Digital will form the core of Dentsu's marketing strategy, says Rohit Ohri

Rohit Ohri talks to Business Today's Arunima Mishra about advertising agency Dentsu India's focus on its digital arm and how it tackled a leadership crisis. Edited excerpts:

Q. How is Dentsu different from other advertising agencies?

A. Dentsu has never been an unbundled agency. It has never separated its media business from its creative or digital sides. That's the way the Japanese like to work, unlike the West's fragmented way of working. Our network arranges itself around the client's need. We are collaborating around the client.

Many agencies are doing it, but these are bespoke teams where agencies create such teams to offer an integrated solution, while we, at Dentsu, work this way. It's a way of life for us versus one of an assignment. Dentsu India grew at 65 per cent in 2013/14, and I am expecting it to grow aggressively to achieve a similar growth this financial year (2014/15), too.

Q. Every brand is looking at digital. Will there be any paradigm shift in Dentsu's strategy in this regard?

A. Digital will form the core of Dentsu's marketing strategy. Over the next three years, I would like to take Dentsu India's digital revenues up, and ensure that over 25 per cent comes from digital. At present, the revenue is evenly split between the mainline (creative agency) and media agency.

Dentsu Digital, born out of the Dentsu creative agency, will bring the digital capability to the heart of the group over the next two to three years. Webchutney (acquired by Dentsu India in 2013) will be integrated much stronger with the mainline agency.

Q. How have you handled the leadership crisis at Dentsu?

A. After the exit of the previous management, there was a serious leadership issue. During this period, many clients moved out of the agency. When I had joined Dentsu from JWT, I had to reassure faith, and rebuild the lost confidence, not only inside Dentsu, but also outside, with our clients.

There was no leadership across the verticals; so we had to find people to head these, who could deliver as well. Many people joined Dentsu primarily because I asked them to. I leveraged a lot of my personal equity to build the current team.

Now, we have three National Creative Directors - Soumitra Karnik, Titus Upputuru, and Swati Bhattacharya - who are the best in the advertising industry. [Bhattacharya heads Dentsu India's new Mama Lab project, which will try to help understand the new-age mother as a consumer and break the stereotypes.] The new team is a great mix of youth and experience. For an agency's growth, one needs to marry the youth's aggression with the wisdom of the experienced. We have become a far more strategic agency which looks at how best we can deliver integrated communication.