 Welcome to exchangeformedia.com. With me today is one of the finest leaders of media and entertainment industry, Ilyn Kirnan, CEO, IPG Media Brands. This is her first visit to India and we are really excited to have you here and thanks for speaking to us exclusively, Ilyn. Tell me how has it been in the last 24 hours in India? It's a dream come true. I have wanted to come to India for years so I'm very very excited to be here. I've only been here for 24 hours so my expectations are still large and excited. The traffic in India is terrifying, that's my first observation and it's great to be here with Diwali, the lights very very pretty so I'm excited to learn and experience so much more. You have been leading India market for quite some time. As a market what do you feel about India you know when it comes to your agency business? We feel very optimistic about India. It's a scaled big powerful market for us. It's a top seven market, it's a big economy in the world. Importantly it's our second most populous country now in the world with the second most employees that we have globally which is very very important for us and we're making a big bet on the role that India will play in how we continue to innovate and create in the digital and technology space so a very important place for us. So finally this time what was it that you decided to have this APAC meeting in India? It's my first year on the role and we're doing business planning for the year and my commitment to the team globally was every business planning cycle will do somewhere in the world. The last one was in Latin America in Mexico City. This is in obviously in India and the next one will be in Canada and so on and so forth so I expect to be back in India again. We are really looking forward to it. So, meanwhile we know there have been a lot of factors because of which there has been a slowdown across globally but I was looking at your results and APAC reason in a region in particular has performed I think there's been the maximum degrowth in this region. The hardest. So there was last quarter you reported a dip of minus 3.3%. So what were some of the factors that did not work in this region particularly? Well the growth that you're reporting on is IPG level growth so ours was a bit better. That being said the fact holds true that for us APAC was the slowest growing region in this year for us and I think there are a number of factors I mean it's it's it's fair to say that the macroeconomic environment globally has impacted every region and usually in a business of our scale there's always one region that goes up and goes down but the rest of the world kind of compensates. This year every region has been a little bit difficult. I think for APAC specifically I think it's a combination of both scale and innovation I think scale is choppy for us. We have large markets in Australia and in India then we have a lot of smaller markets so when you don't have a lot of scale you have less resiliency when things get difficult and I think the rate of innovation I think the insight for us is we have to innovate faster to make sure that during those times we have more new solutions to market to offset the debt. So during the last results Philip Karkowski here global CEO of IPG he spoke about a lot of factors that led to the de-growth or slow down the growth he spoke about decrease in client activity in the tech and telecom sector increased concerns among marketers related to macroeconomic conditions but these are all largely external factors right as as a leader of the agency what are some of the internal things that you can control during these years? You know I give that a lot of thought because obviously the levers that we have we need them to be scaled especially during times of macroeconomic and social disruption like we're experiencing all over the world. One of the things that we're doing right now in the business is it's kind of twofold with a two-pronged strategy which is to really simplify and streamline the way that we do business to bring more accuracy efficiency speed agility which I think makes the our media process which has become quite complicated based on all the media fragmentation for easier to work with and when you have a much more streamlined and simplified infrastructure your ability to innovate far faster speeds up so we're thinking through how we get this virtuous cycle of simplification streamlining to further innovation to offset some of those that volatility that we're experiencing around the world in the future. You know coming back to India market what are some of there are some of the areas where you feel that India is leading you know India is doing better than your other markets. India is very much a digital first market for us so I think the rate of transformation that we can we can expect out of India is tremendous. We also learn a lot from India because it's one of those unique markets where the local business footprint is so large and it's about 80-20 local to global which is unusual for my profile so what we can learn from innovation that's happening in India and bring to the rest of the world is really really interesting and obviously the technology sector we're leading very heavily on on what India can do for us as a partner in how we're all trying to drive change and transformation across our businesses. We're investing heavily in India and we know that India will return tremendous yield for us in the future. Now if I have to ask you the areas where India can do better you know what are the domains in which India can learn from your other markets. I think one that's specific to India uniquely and then one that's probably common to all markets right now the first one being integration. I think we have a lot of amazing amazing newer skill sets in our Indian teams across the market. I think how we bring them together in new ways to work in new and integrated ways for clients as a real opportunity so integration true integration not just integration in terms of collaboration but integration in terms of workflow is a real opportunity so I'm pushing the Indian team hard to make that a reality in 2024 and then in terms of just all markets where we're facing some struggles change you know you can put change on a piece of paper you can you can put the technology plan in place you can find the investments. Driving people change changing behavior is extraordinarily difficult. So one of my asks of the entire network is to just embrace change and believe that what will come with that is better for all. Do we expect any announcements that you are here you know of integration or some something new or some acquisitions. I think meeting here is an announcement. No big announcements we've made some recent big announcements we've done a lot of structural change across IPG media brands to simplify our offering to bring all of our performance units together and to create a much more simplified end-to-end workflow that will transform all of our businesses so that was the most recent announcement. IPG tends to as an M&A strategy focus more and fewer bigger better so we are constantly looking at what we will invest in next but I have nothing to report as of now. Stay tuned on that one. So one of the integrations that happened recently was Kineso. Correct. So and I just as I entered I saw the office of Kineso on the ground floor itself so if you can tell us more about it you know what was the idea behind it and how has it contributed it's been it's been some months. It's been about it's been about nine months. Nine months. So you know how is it enhancing the overall business for. Yeah it's a good question. You know the change is always hard especially when people are impacted and they're asked to carry new cards or move floors or whatever the change is. It's already proving to be impactful for a client so ever. The rationale behind the change is quite frankly clients are demanding simplification. There is no longer a divide between performance media and media. They are one. So with those two realities being in place it was obvious to us that we needed to bring our performance units including our you know connected to data and technology together into one unit. But operating against a workflow that travels into the agency brand so every team works in a client no matter which unit you're in. You're working in one singular optimized end to end workflow. Importantly underpinned by one media brands one P&L one management structure where all teams are motivated and KPI against the same goals. So clients are beginning to feel that simplification in our process. Things should be moving much faster. There should be less breakdowns or or handoffs that cause slowdowns or inaccuracies in data. So we're we're betting hard on our ability to really simplify how we work in this complex landscape and in that simplicity drive tremendous value for our clients. You know talking of change digital has been one of the biggest disruptor of this industry in the last 10 15 years. What kind of challenges does the Google and Meta duply present to you. You know they're great partners of ours and if you're in this business you are in business with Google and Meta. So you know in that regard I embrace them as important parts of our ecosystem. It's always a challenge when there are when there are businesses that are enormously big that get a disproportionate amount of share for many many reasons. It means that new innovation doesn't get supported the way that it needs to get. It means that dollars diversification to support diverse platforms or diverse publishers get more squeezed and clients get very dependent on the ROI models that they become used to in their in their you know M&M. So making change from those platforms is difficult. That being said they're already being challenged because the the rate of change around us is inevitable. So what's happening with Tiktok. Tiktok is a mega entry into the space that is quickly stealing share from the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. The Google it's happening with Twitter. So change happens all the time. So while we we make sure that we work with the marketplace in an open source democratic way we know we deal with the the big guys as we have to and obviously they're great partners. But I expect ongoing innovation and change just to be the the normal course of business. What is the future both for traditional media agencies. It depends on what you mean by the word traditional media agencies or companies. When you're doing the traditional media buying and selling and not like digital is what we we just spoke about Facebook Google and all the traditional things that you were doing in 90s and early 20s. Do they still exist. I don't think I don't I don't well maybe that's a good question to ask. I it's not about how you decide to structure as a business. We are in the business of connecting brands with consumers to in order to connect brands with consumers. You have to be where consumers are consuming media where they're consuming content. The fact of the matter is they're consuming content in all manner of places primarily in the digital ecosystem. So to be avoiding avoiding of those spaces feels like a very bad business strategy to me. So I think today's traditional media agencies are digital are social are performance based are tech enabled are data centric and should carry on being so. So you know recently we had a big conference on media agencies and you know a lot of almost all senior leaders from India spoke she also spoke there and you know the most discussed topic was of remuneration. You know how there has been a gap in this and there's also a trust deficit you know between the client and the agencies and the whole issue of rebate and all of that was discussed extensively and it was coming from heart you know how I we could sense it you know that this is this has become a pain point for most agencies. Is it a global problem. That's one thing that I would want to understand from you and secondly what is the solution that you think can reduce it or help address it. First off it is a global problem. It does take shape slightly differently in different markets around the world based on how people value the dynamics of the marketplace different things that different teams value different clients but it's definitely a global problem and it has been for decades. I think remuneration and how how we compensate fairly in in in these partnerships has has been a problem for a long time. I think the opportunity is is to reconcile the disconnect that we have right now which is we have a combination of we are accountable to driving growth through the most strategic and analytical of ways including in our compensation. So driving real growth for clients and at the same time there's an appetite to drive savings. Now while there's a relationship between those those two things having both at the same time as equal levers is a contradiction. So there are more and more clients who are willing and open to come into the table with us and we have to drive these conversations really openly and transparently to really talk very honestly and candidly about what do we value as a partnership. Are we driving business results. What business results. What are the mechanisms and pathways to get there to make sure there were KPI against those goals versus some arbitrary legacy goals of the past. So it's a very complicated path forward. Lots of innovation happening. I have faith will get there. Lots of great plans want to go on that journey with us. But I'm not naive to think it's not an easy hard thing to to to solve at the same time. You know before we close you're such a senior industry leader you've experienced across different markets. What are some of the other challenges that media business is currently facing and needs to be dressed. You know I think the biggest thing we're all facing is if Boston Consulting Group came out with a research I think it was last year where they were examining the length of duration of competitive edge. So in 10 years ago if you developed a new innovation a significantly scaled new innovation or you're first to market with something major you get a 10 year runway with which to optimize and really run out that differentiation. Nowadays in today's landscape that level of differentiation that you can retain for yourself is about 18 months. So with that as a reality the speed of innovation that we have to be able to act with in our businesses is extraordinary. So to do that we have to radically simplify how we work which is which is a statement when you look at the complexity and the fragmentation in the landscape and the amount of data and tech that we're enabled with we have to radically simplify in order to rapidly innovate. And I think that's the biggest challenge that we face as an industry. Last question. You said India is your seventh market right now right. What are expectations in the next five years from India market. I also mentioned it's our number two market in terms of employees. Yes. So with that that's a really interesting combination. I think with the way that India is changing and the best that India is making in terms of its growth on different industries the technology sector. I expect India to carry on growing and I expect it to be a top five market and maybe even further than that in the next three years. Thank you. Thank you for talking to us. I know you have a packed schedule you need to rush but hopefully next time you'll come and give us more time and come to our event as well. Thank you for having me. It's a little pleasure. Thank you. Thanks a lot.