TBWA seeks a Tequila sunrise

It has been a little less than six months since Omnicom took 100% ownership of TBWA’s India operations and Keith Smith, president, International, TBWA Worldwide, who was in the country recently, caught up with Campaign India to speak about the network’s plans in India and the road ahead in the current economic scenario.
“For the industry in the Asia Pac, it is going to be very tough, as much as it is everywhere else in the world. Six months ago, we were all looking at China and India as being the growth engines that were going to pull us out of the economic crisis in Western Europe and USA. These two markets besides others in the APAC region have been hit as well.”
He added, “At the end of the day, what none of us can anticipate is the effect of the continuing slowdown in the car industry on all its related industries and what effect that will have on our business.” Smith says he hopes to see light at the end of the tunnel. For TBWA in particular, he is hopeful that they will capitalize and grow the momentum achieved by their global Visa win and the Pepsi win in North America.
“Having said that, there are areas where we have cut back on the rate of growth. We had planned for our retail activation unit Integer to be present in more markets by now but we have slowed that down. We have also slowed down some of Tequila’s development into new markets. But in India, we are focusing on Tequila in a big way, although around the world, we may not be going into as many countries with it as we would have otherwise. Given that Integer and Tequila work closely together, and that Tequila’s deliveries overlap with Integer, we will certainly bring more Integer skills sets to India, even if we don’t have the brand here,” said Smith.
On TBWA India’s progress so far, Smith says he would like to see the creative profile of the India office up there along with other TBWA offices. He said, “It took time for Shiv (Sethuraman) to understand what he had to do and we gave him a fairly free hand to do whatever it was that he needed to do in restructuring the agency.
I would like us to be a bit further down the road in terms of creating the kind of image that we want for ourselves in India. Of late, we are really starting to see some of the efforts bear fruit both in terms of profile and in terms of the work that’s coming out for clients like Bajaj Allianz, Standard Chartered and Adidas among others. We are beginning the long road to build the kind of profile for TBWA in India that we have in other major markets. We have got some of the bricks in place that we need to get to that point.”
TBWA Worldwide’s global chairman Jean Marie Dru will be coming to Goafest as a speaker this year and Smith says that’s as good an indicator as any of the significance of the Indian market to the TBWA network.