Going ‘the Dentsu way'

This month marked the high-profile exit of Rohit Ohri, Managing Partner, JWT Delhi, who quit the agency after 21 years to join the Dentsu Group as its Executive Chairman. Ohri, a commerce graduate from Kolkata, would now be the Indian face of Japan's largest advertising agency in India (after the exit of Sandeep Goyal who sold his stake in the agency) with units such as Dentsu Communications, Dentsu Marcom, Dentsu Creative Impact, Dentsu MediaTech and digital agency Clickstream. In his new stint, Ohri will follow ‘The Dentsu Way', considered to be the groundbreaking strategy for meeting the challenges of today's fragmented media landscape, and the ‘Cross Switch' model, a fresh way of thinking about marketing and removing the guesswork from the decision-making process. In an interview with BrandLine, Ohri outlines some of the challenges ahead of him and how he intends to take the agency to the next level. Excerpts:

After 21 years at JWT, what made you leave the comfort of one of the largest agencies in the country for a relatively small one such as Dentsu?

After 21 years at JWT, perhaps I was a little too ‘comfortable'. It was time to challenge myself again. My vision is to make Dentsu one of the most respected and admired agencies in India. If I succeed, it will be the biggest achievement of my career. The game today is not about the size of the agency, it's about the size of the idea created. At Dentsu, I'm going to be chasing scale ideas that build clients' brands and business.

What will be the challenges at Dentsu and will you be the new face of the agency after the exit of Sandeep Goyal?

Sandeep's vision and leadership gave great impetus to Dentsu's growth in the first eight years of its journey in India.

I'm now looking to take Dentsu to the next level.

The group already has a strong infrastructure, an excellent client base and talented, committed people on board in India. Dentsu has a clearly articulated vision around clients and brands. My big priority will be to ensure that the agency lives and breathes that vision. To be able to do so, we need to rapidly step up our service and solution capabilities, plans for which have already been set in motion.

Considering you were Managing Partner at JWT, did you also have a minority stake in the agency? Would you also consider picking up a stake in Dentsu along the lines of Goyal?

Dentsu Inc is a publicly listed company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Dentsu India Group is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Dentsu Inc, Tokyo. The ownership of Dentsu India Group is not likely to change.

How will you now go about ‘The Dentsu Way' to get consumers' attention in an era of overwhelming information? Basically, will you change your nature of functioning from that at your previous agency to the new one?

One of the unique communication models that are part of ‘The Dentsu Way' is called ‘Cross-Switch Marketing'. This refers to Dentsu's innovative, leading-edge implementation of cross-communication, which is defined as “the creation of scenarios to move targets and capture their hearts”, to flip a switch in the consumer's mind. The Cross Switch model has universal characteristics that enable it to be used anywhere in the world. This is only one among the several such models that are being implemented in India.

Dentsu has floated five agencies in India but it is not perceived to be an integrated agency offering a range of services. How would you rectify this image?

For over a century now, Dentsu in Japan has been working with a variety of clients, many of which may be competing within a category. Systematic security measures as well as strict rules are in place to ensure the sanctity of client data and information.

Outside Japan, independent entities are established to manage the assignments of competing clients. In India too, Dentsu operates through different independent, full-service agencies which function across different geographic markets.

While Dentsu India Group agencies currently offer full-spectrum advertising and media services, plans are under way to expand the range of services offered. As a global specialist in ‘integrated communication design', keeping the communications domain as core, we are looking to expand into new advertising-related services in India.

Dentsu is the largest agency in the second largest ad industry in Japan. However, in India it is still the WPP and IPG agencies which dominate the industry. What is Dentsu India's strategy to stand out in the industry?

Dentsu operates in the world's most competitive markets amidst a wide variety of competing agencies, advertising networks and stand-alone specialists.

Dentsu's success comes from an unrelenting focus on brands and client needs and stepping up offerings to fulfil them. The agency deploys its body of knowledge accumulated over the years across world markets, amalgamating globalisation with region-specific insights and integrating this mix using various practices in communications (for example, sports marketing, event marketing, space design, mobile marketing and so on) to deliver precision in execution.

Our strategy would be to leverage Dentsu's domain strength of ‘integrated communication design' and be the best solution partner to clients with our offering of integrated services. That is the passion, the spirit of enterprise and collaboration, with which we will partner clients in India.

Dentsu's client roster comprises a lot of Japanese multinationals. How will you leverage your experience from JWT where you handled one of the biggest multinationals (Pepsi) as an account?

Dentsu Inc partners over 6,000 clients across its global network. The group's India business has a healthy, balanced mix of both Indian, multinational and Japanese clients. As we grow, we do not expect this mix to change.

Partnering large multinationals in the creation and sustenance of long-lasting messages across markets helps develop a true sense of scale. As the world becomes one global community, brands increasingly are striving to create one uniform, lingering afterthought, one key identifier to resound with their consumers across markets. This, of course, gets further sharpened with insights and key drivers into each specific region and then into each market.

The key is to break the mould and think large, think deep and think wide, all at the exact same time. The key is to construct and bolster an all-encompassing, self-sustaining brand environment which nurtures all brand constituents while delivering true value. This is one of the core constructs of integrated communication design.

Dentsu also has a digital agency - what are you plans to beef up advertising in this nascent medium and would you look at bringing in new partners to give boost to this business?

The application of cutting-edge digital technology to communication design is among Dentsu's global strengths. Dentsu is known to do whatever it takes to help partners achieve their goals, be it inventing new communications media platforms or venturing into new business fields if necessary. Knowing client needs for digital in India, we are likely to step up our expertise in digital as part of our integrated service offering to India clients in line with our business plan.

Dentsu is positioned as the world's most innovative agency. How will Dentsu India live up to this positioning?

Dentsu lives by its corporate philosophy of ‘Good Innovation.' Simply put, it signifies ‘The Dentsu Way' which is Dentsu's client-centric approach to thinking, functioning and existing. It is a continuous, dynamic process, symbolising Dentsu's unrelenting spirit of using ideas, technology and spirit of enterprise to partner clients to success.

We are bringing this philosophy to India by implementing Dentsu's unique global service structure, introduction of new original tools, analysis methods and pioneering new communication models. This will be combined with stepped-up services and new solution capabilities.

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