More agencies entering Indian waters

It looks like more and more agencies are waking up to the fact that Asia, and specifically India, has huge potential as a market for the advertising industry. The WPP group has already been operating in India for four years, and is now going about acquiring Indian design firms with a vengeance, to consolidate their design activities in-house. This article in Mint, an Indian newspaper owned by the Wall Street Journal, quotes Sujata Keshavan, of Indian design firm Ray & Keshavan, acquired by WPP in 2006:

…….almost 80% of the design work in India is done by advertising agencies. To deliver quality work and retain clients, most agencies are focusing on the design aspect and creating separate design cells.

Last year, Wieden+Kennedy opened a New Delhi office, and in the next year or two, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Naked Communications and StrawberryFrog are all looking to set up shop in Mumbai. The bigger agencies like Ogilvy and McCann Erickson have had Indian offices for years. The challenge for them now will be from the smaller hot-shops, like Naked and StrawberryFrog. From the International Herald Tribune:

The agencies are trying to keep up with big ad spenders, which are shifting more of their marketing budgets to India and other fast-growing Asian markets and away from Western Europe and the United States, where economies are slowing. “Our view is that we ought to go where our multinational clients are,” said Simon Sherwood, chief executive of BBH.

Agency faqs! quotes StrawberryFrog CEO Scott Goodson:

“We just don’t think that the systems of traditional holding company agencies are the systems for the future. They are outdated and were developed for a very different era. That era has changed dramatically in most parts of the world and it is changing in India too, especially for GenY.”

Just like the hectic building construction activity going on all around India, there’s certainly some serious activity in this industry as well. Look out for some good work from that part of the world in the near future.

[Via the International Herald Tribune, Mint and Agency faqs!]