Your first year as CEO at Dentsu South Asia has just been completed. What were the goals you set out when you joined the agency and have you achieved them?

I wanted to achieve three things. Firstly, I wanted to restore the confidence of our team. I think we have pretty much achieved that. I had to establish the thought that we are a winner brand. Clients asked us about what had happened during the last two years and I told them it was a momentary blip, one which was bound to happen once in our 123-year history.

Secondly, we wanted to have an obsessive client focus. We wanted to meet more clients and address their issues. I’ve had around 120 client meetings at the CEO/CMO level. It keeps increasing and I’m now getting second and third meetings with them. Every client meeting has been a huge learning. These include current and prospective client meetings. On 1 January, we decided on our 40 key clients and moved to a model that I call the ‘egg yolk’. This means one person from Dentsu services the client across creative, media, and technology. This has received great feedback. A lot of our people are still learning. Our APAC team was with us recently and was pleasantly surprised to hear the progress we have made. We will keep expanding and want to move this from 40 to 75. Incentives of employees have been anchored to one Dentsu rather than individuals.

Thirdly, it was about infusing energy into technology. For that, if I look at the year, we have grown rapidly. But nothing is ever to my happiness. I have 'stretched targets’ for the team. If someone achieves a target of 100, it’s pushed to 150, and if that’s achieved then 200. Whatever we do and achieve, I’ll be more and more greedy. I attempted to align the team internally. It started with our global CEO, Hiroshi Igarashi, and Jean Lin (group president, global practices) reinforcing it. I’m looking forward to the next jump in our activities on technology so that we grow faster. 

I’m happy because all three of these goals have been ticked. There were a lot of questions asked from the media about an alien like me landing up into this industry (having joined from KPMG). There’s not been a moment I’ve regretted. This is my family and I keep telling people that I will get the ship across from where we are to where we want to get to, no matter what happens. My competitive set is not the traditional media or creative agency. Anyone in the area of marketing trying to take business from my client is competition for me. Getting the support of Japan was also a big achievement for me because that now fuels the second phase of growth.

About having a common lead for clients across practices, does the team have enough people with the skill set to lead across creative, media, and technology?

It’s not about suddenly moving from being a creative to the best possible strategic planner across all service clients. You graduate and the first step is knowing your colleague and going together for a pitch. The second step is standing there with your colleague believing in his/her solution and talking to the client about it. Step three, which I think we have crossed is about bringing other practices together – so we’re taking more than just one colleague to a pitch and start making some sense of business solutions. We are upgrading. I don’t think we’re at level five (if we were rating on a scale of 1-5), but we’re between levels 2-3. The younger our colleagues are, the more hungry they are for growth. Unleashing them to try and learn and bring other colleagues in has been a big revelation for me.

I’m okay with the team falling and failing ten times, but every time you get up you have to run much faster. If you start fearing what you’re doing, you’re not going to do anything. Don’t worry about justifying, but acknowledge the mistake, is my message.

We are also looking to shuffle people. A planner doesn’t necessarily have to be a head of planning.

You spoke about incentives for one practice depending on the performance of the other. So how have the employees from the media side reacted to this as their incentives may not come because of the performance of creative or vice versa?

For us, both are growing. The way we have looked at overall targets – everyone has a stretched number to get to. I’m not 100% sure everyone can reach there, but I want to see how close to the number one can reach. There’s also a qualitative element – how much effort have you put in to get to it? We’re recognising the effort to an extent. If someone has put in a lot of effort and hasn’t met the stretched target, we will take that into account. In general, when it comes to the leadership team, they understand the concept of portfolio management.

Between creative, media, technology and we have a fourth practice coming in from Japan, which I’ll wait to disclose, we are a balanced car.

Where’s the maximum growth coming from between these practices?

Technology is seeing very rapid growth, but not enough to my liking. We have been growing in very strong double digits since January 2024. I’m holding my growth because we want to give good quality. Clients are asking for a lot of things. Once we achieve that, I aspire to grow triple digits. If I get my act and plans right with Japan, for the next two to three years, that’s possible.

In 2022, Dentsu Creative was an agency of the year at the Cannes Lions. After that, instead of the agency gaining momentum, it lost a lot of its leadership team and several changes followed. You’ve put the agency back on track now ahead of the upcoming awards season. Are you going to be back in the hunt for them this year and do they matter to Dentsu?

They matter 100%. It’s a balance of awards that brings in the reputation and the demand. Awards for the sake of awards don’t bring in practicality. We have to create a balance. We’ll be entering Cannes this year with a couple of promising entries.

About the second part of your question, yes, we lost a lot of talent, but as Jean Lin said last year, we are proud of them. They are doing well. I’ve met a lot of them and have told them that this is family.

Some of them are returning?

Yes, and those who aren’t have been invited to come back for a meal with the team and me. There’s no fight. The market is big enough for all of us. If there are ways of collaborating, we are up for that too. I’ve been telling people that whatever has happened has happened (in the past). Let’s look at what we can do together.

What is your focus for year two now?

One thing I didn’t focus on last year was getting our organisation lean and trim in terms of cost. I’m not talking about people costs. But things have existed the way it was. We will tighten up. We have a new CFO, and I believe we won’t fritter away money for the heck of it.

On the people side, we’re more or less there. But we will churn and get new talent. As you rightly said, some may not like the new strategy, but I hope that most of them do take to it.

What’s the response to this strategy? Was there any resistance?

I wouldn’t call it resistance. There was a little bit of insecurity in the beginning. Questions were about ‘what if I fail’. The revelation is that if you go one level below leadership these issues hardly exist. The more senior you are, these inhibitions come up in your mind as monsters. The people who are managing client groups are feeling like they have been unshackled and can now work. They were anyway talking but didn’t know how to manage their KPIs, so they’re thrilled.

Yes, the pressure has increased but it has helped us sort out the process-related issues. In the past, we used to have a lot of revenue transfer-related issues where one practice may have helped the other. Now it’s not about giving, it’s your duty to do that. If you don’t do it, anyway your bonus is gone at the end of the year. So, the message is to help your colleague, get the job done and put it into the CRM. Administratively we’re making it easier and cleaner.

In Japan, I believe our group chief financial officer, was part of the business side, before moving into finance as his career progressed. The belief that the right person for the job is the way forward and not qualifications. There was someone in the human resources deparment, who moved from business. People don’t quit there, they retire from Dentsu. They move across departments though. So by the time they have finished (their career), they have worked across departments. I want to encourage the same thing in India.

We have a sister company Dentsu Global Services, which is a delivery centre for global and employs 7,500 people. In the last six months, we have had the same HR head too at an APAC level. Now, if anyone wants to move from there to Dentsu India and client servicing, or vice versa, we can do that. It’s about holding people because I’m sure you can find some role for them.

In terms of top markets, where would India be right now?

The official answer would be among the top 15. In the next three years, we want to be among the top two markets in APAC. That’s the aspiration. The growth will come from all businesses, but primarily it’ll be the tech side. Tech also underpins creative and media.

Recently, we were in Chennai with Tag (a digital marketing organisation acquired by the group in 2023). The kind of AI-related work I saw there – it’s unparalleled. One of the people at the Tag office also asked Jean why Dentsu doesn’t talk about AI investments. She said that one of our competitors has said it will spend 30 million, and another has said 300 million. What do you want us to say? We have a philosophy of humble confidence. Japan doesn’t believe in showing off beyond a point. We will do what we have to do. The Tag acquisition is one of the biggest in the world and we are pumping in a lot of money. It’s not about individual heroes. But we can’t be so conservative.

In terms of the mass exodus the agency saw in India, have those roles been fulfilled?

We tried bringing as much of our older talent as possible. If anyone wants some excitement in our lives, we are more exciting than most of our competitors, and that’s in a positive way. We are much more one-Dentsu. Come and talk to us and we’ll craft a role out.

There’s no gap in terms of roles vacant at the agency though.

In previous avatars of this agency, acquisitions were a big part of the growth. Is that the route you’ll be taking too?

Yes. But in a different way. The old avatar was about digital in the earlier world – creative or performance agencies. That brought us to where we are. Now we are looking at consolidating the organic offerings and using our global services which have seen acquisitions that have not been exposed to India.

Thirdly, we’ll be looking at India-specific acquisitions in the technology marketing space. We’ll be focused on them.

2024 will be too early in terms of a big acquisition but in 2025 we would have some movement. We want it to be for the long term.

This article first appeared in the May issue of Manifest. Get the edition here.