Agency View. The power of creativity is not in chat GPT but in solving problems: Dheeraj Sinha

Firstly, I don’t think there is any threat from AI. We need to embrace this technological shift. If I can use generative AI to generate 100 social media posts for my clients or use graphics to shoot an ad film at half the cost instead of flying to a destination, then AI is making my work better, faster and most importantly it frees up my creative resources to focus on bigger things.

We need to understand our place in the value chain. We don’t have self-assurance as an industry. We start getting worried about AI eating our jobs or social media killing advertising. We have to understand that the power of creativity is not in chat GPT or AI, or social media execution but it is in solving problems and in leveraging opportunities for businesses and for humankind. And we need to focus on nurturing young talent and harnessing the power.

We are growing in strong double-digits and meeting our commitments already. I think there’s a bit of a slowdown in tech. Due to the funding winter, even large funded players have tightened their purse strings. At the same time there are other funded players who’ve done well and are spending as they build a brand. But overall there’s a definite slowdown and it is likely to continue this year.

However, there has been an interesting upswing in consumption expenditure. The FMCG and CPG sectors are doing well. Also new categories are opening up with many established companies foraying into new areas. Electric Vehicles as a category is witnessing a lot of action.

We are now beginning to cut the pie into many pieces. For instance, we have the regional offering, where we help brands crack their regional strategy because a lot of brands are now saying that if you win one State in India, it is like winning one country in Europe. Digital has been a strong growth driver. At the same time, we are also doing pure-strategy work. Some of these new services have grown over the last three years and now contribute about 15 per cent to our revenues.

This fiscal is about the CPG and the FMCG story. Household goods and consumer durables are doing well. It will also be infrastructure-led growth, with cement, paints, and furniture doing well. With improvement in margins, FMCG companies are beginning to ramp up spending. So it is in some sense a return to the fundamentals.

In the start-up space, we will see that the players who fulfill a fundamental need-gap will still stay strong despite the funding winter.

Most of the mandates that we are signing now are integrated mandates. The teams are integrated, the work is integrated. In the last five years, we’ve turned our 600-people agency to think for the new-age. So now we think in terms of the consumer journey and not mainline or digital.