While most mergers are believed to be chaotic with operations taking a while to run smoothly, EssenceMediacom claims to have it absolutely sorted. Four months into the merger, the agency has bagged the Agency of the Year title at Abby’s 2023.

“We focused more on structuring the agency while ensuring that people are doing the right roles. We also invested in building a very robust leadership. Now at awards, we enter with the combined strength of the clients of Essence and MediaCom,” says Navin Khemka, CEO-SouthAsia, EssenceMediacom.

Until last year, the agency was not much heard of at award functions. Asked if there was lesser participation or wins, Khemka said it was the scale that has made the difference.

“We were participating and also winning, but the size of the company was smaller before the merger. Today after the merger, we are among the top three agency brands in the country, which means on the award front also we should be on top. Moreover, we are the number three agency in the country. So, we've now got into a league that is equivalent to our sister agencies - Mindshare and Wavemaker. We are all now on a level playing field,” says Khemka.

Talking about the strategies that have worked for the agency, Khemka said they focused on leadership and team building because it is a large organisation with two different cultures coming together.

“The first thing I did was to ensure that my leadership team was set in the right direction because when so many senior people come together it is important to give them very distinct roles and very good roles so that everybody feels that they've grown and they are looking at the future positively. Every office of mine today - Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru – is running like an individual country. The idea is to empower them like an individual country with an individual country head who's running the operation with their own set of clients and managing the entire PnL. That's the way we are actually trying to build a culture,” Khemka explained.

The agency is also set to spread its wings into newer territories in the east and southern parts of the country.

“We are planning to build separate PnLs for Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. We've also designed firewall teams now for some of our big clients like Google and Dell. They are big clients and need a dedicated team because of the huge amount of media billings. So, I have almost five dedicated units running the five large global clients.

Besides these, the agency has created a strategy and transformation team headed by Sonali Malaviya.

“We want every key client of ours to have a transformation plan where we actively engage with them and want to tell them what they should do in the near term of three or five years, and then work towards that vision. So, with her, we put the data person, the commerce person, the insights person, the performance person and the entire advocacy team. All these people work very closely with her directly reporting to her and they are the ones who are driving the transformation for a client who possibly is only doing traditional stuff,” Khemka noted.

Most mergers come with duplication of roles with many people being asked to leave but Khemka claims they managed the transition so well that they were able to retain almost everyone.

Finally, talking about his big win at the Abby’s, Khemka says it’s the timing of the win that has worked well for them.

“I think this win at Goafest is well-timed for us. The fest provides us the opportunity to convey our brand message to the media and clients as we are a newer agency and are gradually expanding the market across the country.”