 As the media landscape constantly reinvents itself, it will be extremely important for all the media companies to keep on evolving. So what does 2020 hold for our media companies and media agencies? And who better to throw some light to this than our next speaker? Well, he's none other than Mr. Stephen Allen, Media Comm's Worldwide Chairman and CEO, according to independent research company, RECMA. During Stephen's tenure as Worldwide CEO and Chairman of Media Comm, the company jumped from being the world's seventh largest media network to becoming the world's third largest media network. So without further ado, may I request Mr. Stephen Allen to kindly step onto the stage and I would also like to request Dr. Anurag Batra to come up and steer a conversation with Mr. Stephen Allen. A huge round of applause, ladies and gentlemen, for both the amazing dignitaries stepping onto the stage. Thank you. Good evening. Please give Stephen a bigger round of applause. He had two conditions before he came up on stage. He said either I can have six shots of single malt come up or applause would do. We haven't opened the bar so can you give him a bigger round of applause? Thank you. Am I switched on? I was just going to say thank you for the very generous introduction. I have to tell you that my mother would trade all of that just to have the word doctor in front of my name like you. That's okay. I'm a fake doctor. The university is owned by my sister one day. She wrote me a mail saying she wants to give me a PhD and actually, you know, I'm the kind of guy who waits for emails. The moment an email comes, I send it back, you know, other types of that. In fact, people ask me what did I get the PhD for? I said emailing. Ironically, the mail went into a junk box for I didn't see it for 10, 20 days because it came from my sister. So I can get you that doctor. It's easy. I have permanent head damage. Thank you. You can give me a PhD. So if you want that, we can get Dr. Srinni to make it happen if you want or Dr. Balsara, whoever you want. And then we'll come to you. But on a serious note, also give Charles a bigger round of applause. I think you were very frugal with the applause you gave to Charles. Do you want to answer your phone? No, no, no. I have some questions. I'm not going to take phone. Okay. All right. Yeah, but somebody's calling. I have questions here, so that's the only reason I have it open. You know, since the time, this is the 19th year of the conclave. Since the time we've started the conclave, this debate about specialization versus a full service agency has been on. I think almost every conclave, we've done this debate in some form. We're in 2019. Tell us in 2020, will we still have this debate? Okay. Or the journalists, you know, where is the trend moving to? Okay. So maybe if I may, Anirag, I will just a little bit about my background and in that context about specialization. So this is my 37th year with MediaCom. I like to tell people that I started when I was about nine. We meant to laugh. But anyway, the point is that when I started, we were part of one of the very early original what was then called media independence. And in that time, media specialism represented about 5% of total advertising spend. So 95% was going through ad agencies. And really, you know, we spent, I spent the first few years of my career trying to persuade people why specialism was the way to go. Then along came an agency called Zenif, which was really Saachi's unbundling media. And it kind of changed everything because it then became the norm. And we all know, you know, as the years evolved, really virtually 100% of media was going through media specialists of one kind or another. The reason I tell that story is because I'm sometimes asked Steve, you've been around a long time. How come they haven't got rid of you yet? Well, I have constant sleepless nights. And the reason I have constant sleepless nights, ask any of my colleagues, I really don't sleep very long, is because I'm always thinking and worrying about what do we need to do next? How do we remain relevant? And basically what's happened and what I've witnessed is if I go back over the last, just even 20 years, I mean, before that, it was simple. We had TV, newspapers, radio, a little bit of out of home. Then along came this thing called the internet. That gave birth to a whole new generation of specialists, search specialists, et cetera. Then as it evolved, we saw specialists in social, specialists in mobile. And every time it was like a kick up our backside, a wake-up call that reminded us that we needed to be better to specialize in these areas. And what you saw often was these companies, these specialists selling or merging into the holding companies that we see today. And I think today, holding companies represent about 42% globally of all advertising investment. So the way I would describe it is integrated specialism. That's quite an oxymoronish term, integrated specialist, it's like a sensible Donald Trump. Say again, sorry? It sounds like a sensible Donald Trump, or a sane Boris Johnson. Well, there's a contradiction. Well, I think what we have to do is think about the customer. So our customer is clients' advertisers. And what our clients want more than anything else is simplicity. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had where I say to a client, what's on your mind? What do you need? What do you want? And always somewhere near, if not top of their list, is I need more simplification. Things are too complicated. So I think that's the first thing. I think the second thing I would say about the customer is all clients are different. Some clients operate in one market, some clients operate in one category, one product. And then we have others that are multifaceted and global. So I think really what I'm trying to say is there is no one size solution that fits all. Fair enough. Because our business is client centric. It's their needs centric. It's their business centric. Since you talk about clients, clients have started to look at big four. So they've gone beyond media agencies for marketing investments for the first time. If not investments, they've gone for advice, consulting. They've gone for strategy. And media agencies or media investment companies on behalf of clients are not only competing with other media agencies, but they're competing with consulting companies. In that context, how are the needs of clients or the expectations of clients changing? And why is the media agency better equipped to serve those needs better than let's say a big four? Okay, okay. I mean, I would add a list of that competitors. So it's not just consultants we're competing against. We're actually competing against clients when we think about in housing, which I'm sure we'll come on and actually talk about. But if I think about what are the clients asking for to answer your question? What the clients are asking for is first of all growth. So how do we grow our business? Secondly, how can we use our data, particularly our customer data, our first party data in the most intelligent way to deliver business outcomes for us, to help us grow our business? And really, therefore, we are very focused on how we actually do that and how we bring together the various parts of a client's business and their marketing services organizations in an integrated way to deliver them the best business outcomes. I think if you look at agencies versus consultancies, I think consultancies are at an earlier stage in their journey. I will always argue if I take Mediacom, I mean, we have 120 offices in 85 countries, 9,000 people who are really totally engaged in finding the best and the right communications for our clients. And consultancy is one thing, and I will come back and talk about that. But implementation and execution are vital. And specialist knowledge. And specialist knowledge. Sure. Now, since you talked about, again, client and in your opening comments, you talked about client's expectations from a whole group, right? And Charles is there in Kans in a global conversation. The brand custodian of Volvo said, and he said specifically when it comes to WPP, we'd rather work with somebody at the whole core structure who understands our brand, our objective, our perspective and kind of have one person dealing with us and then following it down to, so while I'm going back to that debate of specialization versus holding company consolidation. So give us a real example of how you've done it for one or two clients. Okay, so I mean, recently, we actually won, there was a couple of pictures actually. I can think recently we won the Centrica Business Globally. That's an energy company. We also won the global business for eBay. In the case of Centrica, we actually formed a team that was called Team Nucleus, which was made up not just of Mediacom, but the and partnership doing creative work and Wonderman Thompson doing CRM. I think and fairly similar structure actually also on eBay. But I think how we're also bringing it together and nowhere is there a better example than here in Mumbai is through the WPP campuses. So we just opened and we're currently in the stages of moving for those that don't know to Bay 99. And basically that will bring together 4,000 people in Mumbai. We will also be having a campus too in Delhi opening at a later point soon. And the plan across WPP by 2023, we will have something like 85,000 people situated or co-located, I should say, in 50 campuses. And I think that brings unrivaled knowledge and the ability for people to work in a very close and tight knit fashion as a team. You know, since we're talking of how the expectations of our clients are changing, their needs are changing because you just said that we look at very specific approaches for specific clients and their need. When you talk to a big four CEO, he or she talks of digital transformation. They don't talk of digital media investments. Now digital transformation is a buzzword that is used very loosely. Where million millennials are engaging with all services and products digitally and only digitally in some cases. Tell us what is MediaCom done to be a partner for digital transformation? And generally, do you think media agencies are suited to be digital transformation partners who serve as the other service providers? Sure answers, yes. Why? Because we're doing it. Because we're delivering incredible results for our clients. I don't think, as I said before, that we are, it's interesting. I must tell you because of Charles before, something that reminded me. So last week, we had an internal meeting and Jim Hackett, who Charles may know, is the current chairman and president of Ford. He said something quite interesting and he said that he said, often my competitors are calling me a dinosaur. He said, that doesn't annoy me. He said, what annoys me? He said, is that they think that they think that I'm not doing something about it, that I haven't recognized the change and that we aren't making our own progress. And there's another point just to come on to the customer centricity, because he gave an interesting example actually about, I don't know how many of you know Peloton. If you hands up, if you know Peloton. Okay, so Peloton is an exercise bike. It's an exercise bike that connects people from all around the world into classes. It's brilliant. That company is about to fetch a valuation of $8 billion. Think about that, $8 billion for an exercise bike. And what was interesting about that was, it wasn't about how do we make a better bike. It was about how do we make a better customer experience. Sure. So the point there is not about technology for technology's sake. It's about actually what you do with technology and data. I could give you a couple of examples of that if you want. Sure, you know Srinivas speaking at our business world, with another business product that we have. And his presentation was not so much about media. It was a lot about the business environment, and then he came to the brand and business. And one of the things he talked about almost everything you're talking of. One of the challenges for media agencies is the remuneration structure from clients. It has been under pressure over the last five to seven years. And one of the reasons we are talking about digital transformation and media plus and consulting and non-traditional areas of remuneration is because the traditional media planning buying business is under pressure on fees. And I'm being polite about that. It's been under pressure. So tell us in India, it has become a sub five percent. Again, I'm being liberal, number in most cases. Do you see revenues from non-traditional services, which is beyond media planning? In the next three years, outstripping the revenues that you have from media planning. So media planning gets you an entry, but then you do a lot more, which is beyond media planning buying. No, I think what we're seeing is a shift. And it's been a shift that has been going on now for many years. But our core business of planning and buying media, if you like, is still there. And it may surprise you. I don't know, but certainly at MediaCom, and that includes MediaCom in India, is growing. That could be for a variety of reasons, including maybe winning market share. But the add-on areas. So particularly if I think about consultative areas of our business, content areas of our business, analytics and data's areas of our business are definitely growing. There's no question. And just on the in-housing piece for a moment. I saw an interesting piece of independent research last week. So because I know there's a lot of talk about in-housing, and that's obviously true in India as well. And the statistic that I saw was that 27% of advertisers, this is globally, 27% of advertisers are considering thinking or intending to bring programmatic buying in-house. The number who are thinking about bringing media planning and buying in-house is 17%. So I think there's a threat there. But I don't think we're talking about the destruction of our business. Sure, I didn't suggest that. I just said that the margins are in depression. And hence, you need to find alternate sources of bridging the gap. Yeah. And I think what we have been increasingly doing certainly at MediaCom is moving what I would call people might term more upstream. And I think a great example of that is our partnership with Mars. So Mars is a client that we globally won about one and a half years ago. And I would say it's a partnership in the truest sense of the word. So aside from doing the basics, we are really at their side with them looking all around the world at new technologies, which has been well-publicized under what they call operation launch pad, being their rise and their rears, and thinking with them not just about media transformation but business transformation. And market entry. Absolutely. One of the things, again, I was chatting with a WPP leader and he said, I asked him, what are the three top areas from where non-traditional revenues will come? And he said sports, e-commerce, and digital transformation in general. I mean, digital transformation applies to, but he talked sports is a big area where more and more clients are investing money. Second is e-commerce. And third, he talked about the fact that they are consulting mandates for digital transformation. And they may lead to downstream work of actually doing it, which we may set up in-house or subcontract. So these are the three areas in India. What are the areas globally that you see where media agencies are well suited to be the advisors of future? I would say definitely around data and data analytics or even business science, some people would call that, definitely around content. So that's content creation and distribution. And now increasingly, we're talking about real time or dynamic creative, which is really about having not hundreds but even thousands of messages going out at the same time to different components of a client's or advertiser's target audience and refreshing and changing that actually as it's actually happening. I would say also content in the broader sense of the word in terms of entertainment is an area that has actually been of huge growth for us inside WPP. Sport is interesting. You mentioned sport before. I would say largely the holding companies as a whole have probably been less dominant, less influential than the IMGs of this world and other well-known sports companies that you would name. And actually when I think about, I mean, India is a great example, but all around the world, many advertisers will invest as much, maybe even sometimes more, in sport than they do for paid-for media. But I think one of the important things for us as we move forwards and we think about our future is we have to be more automated, so more efficient. And actually I think our focus is increasingly being on what I would call quality media, particularly in a digital world where environments can be less safe and there are obviously always questions around viewability. So, so we're thinking about that and I think the important thing there is about buying for our clients' audiences rather than eyeballs. And what that means is actually spending money on people that actually are the relevant people that may have some intent to purchase or should have some intent to purchase. So I would say to agencies, agencies, the agencies that will be under threat of the agencies that are not talking about what we would call source of growth or not, as I said before, talking on that other matter. Now, just to give you an example of that, I was really quite proud last week that we won an award at the M&M Global Awards for some work that was done here in India We called the campaign Cradle of Health and it was for P&G Pampers. And the insight here was, and I didn't know this, but in India, the penetration of diapers used for newborn babies is 10%. So in the UK it would be nearer 100%, so 10%. And so when we thought about, well, source of growth, in this particular instance, it was almost the opposite. What was the obstacle to growth? And the obstacle to growth, which makes me laugh, was the mother-in-law. All with it, all with it. Yeah, well, always. The mother-in-law telling the daughter-in-law what she did for her son and how actually diapers run healthy and not the way to go. So that was a brilliant insight. And we tackled that through actually talking in a really direct and clever way to the mothers explaining the health benefits, going out, doing workshops, getting government involved, the result of which that penetration of diapers went up by 5%, which was very impressive. Fantastic. So it's market creation in some sense. It's not just advertising, it's market creation for clients. You know, because of your global role and having seen the three, four major growing markets that are growing in the world, what do you think is unique about India and why India will do well and better than every other market? Do you know, I'm pleased you asked me that. So one of the reasons I was here this week, other than I'm very honoured to be here with you, was that we were meant to be having a global board meeting this week in Mumbai. Unfortunately, we had to move it, but I still came. But and the reason we wanted to do a global board meeting here was as much for me to give a kind of kick to my global team to talk about and to think about India. Because I think it's a remarkable market with enormous potential. When you talked before about growth or slow down of growth, we have to look for our own source of growth. I talked about that before for our clients. And the incredible thing about India, I mean, there are several things that strike me. First of all, your GDP growth, even if it slowed down a little bit in recent months, it still makes you the fastest growing major market in the world. You've had a GDP growth seven, eight percent the last few years. First thing, second thing, if I look at your the advertising investment as a percentage of GDP, in this markets, it's 0.33 percent. In a market like China, it's 0.7 percent. So it can double. Yeah. I mean, and many other markets. The global average is 1.25 percent. Exactly. So I think, you know, as agricultural areas and other people come into your consumer economy increasingly and will come on to Ecom because that's going to help too. So then I think about digital penetration. OK, so in the UK, 60 pennies in every pound, 60 percent of advertising investment goes online. In the US, it's 53 percent. In India, it's 22 and a half percent. It's 25 now. OK, I won't argue the two, but 25. But so you are still in the middle of a digital revolution. Sure. I think also when I think about e-commerce. So right now today, e-commerce here in China is about 3 percent of purchases. That's going to go up rapidly. And it was interesting to see Amazon setting up an enormous center in Hyderabad, which is a sign of intent. I know you've got Flipkart here, interesting the deal that they did with Walmart. But I would say to you, don't underestimate Amazon. But the level of growth opportunity when I add all of that up together is really fantastic. And it's a place, I think, where agencies like ours can prosper and still enjoy significant growth. You know, I would agree with you that I think in my personal view, as somebody watches this space, I think Amazon was very smart. I think Walmart overpaid for Flipkart. And I said this publicly, we said it in a publication. But I think it's about they let Walmart pay more. You know, what Walmart makes of it in the future, who knows? Maybe they'll make it work. They have to make it work. They put 15 billion dollars. That's a lot of money. So it also showcases the importance of India. But unlike the Chinese investors, the Chinese investors are the smartest investors. They always invest at the end of the valuation cycle. Whereas the American investors have invested at the top of the valuation cycle. In fact, in most cases, the American funds have created the valuations because they themselves invested, whether it's Tiger and we can go down. They've always, the Chinese wait for the market to slow down. Chinese are investing as we speak more than anybody. And I know it below my other head. So I think I agree with you that Amazon is the smarter one because they'll do what possibly Walmart did in 15 billion dollars, in 2, 3 billion dollars in better. And then there are integration issues, culture issues and so on and so forth. So I think I agree with you that Amazon's bets in India are getting bigger. That shows that India is a very big market, even Walmart's bet. These are good indications of where. And what was interesting, if I'm correct, I saw that Amazon even will invest in bricks and mortar here in India initially and then evolve with the market. And I think you're right about valuations. I mean, the multiples, our shareholders could only dream and dribble about. But I think, if you think about Amazon, I mean, it has a market capitalization of almost one trillion dollars. And really up until only three years ago, it wasn't barely making a profit, but it's about the future and people are buying future growth. Yeah, now coming to my last question and we'll bring the audio. From the time we started exchange for media, this is the 19th conclave. We've been talking about, again, the at least last eight, 10 years, the convergence of Silicon Valley, which is really technology, with Hollywood, which is content, and Madison Avenue, which is advertising. Our business, which is the business of media planning, buying, investing on behalf of clients, communication, has really in some way not being impacted by convergence. Madison Avenue, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood coming together. How has that changed our business? You talked about content briefly. Well, I think, I mean, we're seeing it manifest itself in many ways. I mean, we're seeing a time. We're seeing a convergence of platforms and content owners. We've seen some very big acquisitions and mergers. And if I just think for a moment about, I mean, OTT, really interesting here in India. So again, I saw a figure that the growth in OTT, so that streaming has been something like 30, something percent. I saw a figure just yesterday in the US, so streaming in the US has grown in the last year by 33%. The important point being now that in the US, 14% of homes up from 11% a year ago, 14% of homes are getting their television or their AV or their program content through OTT. So that's another interesting point, particularly here in a very, what I would say, content-driven origination market that you have obviously in India. An example is Sanjay Gupta from Star is there. They're trying to take Hot Star as a very successful example of what OTT can do. Of course, they have top-notch content, but they're taking the Hot Star to other markets because it's been such a big success, so we agree. I would like to get the audience to ask one or two questions. And my question I already asked in terms of technical, I want to ask you, what is your one prediction for future for our business? Just one. If you had to say something that is really going to change our business, what would that be? I would say that all media will become addressable, which will mean that all addressable media becomes programmatic. And that's good or bad? I think, I don't want to avoid that. I don't want to avoid that. I think it's good and bad. So, and I just let me say why, okay? I think it's good because anything that automates and takes boring stuff away, allowing our people, my people, to be more creative is a great thing. More innovation, more great campaigns like we've seen today. I think it's only bad in the sense that we know that machines can play tricks, so we have to invent new machines to kind of foil the other machines. But overall, I think a good thing. Anyway, by 2034, which is 15 years from now, we predict singularity where machines will be as smart or as intelligent as humans or more. So that singularity moment could happen faster. Won't take them 15 years to catch up with me. Yeah, I mean, as of now, that's the prediction today, who it possibly will happen faster. So I'd like to wrap up. If there are any questions, we can take one or two questions. Mr. Balsara, any question? Mr. Srinivas, any question? Any comments? Mr. Gupta? Anybody else wants to ask? So, Nazia is telling me to wrap up the thing. Please give Mr. Allen a big round of applause. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's been an honest conversation. At least you've been honest and you bring a huge experience of across the globe and building something from scratch. You've been entrepreneurial in building MediaCom. I know it's part of WPP, but still to grow it at the pace it's growing takes entrepreneurial zeal. So we congratulate you from Exchange for Media and we look forward to more interaction. Thank you for being at the Exchange for MediaCom. Thank you.