised video invites to all users who sign up on the microsite.