Over the past year, Havas has taken the concept of collaboration to a new level with ‘Havas Together’, in which the global leadership combines efforts to define the company’s future growth drivers
By Aliefya Vahanvaty
The digital age has shaken the industry in ways that few could have imagined just a decade ago. Along the way, it has presented opportunities but also huge challenges to media agencies. Moreover, in a world where size is considered as a necessary condition to achieve scale and success, Havas, the fifth largest global communications company, was assumed to be too small to succeed alone. Assessing the playing field, taking note of the competition and refusing to play a defensive game, Havas’ young Chairman and CEO, Yannick Bolloré welcomed the digital disruption and leveraged its size to spot new opportunities. Today, with consolidated group revenue of €1,865 million for the full year of 2014 and a global organic growth of +5.1%, the Group is well poised to take on the new age consumer.
A whole new world
In today’s uber connected world, gadgets have become an extension of the ‘self’, leaving a data trail where velocity, variety and volume are transforming ‘Big Data’ into social data. Consumers, or ambassadors, are a simple click away from millions of other people - in real-time. That means a single negative or positive comment on any social network can kill or make a brand or a product. The scale of the opportunity today is unrivalled in history.
“Content is the most happening thing now and only through content, one will be able to engage with the customer. Given that there is multi-screen content consumption, content needs to take centre-stage and be more engaging,” says Anita Nayyar, CEO, Havas Media Group, India & South Asia. And it is in this milieu that media agencies today face their most exciting and transformational phase yet.
“From the receiver of the baton in a relay race to actually taking charge and leading it – the transformation that media agencies have witnessed has been phenomenal. It is a glamorous revival that is appealing to the best in talent. A closeness to content and delivery and the ability to analyse and change it in real-time has placed media agencies right at the centre of any action,” says Vishnu Mohan, CEO, Havas Media Group, Asia Pacific.
With this realization, what Havas has done over the last couple of years is invest a lot of money in understanding a consumer’s interaction with the online medium through their ‘Meaningful Brands’ initiative. It is a global analytical framework to connect human well-being with brands at a business level. It measures the benefits brands bring to our lives. It is unique in both scale – 700 brands, over 134,000 consumers, 23 countries - and scope. It measures the impact of the brand’s ‘marketplace’ benefits alongside its impact on 12 different areas of ‘well-being’, both ‘personal’ and ‘collective’ (such as health, happiness, financial, relationships and community among others) for a full view of its effect on our quality of life.
“What Havas as a brand has recognized is that the way the consumer journey transpires has undergone a sea change. The consumer now seamlessly toggles between the offline and online worlds. But when you are designing a campaign, you can't do exactly the same,” explains Nirmalya Sen, CEO, Havas Worldwide India.
Given this dynamic environment, Havas is leveraging digital in a big way, not only with its existing clients but also going out there in the market to new clients with its digital core as the main offering. “If you see our presence as a data specialist agency, it is significant across the globe. In India we don't have so much of data yet. And more importantly, relevant data is scarce. Globally, we have Artemis which is our data aggregator which takes data from practically all the various sources that are available in the market and does attribution modelling on a continuous basis. A brand can find out whether an X input towards a TV ad is working better than a print ad or online or outdoor,” says Mohit Joshi, MD, Havas Media India.
Collaboration, not competition
In a rebranding and restructuring of its media business globally in January 2014, the France-headquartered agency network created 'Havas Media Group' which included all of Havas' media agencies operating in 126 markets internationally. The rebranding is supported by a new simplified structure that places its digital expertise and content marketing at the core of its operations. This move brings the media side of the business in line with the structure of Havas' creative division, Havas Creative Group (comprising the Havas Worldwide global network and Arnold Worldwide micro-network).
The new structure also makes its specialized units such as Artemis (the group's global data management network), Mobext (mobile network), Socialyse (social media), and Affiperf (Havas' global trading desk) more accessible to the teams from both Havas Media Group and Havas Worldwide. On the content marketing side, Havas Sports & Entertainment supports this structure with its 36 international offices.
One of the other things that Havas did as a global initiative was move media back into the creative agency and established this integrated whole into a Havas Village. In India, Havas Villages exist in Mumbai, Bangalore and in Delhi. “The journey has been fantastic because in a time and age when most agencies are floating brand upon brand upon brand, we've completely collapsed the whole structure and we're going into the market with one brand which is offering various propositions and services under the Havas umbrella. To me, in a world of integration, the competition has actually been working the other way around. So while we are talking of giving integrated solutions to our clients at an organizational level, the industry is becoming more disintegrated by offering different brands to clients. We did a great thing by offering just Havas, the brand, to our clients and we've seen that it has paid off huge dividends,” says Nayyar.
Technology and content are fundamental to the Havas vision and apart from this marriage of data and creativity, Havas has been actively collaborating and partnering with the likes of Facebook Atlas, Universal Music, Mirriad and NewsCred, wherein Havas clients would have access to the marketing technologies and content expertise that these companies bring. “There is a lot of value that we as a group can bring to the table and we do leverage the various possibilities and value-adds that we can get from these partnerships to fulfil our clients’ marketing requirements,” explains Nayyar. “Agencies today literally need behavioural scientists and anthropologists to understand and predict the changes in consumption patterns on one hand and at the same time be resourced internally with creative technologists to exploit the opportunities. And for the latter as Alfonso Rodés Vilà, Deputy CEO, Havas and CEO, Havas Media Group has said often ‘collaboration is key - we have played tennis for long, we need to play football now’,” states Mohan.
Leveraging size
In an industry obsessed about size and the benefits of scale, can Havas– the fifth-largest media holding company in the world— be a competitive force? Scale can offer companies advantages such as better prices for media, but despite the noise, Havas executives said they don’t see a need to be big. They say the company’s size has made it easier to simplify its operating structure and operate in a more nimble way.
“Big is great, big is beautiful, but agile and speed is better today,” Dominique Delport, global managing director for the company’s media buying operations, Havas Media Group had said in an interview with Wall Street Journal last year. “Today you have two kinds of agencies - the traditional big boys who are very comfortable with the space, very comfortable with creating content for television and print and stuff like that and then there are these technology companies, digital companies who are exceptionally well versed with the technology but may not be so when it comes to brands and creativity. This gives Havas a space to create for ourselves a whole new world which seamlessly weaves these two together because unlike the older guys we're 18-year-old. And like most 18-year-olds we're very comfortable with technology. This allows us to weave the two worlds together to create a far more effective approach to communication.”
“It’s got a lot to do with the market-share. If you see there is obviously the largest agency in the country that has the largest market share and the market is hugely skewed in their favour. So the challenge to growth remains similar for us as well as agencies of our ilk- with market-share ranging anywhere between 5-10%. It is extremely important for us to have a firm footing. Also, most other agencies have been in the country much longer than us, so we have to make up for this time span of 10-15 years,” says Nayyar. “We have a lot of new age clients and we have been working with a lot of entrepreneurial clients like Quikr, Yepme, Shaadi.com and a lot of others that are specific to India. Our integrated team knows how to target the new age client and understands that the way they operate,” elaborates Joshi.
The next move
In addition to the accentuated focus on collaborations, Havas is continuing to stay the course in the disciplines of importance for 2015 namely, mobile and data that would see disproportionate investments from the holding company this year.
Havas’ growth strategy is also putting a premium on new businesses at a regional and even local level. “In India, the Tier II growth pillar is something that we’re actively looking at to steer growth because while there will always be opportunities in the metros and in the markets that one has established, one has to look for new opportunities. And today the audience and the growth in Tier II looks promising. The other priority is to take digital and mobile to the next level. We are pretty much geared to the take the market on with our new age tools such as Affiperf, Socialyse and Mobext. The third area we are focussing on is our resources - so harnessing resources within our organization and charting out their careers is extremely important to retain talent,” says Nayyar. “India, China and Indonesia are three very important markets in the APAC region as far as Havas is concerned. We are looking at double digit growths from these markets for 2015,” adds Nayyar.
2015 would also see Havas invest in markets in Asia including India and Southeast Asia with an objective to build on its existing footprint and the capabilities in this market. “What is important to understand is the gap between where we are and where we can be. This difference between potential and current status is fast bridging in India and the leap that Tier III and Tier IV towns as well as rural India are taking will make India one of the most enviable markets with digital achieving a huge scale (thanks to mobile). My prediction is that by 2018, India should see a quarter of its advertising investment in digital,” says Mohan.
