Media360 India: CMOs discuss agencies, expectations from them

At Media360 India, Abhishek Gupta, CMO, Edelweiss Tokio Life and Nipun Kaushal, CMO, PNB Metlife, listed down a few expectations from their agency partners and discussed why they’re not open to ‘in-housing’.

 

The session that was moderated by Prasad Sangameshwaran, managing editor, Campaign India, began with Gupta putting down what he expects from his agency partners. 

 

He said, “Agencies and (client) partners both have responsibility towards each other. We need to start treating agencies as real partners and give them clarity on objectives. We can’t just use them for campaigns. We need to give them real visibility. From the client side, we expect agencies to continue with the fire they have at the pitch. They can tell us what can be done.”

 

Responding to a question about what he expects from media owners, Kaushal said, “From the media owners, we go with what our media agency partners recommend.”

 

A topic that was constantly discussed at the Summit was ad fraud. Both the marketers believed that as clients they haven’t faced that issue because their agency partners didn’t have the wrong intention.

 

Kaushal said, “I don’t face that challenge of it going to the wrong pocket. I think it’s fairly transparent. If you have the right partners and respectable publishers, there’s no problem. Something as dynamic as digital is always a learning curve. Where we depend on partners, even partners depend on us. There’s a lot to look forward to.” 

 

Gupta added, “We are seeing examples of this happening in the outdoor industry too and there’s lot of opacity there. I believe that if we’re working with the right partners, the intent is never wrong.”

 

The panelists then discussed about in-housing their advertising duties and whether media agencies are suited with giving content ideas.

 

Kaushal stated, “Creativity has no boundaries and the idea can come from anywhere. That learning has to be given to all. On in-housing, it’s about the commercials and it solely depends on that. I do believe that specialists should be left to do this.”

 

Gupta surmised, “As long as the content is right, differentiated and rooted in an insight, I don’t care where it’s coming from. We have experimented with in-housing for digital buying. For conventional TV buying, we are working with specialists. I firmly believe we have to leave this for specialists.”