Mindshare has appointed Sudipto Roy Managing Director, Team Unilever for AAR (APAC, Africa, Middle East, Turkey, and Russia). Roy’s mandate is with immediate effect and will bring the collective power of WPP to Unilever and help create a horizontal offering for one of the agency’s most important global accounts, notes a communique.
Roy first started at Mindshare heading strategy for the Mindshare Unilever team in Mumbai in 2007. He relocated to Singapore in 2011 to lead the Unilever relationship out of the Singapore hub and went on to play a wider role as Chief Client Officer for Mindshare APAC in 2014. He later joined Tenth Avenue (WPP’s connected experiences company) as CEO of developing markets in 2015. Roy will be based out of Singapore and will wear two hats in his new role. In his first role, he will assume leadership of the Mindshare central and market teams in AAR and his other role will see him proactively work with various WPP agencies to create offerings across digital, data, research, consulting services, content, shopper, and e-commerce.
Said Roy: “I am very excited to be back with WPP at such an interesting point in the development of this industry. We are perfectly poised to build on the advances of the last few years and create the next iteration of the marketing services model powered by data, technology, content & commerce. What we do now sets the tone for the next decade.â€
Commenting on the appointment, Peter Dart, Global Team Unilever Lead at WPP, said: “Roy joins us at a time when we are beginning a signifcant business transformation task as we bring many of our units together to create a more impactful service for one of our largest global clients. His deep knowledge of our markets, our network, and of the Unilever marketing teams will serve as a great enabler to drive this change.â€
Added Himanshu Shekhar, Chief Executive Officer, Mindshare South East Asia: “It is great to have Roy back into the extended Mindshare & WPP family. He is a unique talent whose product and business orientation helps us create impact at speed. We look forward to exciting innings from him.â€
Tenthavenue announced the completion of a new partnership with cloud communications telephony company, Ozonetel, to build the new version of Electra, the mobile marketing platform specifically catering for developing markets.
The new tenthavenue and Ozonetel partnership sees the development of new features and improved capabilities on top of the existing Electra platform – a single technology stack through which advertisers can deliver mobile asset formats through USSD, SMS, Interactive Voice Response and compressed video routes across 150 countries.
Combining the Electra platform capabilities with Ozonetel technology means that brands can utilise enhanced mobile marketing capabilities including:
– Measurement of consumer behaviour and engagement levels in real time for a more comprehensive understanding of what content will work
– Consolidation and delivery of value exchange mechanisms, such as mobile airtime and talk-time top-ups to consumers
– The delivery of personalised content and messaging to the consumer through an advanced logic engine
– Multiple enterprise communication models to scale the offering to across all brands and categories of a company
The deal will also allow tenthavenue to integrate new messaging pipes to work with Electra to create new media distribution products moving forward.
Sudipto Roy, tenthavenue CEO for Emerging Markets commented: “According to Mary Meeker’s 2015 Internet Trends report, there are still 3.12 billion feature phones globally and yet most technologies focus on an in-app advertising based eco-system for mobile. It’s for this reason, combined with the emergence of smartphone ad-blocking technologies, that there is a stronger demand for device ubiquitous mobile formats and subsequently a gap in the market for a platform that can do this at scale (with robust data, content optimisation capabilities and measurement). We are resolving that gap by improving Electra and embedding it with the ability to drive “value exchanges†with the consumer, taking them a few steps closer to actual sales and loyalty than traditional approaches do.â€
Anurag Banerjee, Growth Advisor for Ozonetel added: “We are a product centric company, much like Hubspot and our solutions enable hundreds of companies to manage personalized communications with their customers. We are excited to now extend this support to WPP clients.â€
Rupert Day, Global CEO for tenthavenue, noted, ‘This deal is an incredible leap forward for brands operating in developing markets who understand the value in reaching consumers with optimal personalised content. The partnership with Ozonetel aligns with tenthavenue’s investment in TMARC in January 2014, the leading USSD mobile platform in South Africa. It reflects our vision of driving personalised communications of value to the consumer, and elevates the tenthavenue proposition across Asia, Africa and very soon, LatAm’.
The Ozonetel technology platform underpins more than 1000 enterprise customers globally, providing clients with a single entry to connect with over 4 billion addressable connections through 226 Telecom Operators. Current clients include fast growth companies Zomato and BigBasket, and the world’s second biggest advertiser, Unilever. Ozonetel was recently selected by as one of the ‘World’s Top 50 Marketing Technology Startups’ by Unilever’s Foundry program at Cannes Lions Innovation 2015.
WPP-owned tenthavenue, home to the media network’s ‘connected consumer’ agencies, has has announced today the launch of a new full service mobile agency model led by the groups’ mobile marketing arm, Joule. With this, Joule will attempt to simplify mobile marketing throughout emerging markets.
Under the leadership of Sudipto Roy, CEO for Developing Markets, Joule has been structured to simplify the complex emerging markets mobile marketing landscape. To deliver this, Joule has partnered with well-known mobile innovators globally, allowing brands operating in emerging markets access to global expertise aligned with local understanding.
Joule has a very client roster in India: Sudipto Roy
Sudipto Roy
We asked Sudipto Roy, CEO, Emerging Markets, tenthavenue, a quick set of questions via mail. Could you dwell a bit on India. What will the Bengaluru office do? What is the team strength in India? Are the teams in centres other than Bengaluru in India? Who are your clients in India? Various GroupM agencies are already doing a fair bit of work in the mobile space… will these now be zoned under Joule, or will they co-exist?
“The services offered span enterprise level mobile experience design, asset design and build, connected consumer data architectures, integration, analytics, personalization, social listening, content strategy, distribution strategy, mCRM, content sourcing and delivery.â€Â Any media agency today only focusses on distribution (buying of mobile ad inventory). Digital creative agencies largely focus on creating banners/ rich media content for campaigns/ campaign micro-sites and other tactical builds. We want to address the enterprise level integration of mobile into the company’s business and marketing ecosystem. And hence we bring specialised skillsets to the market which will really help deliver the promise of mobiles to the business.
GroupM and tenthavenue/Joule are separate organisations with different focus areas. It won’t come under Joule.
“We are creating a model of the agency of the future; sitting at the crossroads between meeting brand objectives and delivering consumer needs. We are building a model which truly start to bring alive the ‘connected experience’ vision. This is our first step in Asia in that direction and there is much more to come.â€
We are not building a standard agency which is filled with bodies in every office. We have a very decent client roster in India (I cannot reveal that at this stage). They are serviced from various nodes (Mumbai, Singapore). The client teams are at the forefront and the rest are all focussed on the delivery of projects from the processing centres. That’s how modern business is re-organising itself to be more nimble, cost-efficient and more capable as compared to the standard agency model (which is built on headcount and man-hours and needs staff in every office and every account). For evolved services, we will see off-shoring happening in a major way across the globe.
Tenthavenue, like GroupM, is a holding company under the WPP umbrella. There are several agency brands under this umbrella and Joule is one of them. As the holding group CEO for developing markets, the Joule organisation will report into Mr Roy.
The services offered span enterprise level mobile experience design, asset design and build, connected consumer data architectures, integration, analytics, personalization, social listening, content strategy, distribution strategy, mCRM, content sourcing and delivery.
Under this new model, Joule will have integrated delivery centres all over Asia, spanning Bengaluru, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Manila, Johannesburg and Ho Chi Minh, to manage production and give access to different capabilities.
Said Mr Roy: “By addressing the larger enterprise challenges of integrating mobile with the marketing eco-system, we are moving far beyond the traditional agency or mobile ad-distribution play. Bringing together audience data, hyper-targeting, content personalisation and intelligent distribution that resonates with the consumer allows us to create dramatically more value for the marketer.â€
Meanwhile, Joule also announced the launch of Electra, an “emerging market†mobile communication platform using cloud-based technology to offer mobile solutions such as Interactive Voice Response, USSD (text), mobile incentives, payment, content personalisation and video content compression / delivery technologies. Electra has already been tested across more than one billion consumer interactions.
Said Rupert Day, Global CEO, tenthavenue: “We are creating a model of the agency of the future; sitting at the crossroads between meeting brand objectives and delivering consumer needs. We are building a model which truly start to bring alive the ‘connected experience’ vision. This is our first step in Asia in that direction and there is much more to come.â€
The WPP-owned global communications company Tenthavenue has announced the appointment of Sudipto Roy as CEO Emerging Markets, covering Asia, Africa, Middle East and Turkey.
Established in 2011, Tenthavenue (spelt by the company with the t lowercased) helps build products and services that enable advertisers to create connected brand experiences. As parent to WPP’s ‘Connected Consumer’ agencies, the Tenthavenue agency family consists of market leaders and rising stars in their respective fields, including Kinetic, Aviator, Joule, Spafax, Candyspace, Forward and TMARC.
Mr Roy will lead Tenthavenue across China, South East Asia, Hong Kong, South Africa and drive the network’s expansion into new markets, including Turkey, Middle East and Japan.
Mr Roy has held leadership roles within Mindshare across India, APAC and Africa.  Said Rupert Day, founder and CEO of Tenthavenue: “This appointment comes at a time when we are refocusing our vision for the future. We have had a fantastic start over the last four years, and we want to remain nimble, agile and focused for the next five. In recruiting Roy, we are continuing the energy and direction Tenthavenue requires to keep growing, and to keep building winning propositions.â€
Said Mr Roy: “Tenthavenue is poised to create a highly differentiated marketing services model for the future. The company has an inherent strength in out of home experiences, on-the-go experiences and mobility. That’s the perfect combination for a new age services model as consumers spend less time in front of the TV and desktop and become mobile.â€
Mr Roy will be based out of Singapore and will begin his new tenure in mid-April.
Mindshare has announced the appointment of Helen Tan-Bhasin as the Account Lead for Team Unilever for APAC, Africa & Turkey.
Ms Tan-Bhasin joins Mindshare from StarcomMediavest Group where she worked for 13 years across the Manila and Singapore offices.
Said Sudipto Roy, Chief Client Officer, APAC, on the appointment: “Helen joins the Mindshare family at a truly exciting time, when products are being transformed, data consolidated and technology capability is at the forefront. It is opportune for her to bring her experience to us as we script roadmaps for the next two years. Helen represents a rare combination of intimate FMCG marketing knowledge, key market exposure in addition toexperience at the forefront of cutting edge work with marketing organizations similar to Unilever. We look forward to her leadership.’
Ms Tan-Bhasin will report directly to Mr Roy, leading a regional team based out of Singapore to support the markets.
In what is being billed as a landmark move, Mindshare has entered into an exclusive partnership with Big Data firm Crayon Data to power its planning, insights and consultancy offering.
Combining Mindshare’s proprietary data and research with Crayon Data’s data collection and analytical capability, means even greater adaptive solutions for marketers, providing an ability to not only identify different consumer profiles and segments, but to also target and track those profiles across a complex range of media channels, including social media and video.
For Mindshare, this partnership continues their focus on developing leadership in Adaptive Marketing, a shift that is impacting how the agency thinks about services, products and ways of working.
Said Sudipto Roy, Chief Client Officer APAC and Chairman of Mindshare’s Products, Partnerships & Services: “One of today’s key business challenges is the complexity surrounding the collection of data making traditional database processing and management tools ineffective in helping clients make optimal decisions about their customers’ needs. It’s a fundamental requirement of business success. Without the ability to support customer needs, organizations fail.”
Suresh Shankar, Founding Director at Crayon Data, added: “Media, analytics and behaviour is all going digital, and choices are proliferating in every aspect of our life from media to daily decisions. The partnership seeks to marry Mindshare’s media data sets and expertise, and its innovations like Loop Room, with Crayon’s choice engines, algorithms, and Taste/Interest graphs. This partnership forms part of a big transformation and caters to our mission of turning the misery of choosing into the magic of choice.”
