By Simran Sabherwal
Big wins, retaining clients and being among the awards - it’s been a busy time for Maxus after Kartik Sharma took over as Managing Director, South Asia in January this year. Sharma’s focus now is to build on Maxus’ strengths - digital, technology and analytics, especially the new behavioural science lab, Moribus – while assimilating the agency’s mantra #LeanIntoChange
I come as a fan of Maxus – this was the sentiment expressed by Vikram Sakhuja when he took over as Global CEO of the Group M media agency Maxus. Not just Sakhuja, many in the industry in India and globally have expressed admiration for the company, seen to be energetic, young and agile. Equally fond of it is man-in-charge Kartik Sharma, Managing Director, Maxus, South Asia who took over the reins from Ajit Varghese at the start of the year as Verghese moved to Singapore as CEO Maxus Asia-Pacific. Since then, Maxus has won businesses to the tune of Rs 300 crore, a feather in its cap being retaining the Vodafone account (a billion dollar global business) in India, even as it was won globally under the Team Red led by MEC.
Leaning into change
Attributing the success to the culture prevalent in the organization, internally called PACE – an acronym for Passionate, Agile, Collaborative and Entrepreneurial - Sharma says that while the client is at the “centre of everything”, the agency does not hesitate to ask tough questions and face tough challenges. That is why advice given by Maxus is valued by clients, adds Sharma, reiterating that the agency has seen a lot of clients go through peaks and troughs, and it has been there right beside them. “Our working relation with them never changes. We don’t look at the billing number only to decide that,” Sharma adds.
Q & A: ‘Our culture is to win every day, not just at pitches’
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Born in the digital age, Maxus’ approach to communication and the way it works, including planning and buying, is perhaps shaped by the fact that Maxus thinks digitally, but has an integrated approach. Following its mantra of ‘Lean into Change’, which articulates the agency’s behaviour, the Maxus philosophy is - don’t wait for change to happen, embrace it, lean towards it and take the initiative to do a few things and also get clients to start doing it.
Digital Remains the Focus
Digital, data and technology were identified as the key growth drivers for Maxus as part of the visioning exercise carried out by Verghese in 2007, and to date, Maxus has “totally stuck to those visions” says Sharma. He looks at digital as an ecosystem, not just a medium, and that is probably why Maxus has been winning big – both clients and awards – on the digital front. The agency, which prides itself on being a full service digital outlet, has increased its headcount and trained personnel in all aspects of digital.
From a technology standpoint, Sharma is excited about Metal works – the technology R&D division that can help solve a client’s problem. Based on the brief, and with the aid of technology, solutions can be customized for a client. With Intellectual Property (IP) for more than 30 products to help solve problems, Sharma says that clients are excited by the possibilities that Metalworks offers. Last year, Maxus took steps to unify all its proprietary tools and digital tools under the “smart data” platform. This helps the agency to look at various forms of data and visualize it in interesting ways for clients and also use analytics to provide predictive work in near real time. While smart data is the buzzword, a major task for all media planners is making sense of the deluge of data related to a particular brand. To solve this dilemma for Nestle, Maxus took the initiative to set up DASH - Digital Accelerated Social Hub - over a year ago. With the help of tools to decode data, DASH house inside Nestle helps the Swiss food and beverage company solve problems on “almost real time basis” says Sharma.
The Moribus Advantage
Maxus launched Moribus, a behavioural science unit, last month as part of its consumer insights division, Insights. This lab will use disciplines of behavioural science, behavioural economics, sociology, psychology and so on to solve real life business problems and is the first of its kind in the entire Asia Pacific region. The agency has an exclusive tie-up with Mumbai University’s Centre for Computational & Social Sciences as knowledge partners to do indigenous customized research projects for marketers.
Commenting on Moribus, Sharma says, “We believe that there is a huge opportunity for new disciplines like behavioural science to solve some of the marketing problems. While conventional market research has its own place, it also has some limitations. So anything that we do on Moribus will complement conventional research. The traction we have seen on Moribus currently is fantastic.”
People power @Maxus
Besides the appointment of Kartik Sharma, Maxus has seen changes across its management team. Anand Chakravarthy and Navin Khemka have been brought in to head West and North operations respectively, while Sanchayeeta Verma has been elevated as managing partner, to head the South region. Being a lean organization, Sharma sees to it that everyone on board understands the organizational goals and more importantly collaborates to pull in the best resources available within the agency for projects, especially pitches. “It is a pretty unified vision that we have set for ourselves. We collectively have to win, there is no single one winner as everybody wins,” he says, adding that it is also collaboration within the WPP group that helps Maxus leverage its maximum strength.
POWER OF 49: A ‘STANDOUT CAMPAIGN’
Before the 2014 general elections, Maxus helped Tata Tea launch the Power of 49 campaign with the aim of getting women - 49% of the population - to cast informed votes. As part of the campaign, Maxus integrated empowerment stories into popular TV soaps across channels, leveraged influence of Bollywood stars to make the Power of 49 public besides a whole lot of other integrated communication. It drove national debate across all major media networks, pushed female voter intention in India up 300%, and Tata Tea saw 13.4% increase in sales.
Kartik Sharma calls Power of 49 a ‘standout campaign’ - a simple idea which the creative agency developed, but taking it to the next level in media was a challenge. He says, “It exceeded all expectations. Power of 49 really has been to me everything that Maxus says and believes and does.”
‘TOOL’ED FOR GROWTH
Maxus India’s approach to media lies in the agency’s proprietary framework for planning called Relationship Media (RM). It comprises a set of tools it evolves and changes every year to reflect market realities, and is designed to understand brand challenges and consumers in totality leading to meaningful, breakthrough and innovative ideas for the brand.
Resolve: Just introduced in India, it identifies specific barriers that a client’s audience, brand, and category face and how best to overcome them in communication.
QED: It uses the power of econometrics to optimize media investments.
DigiFaces: A recently launched global GroupM tool customized by Maxus, which helps understand consumers on a qualitative basis.
Figure: A GroupM TV optimizer tool, helps optimize TV plans.
Iconoculture: An online survey, it gives a deep insight about consumer habits and media consumption.
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
