Dentsu announces the appointment of Prerna Mehrotra as Chief Client Officer, Dentsu APAC, expanding her current remit as CEO, Media, APAC. In this newly created role for the region, Prerna will focus on designing and delivering an elevated client experience across Dentsu’s services in creative, media, and customer experience management (CXM).
Rob Gilby, CEO APAC, Dentsu, said: “Prerna joined dentsu in 2016 as our Head of Investment and has continued to show her star quality, working across divisions and clients. This appointment is a huge testament to Prerna’s tenacity and growth mindset. She consistently demonstrates outstanding leadership and understanding of the changing client and consumer landscape, innovating products and services to capitalize on new opportunities for growth. I look forward to working closely with her in her new capacity and a critical new role for the APAC region.”
Added Yusuke Kasahara, CEO, Solutions APAC: “Prerna continues to elevate the culture of client-centricity across the network, ensuring we put forward the best of our talent and capabilities to deliver outstanding business solutions for our clients. She brings a strong point of view and critical thought leadership across business and marketing strategy to deliver growth for our clients and I’m delighted she has taken on her next challenge within Dentsu.”
Dentsu X has released its findings from its Motivations Study, to help brands better understand the innermost drivers that influence people to act in certain ways. By understanding these Motivations, Dentsu X can drive growth for brands by decoding behaviour and connect with valuable audiences like never before.
The fact files dive into how Motivations play a role in customer decisions, and why traditional data often fails to capture these nuances. Profiling more than 400,000 people in 70 markets across the world, the study has identified six core Motivations that drive everyone at varying levels:
• Accomplishment,
• Affection,
• Information,
• Possession,
• Power,
• and Protection.
Each core Motivation comprises 25 sub-Motivations that are defined by individual statements that help dive deeper into the uniqueness of each person and their drivers.
The Motivations Study is being released as part of Dentsu X’s privately owned and operated consumer insight tool CCS. Through CCS, brands can understand audiences on a deeper, human level. This includes understanding media behaviours, lifestyles, passions, favourite brands, and category behaviours.
The Motivations fact files include:
• A deeper look at understanding people’s Motivations, such as why a customer buys a product and why they do the things they do.
• How understanding Motivations is important for understanding target audiences and bridging the expectation gap to become more relevant.
• How understanding Motivations is helping clients target truly relevant audiences with creative messages, plan intricate offline events and break biases in product positioning.
Prerna Mehrotra
Said Prerna Mehrotra, CEO, Dentsu Media APAC: “In today’s data-rich environment, for brands to be truly relevant, it is important for them to understand the underline motivations behind audience behaviours. We are excited to share local insights on how understanding motivations can close the disconnect between the product offering and what consumers really want. Even within markets, we see distinct nuances that make the core Motivation different from the sub-Motivation. This report will help our clients understand the human truths about their audience empowering the brand’s planning process across all marketing disciplines.”
Dentsu International has been selected as Standard Chartered’s Media Agency of Record for a further five years.
Said Emma Sheller, Global Head, Brand Strategy & Consumer, Private and Business Banking Marketing, Standard Chartered: “At Standard Chartered, we are here for good. It’s the motivation of our business, and a principle we clearly share with Dentsu in the commitments and progress they’re making to be a force for good. We are committed to reducing carbon emissions, lifting participation and improving lives, and setting a new model of globalisation based on transparency, fairness and trust. It is important for us to have a partner with shared values and ambitions who would work with us to achieve our goals. Dentsu came to the table with a deep knowledge of our business, our commitments and how we can drive growth from the media with an impressive service model and a team aligned to that value set.”
The assignment covers Standard Chartered’s global markets across media planning, strategy and buying.
Prerna Mehrotra
Added Prerna Mehrotra, CEO, Media, Dentsu Asia Pacific & Singapore: “We are proud of the work we have delivered with Standard Chartered over the course of our four-year long relationship and are excited for the potential of our next five-year commitment. We presented Standard Chartered with a team of brilliant people, who felt passionately about delivering performance with purpose for the Standard Chartered business, which set strong foundations for us to build the next five years on. Our vision for good growth, delivered through our ‘One Dentsu’ service model across the diverse markets Standard Chartered operates in, delivered the competitive advantage for the team. We are thrilled to be continuing our partnership with them.”
Advertising investment is forecast to grow by 10.4% globally in 2021, according to the latest Dentsu Ad Spend Report. The twice-yearly report which combines data from 59 markets, anticipates US$634 billion will be spent globally with all regions enjoying positive growth.
Adspend in APAC is expected to grow by 8.0% or US$17 billion to US$229 billion. In the region, Australia and India are forecasting particularly high growth rates in 2021, with 2021 growth expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels in China.
The pandemic-induced decline in advertising spend during 2020 has proved less severe than anticipated. Some trends in consumer behaviour and spend in advertising which emerged during the past year have remained.
In APAC, the 6.2% rise in digital spend last year is forecast to grow by 12.8% in 2021 to reach US$124.5 billion, representing a 54% share of total ad spend. Forecasts for Social (33.4%) and Video (10.8%) will also rise, with Search also growing (7.8%) reaching US$23.1 billion in 2021.
Offline/Linear ad spend will see a return to growth 2.8% to US$104.8 billion, following a 15% decline in 2020, however it is predicted that spend levels in APAC will remain below pre-pandemic levels in 2021.
While regional live events such Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Games continue to be a significant driver of growth in Linear TV ad spend in APAC (3.9% increase in 2021 to reach US$59.2 billion), the dentsu data suggests a shift towards CTV (Connected TV) and OTT (Over The Top) and audiences moving more towards digital media consumption mean Linear TV spend will remain below pre-pandemic levels until beyond 2021.
With restrictions lifting on social activity, OOH will see a bounce back post impact of the pandemic, rising 7.5% in 2021 in the region. Cinema has a slightly longer recovery, with a further decline in 2021 (-5.0%) but expected to bounce back in 2022. Radio will also see growth (4.3%) in 2021.
While most channels will return to growth in 2021 (Cinema in 2022), Print is seeing a slight decline in 2021 (–2.7%) and expected to continue declining in 2022, as it continues to evolve towards new modes of digital delivery.
Looking at the industries who will see growth in ad spend this year, it will come as little surprise that government spending remains a key growth area, supporting the Covid vaccine rollout and other related initiatives. In APAC’s key markets, the travel and transport sectors, will still be affected by the uncertainty of the past year and see a muted increase in demand (4.9%), while Media & Entertainment is forecast to see growth (9.7%).
The decline in APAC advertising spend prompted by the pandemic in 2020, has proved to be less severe than originally anticipated. While 2020 remains the weakest performing year since the global financial crisis, the decline in growth has been raised since Dentsu’s January 2021 forecast (from -8.0% to -5.2%.) In 2021, the market is seeing a recovery in growth (8.0%), an improvement (2.1% pts) on January’s predication. Looking to 2022, recovery is set to continue when spending is likely to reach US$243.6 billion and grow at a rate of 6.3%.
Ashish Bhasin
Said Ashish Bhasin, CEO APAC, Dentsu international: “It is promising to see a return to growth in the APAC region with two of our markets in the top five contributors of ad spend growth; China and Japan. While China continues to see strong levels of growth driven by Digital and OOH, Japan’s growth will be buoyed by events like the 2020 Olympic & Paralympic Games, and the House of Representative elections and the advertising spend associated with it, particularly in TV.
In addition, Australia and India are two of the top year-on-year growth markets, forecasting a surge in ad spend. Australia has had a stronger economic recovery after the pandemic particularly in TV and Digital where the government focused much of their Covid-related campaigns, while India is expected to see a resurgence in Digital advertising spend though TV is still the main contributor with a 40.9% share.”
Prerna Mehrotra
Added Prerna Mehrotra, CEO Media APAC and MD Media Singapore: “We are optimistic that the region will bounce back to positive growth in ad spend, with some channels likely boosted higher than pre-pandemic levels. The main drivers behind the growth is economic recovery, with the APAC GDP set to increase by 7.3%, and a stronger-than-ever push to digital marketing. Serving as a stimulus the pandemic has accelerated digital adoption. Digital media will continue to drive ad revenue growth this year with strong performance in social (+33.4%) and video (+10.8%) and majority of spends in mobile. We will also see more investments diverted towards addressable and the digitalisation of OOH channels. Programmatic DOOH will also be a key growth driver in the future. With the growing numbers of SSPs and DSPs partnerships and an increasing demand for location-based solutions to ad-reaching consumers in these times of uncertainty, advertisers will benefit from the speed, flexibility and the targeting capability that the medium will provide.”
Growth in global ad spend between 2019 and 2022
Year-on-year % growth at current prices (January 2021 figures in brackets)
Share of global ad spend by channel between 2019 and 2022
The media arm of Dentsu international published the first in-depth review of a cookieless future in the wake of recent Google announcements and timelines. The Cookieless World: A Guide for the New Era of Digital Marketing provides a deep dive into the impact on brands due to major changes in web tracking capabilities and enhanced privacy legislation. It will explore a range of areas including Data Management, Audience Activation & First-party Data Usage, Performance Measurement and Preparing for the Deprecation of Third-party Cookies.
Last week, Google reset the clock for supporting cookies within its Chrome internet browser. The new report from Dentsu explores the knock-on implications for both consumers and brands, as well as the solutions its media agencies Carat, iProspect, and DentsuX can leverage to support the change.
On launching the report, Rohan Philips, Global Product Officer, Media, Dentsu international said: “Across the globe, 91% of consumers are concerned about the amount of data companies can collect about them and 42% have taken steps to reduce the amount of data they share online. So, it’s no wonder all eyes are focused on this fundamental change in the way we all operate on the web. We now have the time and opportunity to make sure what comes next is the best solution it can be for our clients. With such a major upheaval to the long-established status quo, we understand there’s uncertainty and a lot of questions. The Cookieless World report is there to provide answers for marketers who need to wrestle with the big challenges facing their brands now and in the coming years.”
Prerna Mehrotra
Added Prerna Mehrotra, CEO, Media, Dentsu Asia Pacific: “With the most popular browsers ending support for third party cookies and the rise of other types of tracking prevention, the ability for brands to target consumers and measure campaign effectiveness will be impacted. This, coupled with the rise of global and local privacy legislations, will significantly change the fabric of digital marketing in the coming future. Brands will now need to relook at how they engage people online, while limiting some of the most widespread digital marketing tactics, such as personalised 1:1 targeting. The time is ripe for brands to rethink the next lap of their marketing practices.”
Dentsu has been appointed as the agency partner for William Grant & Sons, a Scottish company that distils Scotch whisky and other selected categories of spirits.
The appointment is the result of an Asia Pacific (APAC) business consolidation which concluded at the end of 2020. This will see Dentsu driving omnichannel marketing for William Grant & Sons, focusing on strategic pillars of connections planning, digital acceleration and driving media effectiveness and efficiency across the APAC region.
Said Susie O’Donoghue, Global Head of Communication Strategy and Planning, William Grant & Sons: “We have an established global relationship with dentsu and after engaging with the APAC team during our chemistry meeting, we were impressed with their well-rounded thinking, demonstration of planning capability, as well as expertise in driving omnichannel thinking. Throughout the engagement, dentsu demonstrated in-depth understanding of our consumer landscape, ever evolving media and tech ecosystem. Most of all, we like that they have expertise working with clients in the alcohol and spirits business. We look forward to partnering with dentsu to drive growth for our brands in APAC.”
Prerna Mehrotra
Added Prerna Mehrotra, CEO, Media, APAC: “We have been working with William Grant & Sons globally and are delighted to have managed to expand this partnership within Asia Pacific. At dentsu, our role is to drive accelerated growth for our clients by delivering experiences consumers want today, whilst unlocking the promises of tomorrow. By understanding our consumers’ world digital first, we are able to unlock new growth opportunities at every stage of the consumer journey. For William Grant & Sons, this has translated into a full digital transformation project as we look to support them in their omnichannel, ‘people first’ future. We are excited to work on iconic William Grant & Sons brands and delighted to partner them in their omnichannel journey here in APAC.”
Dentsu International APAC today announces the promotion of Prerna Mehrotra into the role of CEO, Media, APAC reporting into Ashish Bhasin, CEO, Dentsu APAC and Peter Huijboom, Global CEO, Media & Global Clients. This is in addition to her current role as Managing Director, Media Group, Singapore reporting into Prakash Kamdar, CEO, Dentsu Singapore.
Said Bhasin: “Prerna was a clear candidate for the role; having joined the business in 2016, she has gone from strength to strength excelling in roles across investment and media. This integrated view across our media portfolio and her acumen of over 20+ years sets her apart from the rest – I am looking forward to working with Prerna and driving growth for our clients together.”
Added Huijboom: “I am delighted to have Prerna join my leadership team and drive dentsu’s Media strategy in this critical region. Her experience in key markets including India and China and her long-standing client relationships will ensure we continue to drive value – and excellence in everything we do.”
And finally this is what Mehrotra commented: “The media landscape in this region has never been more complex. Over the past eight months, consumers expectations of what brands produce and how they behave has changed rapidly, and it will only continue. I am excited to be working with top talents from across our markets to create growth opportunities and long-term value for our clients.”
