Consumer experience more important than just consumer reach today: Shekhar Banerjee
2023 was a great year for Wavemaker with significant business wins and an impressive body of work for clients. The agency has been flying high and is poised for more growth in 2024 with 11 new clients onboarded so far. According to Shekhar Banerjee, Chief Client Officer and Office Head, West, North & East, Wavemaker, the agency's success can be attributed to the contributions it makes as a growth partner to its clients, making it "the most wanted agency in the market." He noted that every talent in the country aspires to work with Wavemaker, adding, “Going by our new business track record, it clearly seems that clients outside would also like to work with us, and therefore they are inviting us to look at their business. I think they are aligning with our ambition to become the most sought-after agency in the country.” In an interview with exchange4media, Banerjee delves into Wavemaker's India business, tech investments, outlook for 2024 and more. Edited Excerpts: How has Wavemaker India's business performed thus far in 2024? We've had a fantastic year in 2023, both in terms of the volume of work we've produced for our clients and the business that we won. We have emerged as the top agency for winning new clients, which is a significant achievement. As we move into 2024, our momentum remains strong. We have already won 11 new clients of varying sizes, marking a very promising start to the year. Overall, things are looking very positive. Wavemaker is making significant investments in emerging areas such as technology, content, and data. Could you provide further insights into these investments? As early as 2018 and 2019, we identified some avenues for growth at Wavemaker. We understood that to truly serve our clients in growing their businesses, we couldn't rely solely on our core media products. We recognized that a comprehensive approach was needed, focusing on three key areas: commerce, consumer data, and content. These elements collectively address the evolving consumer journey, which has undergone significant changes and is expected to continue evolving. We believe that by addressing these three areas, our clients are able to leverage these capabilities over their competitors and better connect with their consumers. Actually that panned out fairly well for us.Initially, we anticipated a gradual development over several years. However, the landscape shifted dramatically with the onset of COVID-19. What we thought would take five to eight years to materialize suddenly accelerated, with multiple evolutionary stages condensed into one or two years. Despite our initial projections, the trends we anticipated emerged much sooner than expected. Following the onset of COVID-19, businesses realized the urgent need to transform their marketing and organizational systems. This spurred a transformation journey for many clients, in which we found ourselves playing a leading role. Thanks to our early investments, we knew much more than many people at the client's end that we became the place from where knowledge was going to their system. Consequently, we became the primary source of intelligence guiding their transformation efforts. This shift placed us in a position of authority within our client relationships, allowing us to drive change and innovation. What changes have you observed in the consumer journey over the years? The biggest change that has happened, encompassing marketing, media, and overall consumer engagement, is the distortion of the traditional pattern where marketers could easily drive reach among consumers leading to conversions and ultimately business growth. Today, due to the evolving consumer journey, this pattern has been disrupted. Irrespective of a brand's strength, competitors can now easily capture market share, especially in the realm of commerce. Additionally, consumers have become more discerning and indifferent compared to the past. They are now more aware and conscious of various factors beyond just brand quality. They consider a brand's impact on the planet, as well as its health implications. Consequently, storytelling in marketing has evolved significantly. Brands are now required to address a multitude of factors, making the tasks more complex than before. If you are not going to address those, often you will not convert a consumer. At Wavemaker, our approach revolves around serving this evolving consumer journey. We make substantial investments driven by our Wavemaker operating system, a toolkit accessible to every planner in Wavemaker. It starts with first decoding this consumer journey, identifying problems and areas needing improvement. From there, specific tasks emerge, guiding our strategies. Three major levers come into play in our approach: How we tell our stories now, which is a role of content and not just creative. Second, is how we create this one-to-one relationship where the consumer data is coming in and then how do we finally close the deal where commerce is coming in. How has the role of media agencies evolved in recent years, particularly over the past three to four years? The role of marketing has changed significantly in recent years, and we must take these changes into account. Firstly, consumer experience (CX) has become more crucial than simply reaching consumers. Secondly, there's been a significant intervention of technology and AI in our field. AI, for instance, is reshaping decision-making processes and is widely used for optimization and efficiency improvement. Thirdly, with the increasing focus on consumer and data privacy laws, the marketing ecosystem, often led by agencies like Wavemaker, is grappling with how to build robust consumer data lakes and establish one-to-one relationships with consumers. At Wavemaker, we have a framework called KYC (Know Your Consumers), which focuses on understanding consumers through behavioral data rather than relying solely on claim data or secondary research. So these three big pieces matter a lot more than before. Wavemaker won the "Best Media Agency of the Year" at EMVIES. What factors contributed to this success? EMVIES is a prestigious stage in India and there no doubt nothing matches the glory of EMVIES in this country, especially all the more because of the rigor that goes behind winning every medal. What sets us apart, firstly, is our diverse client base who trust us implicitly and back our recommendations during execution. Secondly, our talented team is committed to producing innovative work, pushing boundaries and striving for excellence. Thirdly, our focus on understanding and addressing the consumer journey ensures that we identify and solve the right problems, leading to superior outcomes. When we showcase this combination of client trust, consumer-centric problem-solving, and creative talent at forums like EMVIES, it garners appreciation from marketers, judges, and everybody together. How did the first half of the year start for the industry? I believe that contrary to our expectations, there will be very strong headwinds due to the inflationary nature of the market. However, we haven't seen much impact on our rollout yet; it's holding steady for now. With the upcoming elections and the successful IPL season, as well as the promising outlook for the World Cup, I don't foresee any significant headwinds at the moment. In terms of advertising spends by marketers, essentially investments in demand creation, there doesn't seem to be a slowdown. That's progressing fairly well, which is a positive sign for us. Infact, IPL is doing fairly well and there are certain pockets of IPL which are sold out. What is going to be the focus area for Wavemaker this year? The focus area for Wavemaker begins with where we allocate our investments, but the more critical aspect is our strong belief that there's always a better way to unlock our client's growth. To decode where the next growth for our client will come, we aim to extend more of Wavemaker's practices to our clients and leverage the wealth of knowledge within GroupM, making it readily accessible to our clients. Additionally, we're focused on empowering our talent to learn and achieve more than before. Our talent possesses a diverse skill set, spanning core media, television, digital, and beyond, allowing them to easily pivot and become experts in emerging fields such as commerce and consumer data. Enhancing our talent's capabilities in these areas could lead to significant breakthroughs for us this year.