“We want to make our mistakes quickly and learn from them”

In a bold move, dentsu international has created an entirely new global creative network, uniting its creative agencies, including DentsuMB, 360i and Isobar, and expanding its Entertainment, Earned Attention and Experience capabilities. The launch is part of a broader strategy aimed at simplifying client engagement and injecting creativity in everything dentsu international does,  all backed by a depth and breadth of creative capabilities that are unparalleled in the market. Dentsu Creative is poised to transform brands and businesses through the lens of modern creativity, which looks to deliver ideas that create culture, change society and invent the future.

Led by Fred Levron, who joined dentsu international as Chief Creative Officer in November 2021 and has demonstrated the transformative power of creativity throughout his acclaimed career, Dentsu Creative will be comprised of 9,000 creative experts in 46 markets connected to 37,000 media and CXM experts across dentsu international and collaborate closely with dentsu’s creative team in Japan. In the near future, further leadership announcements will be made as Dentsu Creative brings in the next generation of strategic, production, business, and creative leaders.

In conversation with Adgully, Amit Wadhwa, CEO India, Dentsu Creative, and Ajay Gahlaut, Group Chief Creative Officer India, Dentsu Creative, speak at length about the idea behind combining all the agencies as one, their approach and offerings for their clients and much more.

Excerpts:

You have combined Dentsu creative with all the creative agencies. What was the need of it, and why this change?

Amit Wadhwa: Everyone is talking in terms of integration, because that is the need of the hour. The clients are asking for it, the brands are asking for it, people need it more than ever, because people cannot be just stuck in one silo. They need to understand the holistic picture; but to be honest, you rarely see anyone is walking the talk. There is a lot of talk about integration. It's the most abused word in this industry, but it is about walking the talk.

And if you have to walk the talk, you have to make it structurally set in a certain way that it operates and delivers integration. When we announced earlier, which was about Dentsu MB group and Isobar group, this was also in that direction. This was step two for that, because we're trying to combine everything under Dentsu creative, under a singular leadership, so that we don't need to worry about this agency. We can pull in whatever is the requirement of the client, we can pull in resources if it is technology which is required, if it is digital which is required if it is mainline or PR or whatever is required, we can pull in the right resources and deliver it to the client state. So this is for the client and, as far as people are concerned, why should people be confined to just those specific brands and just the domain they are operating in. So this gives people the liberty to work on various clients, various domains and Dentsu creative is a step in that direction, we are creating that pole integrated agency which will deliver to whatever the client needs.

What more do you plan to offer to your customers with Dentsu creative and what is the implication of Dentsu creative in India?

Amit Wadhwa: We will offer the entire gamut to the clients, right from if they require TVC or print; but creativity is not confined to art and copy, it is a lot more. It is about technology, it's about digital, and it’s about PR. That's what we will bring under Dentsu Creative.

Dentsu Creative is also about strategy. It is also about regular creative, digital experience, PR, and tech solutions, all under one roof and that's what we will deliver through Dentsu Creative.

Ajay Gahlaut: You heard of the term modern creativity and that is what we hope to bring to our clients and modern creativity is unbound; it's not traditional creativity. It's a much more exciting space to be in, because now, a creative person can really have various dimensions to their idea so, for instance, if you take Unfiltered it is an example of modern creativity. You have a problem, you have a creative solution, but you have technology at the heart of the creative solution. You didn't have that solution before; creativity brought that about by using technology. That is an example of modern creativity, which is unbound and different from traditional kinds of ways of how agencies used to look at creativity.

Will there be any restructuring that we will be seeing in the coming months or coming days?

Ajay Gahlaut: I just have been given the role. I really have to feel my way and figure out how to do it, but obviously if new things have to be done, it has to be done in new ways. People have to be integrated, just as, if you need to integrate the offering, you need to integrate the teams and that is something that we will do going forward. And that is a mandate, and it's something new and exciting, it's something that no one has done before, so we are very excited about it, and we are willing to do whatever it takes, we want to make our mistakes quickly because we are first of the blocks and we want to learn from our mistakes. We want to be right up there for our clients, with the best possible solutions as a group under one single integrated offering of Dentsu Creative.

And what is your agenda to enhance Dentsu Creative?

Ajay Gahlaut: When the entire offering comes together, it will be an enhanced offering by itself. It's enhanced from the offerings that agencies, which are not yet integrated, can offer. It is enhanced in a way that a single creative thought is taken across various parts of the creative ideas, so it will be like when you put things together, the power of the sum of the parts of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, so that's going to get enhanced by itself.

How do you see India as a market for Dentsu Creative?

Amit Wadhwa: What we'd love to believe is that it's a very important market and that is the truth. India is a big market as far as size is concerned. India is a growing market. Also, India is a market which adapts very quickly. We are pretty resolute as people, and hence we adapt quickly and we have done it in the past. To be honest, when we moved into Dentsu MB and Isobar, we actually integrated our ways of working far more strongly. This is actually the next step; this is the big step. And like I said, this is actually walking the talk, and India I would love to believe is one of the most important markets.

Watch the entire conversation here: