Women can add a lot of value to business of advertising: Srija Chatterjee

In a Q&A, the MD of Publicis Worldwide highlights her priorities for the agency besides speaking about gender diversity in advertising

Srija Chatterjee, managing director, Publicis Worldwide, is among the few women heads of an advertising agency in India. At a time when Indian companies and boards are looking to introduce more women at the top, Chatterjee, who has worked for agencies such as Mullen Lowe and advertisers such as Marico earlier, believes the criterion for selection should be meritocracy and not gender. Women, she says, fall off the map too easily in advertising, resulting in fewer of them at the top. Chatterjee also believes that Publicis Worldwide will have to work harder to push up its ranking in the country as it looks to grow and evolve. In a conversation with Viveat Susan Pinto, she highlights her priorities for the agency besides speaking about gender diversity in advertising. Edited Excerpts:

India seems to mirror the west when it comes to fewer women at the top in advertising. Yet, the media agency business has a lot of women CEOs. Where lies the problem then in advertising?

I think it is a mindset issue. My observation is that women give up down the line in advertising. While it is true that life goals change for a woman and that she needs to balance work and family, but if she believes she cannot take up a challenging assignment, then nobody can compel her to do it.

Do you think ad agencies are doing enough to address the issue?

I cannot speak for others, but my agency as well as Publicis Communications (holding company for all Publicis Groupe agencies in India) as a whole is encouraging women to take up bigger roles. Publicis Capital, which is part of Publicis Worldwide, for instance, has a woman heading it in Ravpreet Ganesh. Publicis Communications has a woman human resources head. We have a woman heading both Sapient Razorfish and Digitas LBi in Himani Kapadia. The experiential marketing arm of Publicis Groupe, which is Arc Worldwide, has a woman head here in Vandana Verma. So there are women in key positions and we continue to welcome women, who are talented. I think women can add a lot of value to the business and if they are prepared to take up challenging assignments, opportunities for them do exist.

The year 2018 is the first full year of operation for you, after taking over as MD in March-April last year. What is your agenda this year?

I spent last year understanding the business, clients and people. I know what the agency wants, what its capabilities are and what has to be built. My agenda this year would be to move a level up. To take Publicis Worldwide from being a middle-of-the-road agency and moving it up the pecking order. Currently, Publicis Worldwide is not among the top ten agencies in the country. I would like to change that and at least try and get it into the high single digits in terms of ranking. 

But is this easy given that the market is competitive and that recall for Publicis per se is not high?

Both Saurabh (Verma, CEO, Publicis Communications) and I agree that our work is bigger than our name. I have met a lot of prospective clients in the last few months, and many of them have been surprised with the work we do and the number of brands we handle from Maggi to Skoda, Zee, HDFC, Bharti AXA, L'Oreal, Lakme, Spicejet and Makemytrip among others. So yes, we've been doing a great job in terms of the work, but I don't think we've been doing a great job of the Publicis brand. The two need to come together. We need to up the Publicis brand in India.

What is your mandate on Publicis Health, a business you have begun heading recently?

I was given the mandate to head Publicis Health at the start of this year. On Publicis Health, I find myself in much the same position as I was when I took up the responsibility of Publicis Worldwide last year. Having said that, we already have a strong set-up in health. The mandate would be to consolidate our learnings on health, understand what we have globally in the healthcare vertical and applying them to the Indian market. 

What about Marcel? The agency was launched with much fanfare last year in India. But one hasn't heard much since then?

There are plans for Marcel in India and they will be announced at the opportune time. It is a Paris-based creative agency of the Publicis Groupe with offices in New York, Mexico, Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Sydney (Australia). It is an agency that helps brands thrive in the digital age and we have been spending time to figure out what it can bring to the table and how it can be positioned differently to what is on offer in the market here. A few clients are working with Marcel, but at this stage we are not talking about it yet. You will hear from us on Marcel in the future.