GroupM’s Wavemaker, which was formed in 2017 through the merger of Group M’s legacy media agencies Maxus and MEC, is celebrating its sixth anniversary this month.
Wavemaker started out with offices in 90 countries and over 8,500 employees and some major global clients like L’Oréal, Colgate-Palmolive and more. In September 2019, Toby Jenner stepped into the role of the Global CEO and only a few months later, Wavemaker unveiled a rebranded new look which the agency then called ‘The New Wavemaker’. This was March 2020. Two weeks after this announcement, the world went into a lockdown owing to Covid 19. After this, which is the most part of the six-year journey for Wavemaker, the agency had to sail through a global pandemic, two wars and several macroeconomic challenges. But over the past few years, the agency has come a long way. And specially their India business has done exceedingly well. Wavemaker today is one of the top three media agencies in India.
CEO Speak
Global CEO Toby Jenner in an exclusive TV conversation with Storyboard18 during his recent Mumbai visit says because they launched ‘The New Wavemaker’ right here in Mumbai, “it’s kind of nice to be home in a weird way.” “The work we have done on Mondelez with Shah Rukh Khan, which has multiple awards. We said we were going to retire Shah Rukh Khan and the Mondelez work in that respect. But I think given we’re here, it’s very pertinent. And then finally, I think new business, we have got an amazing local based business when I inherited Wavemaker four years ago, but I thought there was more global and multi-market business we could take on. And so winning the likes of Danone globally, Audible globally, winning multiple assignments for L’Oréal have really built on top of Colgate, which we have globally, and Paramount’s Theatrical as well.”
Jenner calls India a growth market. “We see the economy growing in double digits, we see our industry growing in excess of that,” he adds. Jenner adds that the breadth of commerce and opportunities in India is really stark and much greater than in many other markets.
New APAC leader
Also joining on his India visit, Storyboard18 caught up with Wavemaker’s newly appointed APAC CEO Sindhuja Rai, says that the task cut out for her as an APAC leader for Wavemaker is to ensure that they become a lot more strongly engaged and embedded with their clients.[/caption] She took charge of the region a couple of months ago and has been visiting different markets ever since. “We started off with a summit in Singapore where we brought in all our Southeast Asia team members and spent some time with them reviewing the work that we are doing across all our clients in this part of the world. This was followed by a visit to Australia, met up with our clients and our teams there. Again, a very strong momentum in that market for Wavemaker. Then we went to Shanghai and I met a couple of our clients in China as well, Hong Kong, and then I’m here in India.” She says that the new task cut out for her as an APAC leader for Wavemaker is to ensure that they become a lot more strongly engaged and embedded with their clients. “There is a huge opportunity for us as a network where we tap into the larger network as well to pull in capabilities to deliver against the cost,” she says.
Rai has worked on the client side. In her previous role, she led the global media investment and AMEA consumer experience team at Mondelēz International. She was at Mondelēz International for just over 12 years. When asked what made her move back to the agency side and join Wavemaker, she simply says she wanted to come back to “the heart of the business”. “I am a media practitioner and I wanted to come back to the heart of the practice. I had a great learning experience at Mondelez, one of the best organisations that you can work for. But in a client organisation, media is what I would define as a support function. So for Mondelez, chocolate and biscuits are the heart of the business. But in an agency ecosystem, we are the heart of the business and I have to come back to the heart of the business.”
India growth
Coming back to India, Jenner says that moving forward the task for Shekhar and Ajay is building off a very strong base. “In terms of their top line growth Ajay and Shekhar have done exceedingly well. They have doubled the global average and we’ve grown considerably globally. And in terms of profitability, it is three times the global average. They are really smashing it. But there is some new business that I did like to see brought into the market, two in particular that I don’t want to name,” he adds, with a grin.
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