Tom Bernardin is the chairman and chief executive officer of Leo Burnett Worldwide, one of the largest advertising agencies globally, whose roster of clients include Samsung, Kellogg's, McDonald's and Proctor & Gamble (P&G). Bernardin tells SAPNA AGARWAL his plans for India and the Asia-Pacific to drive growth for the company in the years to come.
The Indian operations of the company have been growing at compounded annual growth rate of 20 per cent for the last 10 years. How do you see it performing this year?
We estimate the region’s growth at over 15 per cent and are looking at aggressive growth opportunities here. Leo Burnett India bagged the Bright Star award, an internal award given for performance and revenue and creative contribution to one out of our 96 internal agencies, for the first time, last year.
What kind of growth opportunities?
We are looking at India for both organic and inorganic growth. We want to grow our creative as well as digital and retail capabilities here.
How will the region play a larger role in the global operations?
Over the last two years, I have set up a global leadership council and have put in place a new management structure. Now we are making changes in this council to have greater Asia-Pacific representation. What this means is that the current Asia-Pacific (APAC) president, Michelle Kristula-Green, will move to our headquarters as the global human resources head. Jarek Zeibinski will take up Kristula-Green's post and, additionally, Arvind Sharma, chairman of the Indian sub-continent, will also be a part of this global leadership council. With these changes, we will be better enabled to tap into the resource pool and capabilities present here.
India is already the hub for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) for P&G’s Tide, and for Asia-Pacific for Whisper. Do you see the region becoming the centre for global operations?
We are convinced of the quality of work being done here and are working on a pilot project to see the feasibility of India as an outsourcing hub for the US. We need to ensure that the systems and processes are in place. Our clients are open-minded to experiment with new business models and that makes outsourcing a good option to saves costs. We will start with the outsourcing of work that is being done by a third party vendor in the US to India, like bits of digital and production and then extend it whereever suitable.
What about your global clients? Are they also your clients here in India?
I am here to meet all our global clients who have a presence in India to ask them to work with us here also.While some of global clients like McDonald's and P&G are our customers here as well, others like Samsung have Chiel Worldwide as its creative agency in India, whereas the creative agency for Kellogg’s is JWT. However, we have started work on some of Samsung's products in India and expect them to be on air soon.