 Ladies and gentlemen, you're right now on the E4M Conclave and right now, currently, we're on the fireside chat that it is, is it the time for agencies to reboot? Well, as the agency landscape constantly reinvents itself, it'll be extremely important for the agencies to keep evolving. But what does 2021 have in store for the agencies? Well, to enlighten us on the thing, it gives me immense and great pleasure to introduce to you our keynote speaker for the day, Mr. Mark Reed, global CEO WPP. Well, Mr. Reed has held multiple leadership roles at WPP, having first joined the company in 1989. As head of strategy and then CEO of WPP Digital, he was somebody who was responsible for WPP's first move into technology. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Internet Startup Web Rewards and specialized in media and marketing as the principal at Consultancy Booth Allen and Hamilton. In 2015, he became global CEO of Wonderman, which he transformed into one of the world's leading creative data and technology agencies. He was also recently honored by the IPA, which is the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising for his outstanding contribution to the industry. Mr. Reed is regularly named amongst the world's top digital influencers, and he's also the chairman of the National History Museum Digital Council and was recognized as the hero's champion of women in the business in 2018 and 19. In conversations with Naval Ahuja co-founder Exchange for Media, Mr. Reed will be unlocking answers to whether it's the time for agencies to undergo a reboot after grappling with a year of degrowth, a lot of transitions and uncertainty. So, ladies and gentlemen, with this, I'm pleased to welcome Mr. Reed and Mr. Ahuja to join in the most awaited fireside chat. Ladies and gentlemen, it is now time to welcome both of them, Mr. Ahuja and Mr. Reed, on your virtual screen. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Papna. And a very good afternoon to everyone in India. And good morning, if you're based in Europe, somewhere in Europe. Thank you, Mark, for joining us early morning time from UK. I hope things are settling up as far as COVID is concerned. It seems like the rate of infection is still growing, so please stay safe. If let me set the context before we get into our conversation, Mark, the new year has started WPP works, Jan, December. So I thought what we'll do today is we'll pick up a few large issues that the advertising, the marketing industry has seen in the last few months how things have shaped up. So one naturally has been the impact of COVID on consumer behavior and it is no secret enough has been written already about how digital adoption has taken a huge leap during COVID. What I'd like to have a chat with you today about what is the impact this changing consumer behavior will leave for brands, for agencies and the media ecosystem. Then perhaps we can have a chat about how specifically this will impact the industry at a broader level and then possibly at a micro operational or domain company level. Intertwined with this conversation, I'd also love to pick your brains on the so much chatter about social media, the various ways social media is impacting what brands are doing, what consumers are doing. And you've spoken about that in the past, so maybe you'll have another chat about this. One of the key themes that WPP is championed that you championed as an individual is about brands, companies building sustainable businesses, sustainable brands. And that's another I think issue we should chat about what is the post COVID view on sustainability as far as brands are concerned. And last item of the agenda, maybe discuss a few numbers about India, what's going on, India's growth or degrowth trajectory has been very different from the world though, you know, at an industry level, we've seen FMCG growing, we've seen technology growing, but at the same time ads, ad spend growth has been very mixed. What's your view on what's happening in India and where we are currently. So thank you again, Mark for joining us. Let me start this conversation by asking you, Mark, if you can summarize for us, what do you think will be the, you know, lasting legacy of COVID for brands? Good morning and thanks very much all. Good afternoon I should say and very good to see you and very good to see everyone here. Look, I think that, you know, the legacy of COVID for brands and for society, you know, will be really fundamental. Now, at one level, you know, what we're seeing is, you know, a rapid acceleration of the trends that were already taking place in society, many of the things that you mentioned, you know, the importance of purpose, the growth in digital media, the explosion of e-commerce, they were things that I, you know, that we were already seeing, but the sort of the unique nature of the pandemic, the fact that it caused sort of physical separation has clearly meant a massive explosion in the digital parts of the economy. And that goes from media to other parts of the economy. I was talking to Srinni, our country manager for WPP in India, you know, earlier about this. And, you know, we see even in education where WPP has a foundation that provides education to many people in Mumbai and the rapid spread of education online and kids gathered around, you know, someone's device to receive their lessons. You know, that's not something I think anyone would have expected to have taken place as smoothly two years ago. So I think that brands that were ahead before, ahead of these trends, you know, brands that had thought about their purpose, companies like Hindustan, Neva, companies that had built an e-commerce presence, companies that were already experimenting in mobile marketing, and companies that were forward thinking will be the companies that come out of this strongest. And those companies that were playing catch up to some extent, you know, it means they have to need to think about that. And we use the sort of framework for brands during the pandemic, we call it sort of react, recover, renew, you know, react to what people did in the first, you know, days and months after sort of COVID came out, you know, how do they shift their communications to be more purpose-oriented? How do they talk to customers about what they're doing? And we move quite quickly to the renew face in India, you know, around September, October, the recovery phase, September, October, we started to see companies thinking about recovery at the pace of that recovery. What I think is much more fundamentally interesting for companies and for brands is the whole notion of renewal. How do they really do what they used to do in a very different way and respond to these trends? And I think it's pretty fundamental actually. That's right. I think a large number of brands that were forward-looking three, four years back will see COVID benefiting them immensely, which has been a year of, you know, significant changes in consumer preferences, tough business environment. Tell us, Mark, how is WPP used this time? And I asked this, you know, from an advertising agency ecosystem point of view. There were winds of change blowing in the advertising ecosystem already even before COVID happened. Three, four, five years preceding especially after digital started doing very strongly fragmentation of, you know, consumer reach out media started a few years back. Agency ecosystem environment has been changing very rapidly. How do you think COVID has kind of, you know, changed that even further? Yeah, I think, you know, I think you were about to use the word opportunity and I don't think one could refer to this time, which has been very difficult. Let's face it for everyone. And I know talking to my colleagues in India, that's the case in India. But to some extent, we have to use this time to make the changes that we need. Now, I'd say from a WPP perspective, you know, we laid out a new strategy just over two years ago. And I think that that strategy did well to address many of the changes that we're talking about today. And the work that we've done to simplify and reposition the business for a sort of more digitally important and integrated future, I think was the right thing to do. And we've brought together VML and YNR and Wonderman and JWT to create Wonderman Thompson. I know that there are questions asked at the time about, you know, those decisions and in what order we should have the names if you can believe it. And, you know, we needed to create globally strong grants. And I actually think that the work, you know, in particular the work that Shrinni has done in sort of repositioning our portfolio in India has been to our advantage. I mean, the reality is that if we're going to advise our clients on digital transformation, we need to be ahead of those clients in making those changes. You know, we can't be transforming our businesses before our clients. We need to demonstrate that we're ahead of them in making those changes. And I hope that that's something that we've done through WPP in India. We have 4,000 people working in digital hubs in India providing services to companies all over the world. And what's been interesting is whereas four or five years ago, most of those people would have been engaged with companies outside of India, increasingly we're seeing demand from our clients in India to use those capabilities. So we're going from a sort of offshoring model to much more of a center of excellence or expertise model, which I think is really important for us. So I think that what clients need globally is exactly what they need. They need partners who are able to help them transform, partners who are able to help them implement technologies like Adobe or Salesforce and engaging that companies that can help them sort out their customer data, companies that can help them build e-commerce capability. And that's really what we've been investing in in WPP, to be a partner. You know, we call ourselves a creative transformation company and creativity talks to creativity, ideas, inspiration. I think that's what clients ultimately come to WPP companies for. But also transformation company able to help our clients shift their marketing from how it needed to be in the past to where it needed to be in the future and for us to be the best partner in helping clients do that. And certainly that's been our goal. I think that's a very relevant point, especially with regards to clients seeing agency as agencies have having sort of already adopted the future that you are getting your clients ready for. Give us two, three examples of what WPP would have done. It could be in India or outside of what WPP would have done in COVID, which otherwise would have taken two, three years to kind of implement or do. Yeah, I think the, you know, I said to our team at the beginning of COVID that this is going to be a unique period. I don't think any of us knew how long it would take place. In fact, the news broke. We had our first sort of executive committee meeting abroad in Mumbai, right at the beginning of March. And we had Dr. Peter Piot who was the professor who discovered the Ebola virus come and talk to us about COVID. I think it became pretty clear to us at that time that this was going to be have a major impact on all of us. And we went home, I think quite sanguine about the future. But what we agreed was that we would use the period to make the fundamental changes, not to avoid the tough decisions, but to make the tough decisions that we needed to make to position the company better for the future. And that involved looking after our people and making sure that our people were safe and well. We sent 100,000 people to work from home over a weekend. It used to take us six months to do an office move. And we moved everyone out of the company from Friday to Monday. And by the way, the company continues to deliver work to clients. And actually our clients at distraction schools have improved over the course of COVID as I think people and clients have got closer together. Secondly, we've really embraced remote working, which I think goes further than working from home or working from the office. We're doing work much more quickly and much more directly with clients. So whereas it may have taken us 16 weeks to produce a television commercial, we can now produce that in 16 days, using the types of technology that we're talking about remote ways of working and socially distanced television production. So the way in which we're working is very different as well for clients. And we're looking sort of new investments in marketing technology and data to support that growth. So I think that we've really thrown ourselves into might be too strong to throw ourselves into this and use the time to make sure that when we come out of it, we come out of it in the strongest possible way. Yeah, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. Things that we never thought would be possible are happening now. Nobody thought we would be doing board meetings on Zoom calls. So it had started happening already, but the mental innovation is gone now, doing large meeting on. I mean, we built a tele dentist app for Colgate to connect people in their dentist and not quite sure how the how the surgery works remotely over a phone. But I think that it's an indication of what we can do and what is and what is possible. So WPP built this app for Colgate? Yeah, we work with them on the app. Yeah. I mean, we have a big technology development. I mean, I think sometimes we're seen as an advertising company as a source of if I had some frustration, it's a source of some frustration to me, you know, roughly, you know, maybe a third, less than a third of our business, even in India is in this sort of classic disciplines that people would see as being sort of advertising. We have very strong capabilities. We're helping eight of our top 10 clients deploy e-commerce capability today, building direct to consumer applications on Adobe and Salesforce technologies. So we're a very, very different company from the company we were five or 10 years ago. And I think that that's really true in India. And it's very interesting. I think that our ability through Shruti to execute this sort of global strategy in India is actually very beneficial to us and has helped us accelerate the change at a local level and bring people much, much more closely together, you know, moving into, you know, as you know, with people into our campus in Mumbai, and we would be doing the same in Ganga if we were able to, but having, you know, 8,000 people in two campuses brings the company closer together and enables us to work, you know, much, much more collaboratively for clients. And that degree of collaboration, I think has massively improved over the pandemic. Yeah, very interesting. You mentioned this point, Mark, and maybe I'll pick you up a little bit more on this. Last five years have been a huge disruption for the advertising business and COVID has only accelerated that. And as you mentioned, not just understanding and offering technology solutions, you have, you are now creating technology solutions for a large number of your companies. You know, you write WP created an e-commerce sale in India. I think it's been three years if I'm not mistaken. And most brands, at least post COVID, there'll be no brand who's not looking at a, you know, full-fledged e-commerce vertical. And you've been in the business long enough to have seen the entire gamut of services change from an integrated shop to then creative and media being split. And now, you know, the walls have blurred. Today, media agencies are going and pitching in some cases, creative ideas to clients, right? Creative agencies, when they're creating, you know, commercial, they have to think about where the commercial deployment will happen, whether it will go on Facebook or Google or a television channel. So you think gradually, as we move forward, creative media need to work far more cohesively, if not come back under one single umbrella, but sit together on the table when they are dealing with clients to happen before the services split. Well, the point I would make is it already is under one single umbrella, but that umbrella is WPP. And it's not a question of the creative people being in charge of the media or the media people being in charge of the creative people. It's really about collaboration amongst the people. You know, the new offer for WPP, we let out communications, experience, commerce and technology. And I think over focusing on creative versus media is actually just focusing on the traditional parts of the business, you know, the expansive part, the areas of the business that are growing. I mean, this is not, you know, totally true in India, because India is one of those markets where, you know, we are seeing strong growth in, you know, advertising spend and traditional communications. But, you know, generally across the world, the areas of our business that are growing, you said, oh, how do we build experiences for clients? How do we grow, help and grow in e-commerce? And how do we help implement marketing technologies? I'm much more interested in having a collaborative WPP that shifts their focus into those growth areas than having a debate, quite frankly, from the 1980s or 1990s about whether the creative or media people are in charge or indeed whether people inside a particular company can get on with each other. Of course, people can get on with each other and collaborate. And, you know, my view is that the best people are the most collaborative. And that's what I want to have at WPP. And I think that's the type of environment where our people want to work. And so we have to demonstrate to our clients how we can bring together the right solutions to help them, you know, succeed in the market. And that's not just a question of creative and media, but clearly creative and media need to be much closer together. But the new agencies that we've created in WPP, you know, VML, YNR, Wonderman Thompson, you know, have capabilities that go beyond advertising into e-commerce, into health, into building experiences, into CRM and data capabilities. And that I think puts those businesses in a much stronger position to give clients the right solutions and to grow. Fair enough. I think a very, very important point doesn't matter to the client, especially it doesn't matter where the idea is coming from. Especially today, clients are not looking at advertising agencies to just bring communication ideas to the table. And I think agencies certainly have a unique proposition here in terms of having significant understanding of brand to be able to suggest the right technology platforms to use the right e-commerce strategy to follow. We have an understanding of consumers there. I mean, an understanding of consumers and how they adopt technology and an understanding of marketers and how they use it. And too often, I talk to clients who have worked with another consulting firm, they say, well, we implemented this technology, but we don't know what to do with it. I would approach it from the other way and say, well, what are the marketing programs that we need to have? What is the technology that needs to power it? And how do we do it? Now, the other half of that coin is creativity. Because actually, I think that in this new world, the demand for creativity has not gone away. And you may have seen that we hired Rob Riley as our Chief Creative Officer across WPP. And I can see Per Peterson on this call somewhere, creativity is still critical to our clients and in all of its forms. And we can't forget that. So it's sort of two sides of the coin. On one side of the coin, you have creativity and ideas. And on the other side of the coin, you have data and technology. And I think there's two notions have to be inseparable. And I think at WPP and the agencies within WPP, we have a unique ability to bring those two things together to create really breakthrough ideas for clients, as well as understanding how to get those ideas to reach the consumer, as you say, through the media and other channels that they will build. That's right. Let me now come to the media side of the business. Mark and COVID has been the year of profound change. And as I mentioned earlier, this change was already underway. The center of gravity in the media space has shifted in the last year significantly away from what we come to call as legacy media companies to new age digital media companies. It is a no brainer that this change is here to stay. In fact, it will further accelerate as especially in countries like India where COVID has been to use a cliche term game changer. There has been significant uptick in adoption of digital technologies, whether it is digital transactions, whether it is consuming content on digital like OTT, whether it is going online for shopping habits. What does that do to legacy media? India is a very different country. Television is alive and kicking. Print, if you look at language, print is alive and kicking. There has been a setback in COVID, but things have quickly returned close to normalcy. One can say, what's your view on how legacy media can look at the post COVID years? Look, I think India is a unique market because of the strong growth in the economy overall, as I said. But I think the direction of travel, unfortunately for legacy media, is only really heading in one direction. And that's driven by the changes in consumer behavior. And if you look at the trends over the last two years, you can see the impact. I mean, Group M, I believe the ad spend in 2019 declined by 20%, and it will probably be up 20% to 25% in 2021 this year. So let's say it's down 20, up 25. It ends the year 21, up 5 over two years. Now, digital probably grew at 30% in 2019, and 10% probably will go 10%. You know, low, double digit, 10% this year. So that will be up 40. And TV was probably down 20 in 2019 and up 10, so it's down 10. So by the end of 2021, you'll have digital up 40, TV net down 10. So you can see, I'm afraid, the inevitable direction of travel from an economic perspective and digital media now is more than half of all advertising expenditure on a global basis. So I think that those media companies that haven't built strong digital capabilities clearly need to do that. And those clients that haven't figured out how to activate their brand campaigns and how to reach their consumers in a relevant way through digital media need to do it. Now, there will be compensating changes that make it somewhat easier for companies. And we're very bullish about the prospects for, you know, online video and connected television and these are formats where sort of video advertising, i.e. TV ads, are much easier. So I think there will be compensating changes that will mean that we will still be able to get commercials in front of consumers. But the reality is that things are really only heading in one direction and India will be no different from any other market in that respect. And as you say, the pandemic has shifted that because of the explosion of devices, the explosion of local language in India, content, the continued growth in social media, all of those give consumers more reason to be on those platforms. And, you know, it's a, you know, it gathers weight with time and the investments in different areas sort of reinforce the position. So I think you have to, you know, to be successful in business, be in businesses, you know, with tailwinds. And in the media business, the tailwind is clearly on the digital side of the company. It's been very interesting to watch the growth of digital media in the last few years from a medium which had sub 5% of spend share in developed countries. It's gross 50% already. India is looking at a 25% share this year and growing. One of the issues that has repeatedly come up in the last few years and the WhatsApp, the recent WhatsApp controversy kind of puts a spotlight on that are three, four aspects. One, you know, issue with regards to privacy of data, issue with regards to a genuine, genuineness, authenticity of data that is being generated. Third, digital largely, at least in countries like India, was so far used as a lead generation mechanism, not really a brand building media. As countries like India jump to a 25% plus ad spend, do you think the expectations, the accountability demand from digital media will change significantly? Because I say this also because there are lots of brands, for instance, to give you an example, a brand like Parle in India, which is a large food company, an FMCG advertiser, was doing sub 10% spends on digital and when COVID happened, they jacked up their digital spends to 40-50%. And now it's come back to 2025, but that's still double of what they were doing earlier. Now, for a company to double their spends on digital, of course, they'll look at proportionate accountability coming in. Do you see digital media accountability now being sought of being a very different level than how it was earlier? I mean, look, I think clearly, we need to provide accountability in digital media and the points that you made around respect and consumer privacy, accountability are important. But I think the days when you saw digital as just being a lead gen medium are long gone. And the point you made is the most important, you go from 10 to 40 and back to 20, but it's like stretching elastic band, it's ever growing from 10, you're growing from 20. So you've seen probably a three to four to five year acceleration of the trends of digital media. I mean, I remember being in India 12 or 13 years ago with Harish Balam and East Village talking at sort of mobile media, mobile marketing conferences about when would mobile advertising take off and sort of general view would be it was always sort of next year and every year it was next year. Well, that time has genuinely come. And with the shift of ad spend to digital media come two things. One is, as you say, the demand for greater accountability and brand safety, so more responsibility. But the second thing come more resources and those resources are able to build better content, able to invest in stronger content moderation and ensure brand safety. I think that's important. And then to the point about lead generation, as these devices get closer, as commerce and consumption activities increasingly take place on these devices, the notion of sort of lead gen media becomes much less relevant. If you can advertise on a phone and shift and drive demand directly, it's accountable. You can see the transaction. So I think that digital media promises to provide greater accountability and to provide brand building media that drives sales. So I think that's why companies are adopting it. And look, I agree with you. I think Montalers have said they've shifted over time in the US to more than 50% of their spend from digital media. So it is possible for companies that have relied very heavily on traditional television. And my argument to them would be, well, if you don't do it, what's the alternative? So you might not like it. But as you said, necessity is the mother invention that they have to figure out a way of reaching consumers in a relevant way on the devices on which they operate. Now, all of these things would be done in a very sort of, let's say, locally relevant or Indian way. And we're talking to people about e-commerce in India, which won't necessarily involve an Amazon driver van like it does for me in London, but might involve someone running around the corner from the local shop to bring you your produce. So things can happen in a very relevant way, but people will find a way of driving transactions online. That's right. Let me stick to digital and the most influential part, if I can use that term of digital, which is social media. And it's been making news most nonstop the last few years. We've seen what's happened, the impact of social media with regards to the American elections recently. You've spoken about content regulation, content moderation on social media. And it's been a burning topic world over. Brands have spoken about it, brand safety on social media. We have a situation today where brands have genuinely had, have been vocal about their concern with regards to, say, toxicity of content on social media is concerned. And what COVID has done actually is it's putting even more consumer time on social media. So in a lot of ways, social media companies have become stronger. So we have a kind of contradiction here where on one hand, brands have expressed and wanted their concerns to be addressed. On the other hand, social media companies are only becoming even more stronger. What is the way to deal with this contradiction? Look, I think brands have to make a decision whether or not they want to be on social media. And, you know, you saw in the U.S. at several brands, you know, big brands made a decision that at that time, they did not want their appetizer money to fund social media because of its impact on society and concerns around brand safety. And I think that they have every right to do that and ask sort of fundamental questions. You know, you saw, you know, the impact of Twitter's decision and Facebook's decision, you know, on President Trump and it's noticeable that a number of politicians actually questioned that decision from the perspective of free speech, which I can understand. But at the same time, I think it is something that clients need to consider whether they want their appetizer dollars to fund that type of activity. At the same time, I do think that we're seeing growth in other types of services, you know, local language services in India, local media, online gaming, sort of more brand safe environments. So I think that brands, you know, like many things, it's, you know, if it's that's your principle, then you have to decide to, you know, to be there or not to be there. And I think social media companies have an obligation to moderate their content if they do want, you know, advertiser dollars and think about what is on their platform. What's not on their platform. Now, I know that's difficult for them to do and, and, you know, Facebook have asked, in a sense, for it to be codified by law to make their life easier, if you like. But, you know, I think that it's an obligation on them to do it. And I know that they are concerned. I think what's troubling is that we always seem to be behind the curve. We always seem to be shocked. It's one thing, it's one thing after the other. And I think that's what should give people concern is we just don't seem to be able to get ahead of this issue on social media. And the way in which it allows sort of direct, you know, communication in that way. At the same time, you know, there's sort of the practical nature to what you can do. And I think natural concerns about privacy and censorship. So I think it's a thorny issue for clients need to take a position and our job WPP is to advise them on what to do and how to stay as safe as they can. And we spend a lot of time, you know, working with them and working with industry bodies on that. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, brands have spoken last year, many large brands got together and one by one, they did take a decision to stay off some of the platforms till the time, you know, content moderation issues are fixed. So I think brands are taking their steps and agencies have an important role to play in that arena. Let me come to some aspects of what's happening in India, Mark. Ficky frame where you spoke last year in April, and it was early days of COVID, we were just a month into the lockdown. Your assessment at that time was since WPP works Jan, December, Q2 will be 60% down for India. Q3 will be 30% down and Q4 recovery will start. How have the numbers gone? Don't tell us exacts because we understand WPP does not do market wise numbers, but give us a sense of how the shape in WPP is kind of the bellwether stock if I may for the Indian advertising economy. So how's it been each quarter? I think one observation I would make about the pandemic is that I think it's demonstrated, you know, the importance of our industry and of marketing and of what we do. And there's no doubt that while, you know, advertising spend in our industry has been impacted, like every other business, it has been significantly less impacted than we thought. Our business has been much, much more resilient, much, much more important to clients. So I think we have demonstrated that being able to reach your consumer and getting the message right, consumerizing what we're doing is important. And, you know, we certainly haven't seen, you know, declines of that order of magnitude in ad spend. I'm pleased to say that the general curve is sort of as I, the shape of the curve is as I predicted back in April. I can't believe I gave you a prediction. But anyway, if I did, I'm sure you're right. But the degree of it is much, much less pronounced. And actually, we started to see growth in India in August and September. And, you know, the shift, the delay in IPL will be helped you for a little bit, but we had a very strong holiday season as well. So we started to see growth back in India, August, September, and we're seeing the same thing coming in in the beginning of this year. So I think that actually our business has been much, much more resilient, you know, on a global basis, analysts expect WPPs, you know, net sales for 2020 to be down anything in the region of, you know, 8%. And if we were to do, you know, something in that magnitude, you know, I think it's a significantly more resilient performance than we would have expected at the beginning of the pandemic. Take us, take WPP on a global basis, you know, in Q3, we saw growth with more than half of our top 30 clients. We actually saw, you know, parts of our business much more resilient. So I think if you look at it sector by sector, you know, in India, you know, FMCG has continued to be strong. It's got 25%, 30% of advertising spend, and it's been, you know, strongly for much of the pandemic. But while the focus in the initial days was really on health and hygiene products that spread into other FMCG categories, you know, those companies that again share during 2020 and done well, will I expect want to continue their spend into 2021 to maintain it? We've seen automotive. I mean, maybe for obvious reasons, people want transport, you know, protected personal transport, we've seen automotive really come back, you know, very strongly. And that's a pattern actually we've seen, you know, really around the world. And then clearly, the technology players, you know, part funded by financial backing in part because of the growth available, you know, fintech, mobile games, big increase in spend from mobile gaming. Interestingly, a lot of spend on television, you know, we can talk about the death of traditional, but you know, let's face it, it's not dead. It's just not going to grow as fast. But, you know, they are going on to traditional media to get their message out. And so, you know, like everything in life, it's a balance. There's no, you can't be just digital or just traditional. You have to be in the right channel for the task that you want to accomplish. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think IPL is a prime example of that. Estimates say that IPL alone clocked some half a billion dollars in spends and my guess is 70% of that went into television advertising. And that's a huge amount of money for a country when, you know, digital is growing at 20, 30% and where rest of the television and the print industry de-grew. That's a very large number. And a lot of this growth has also been fueled by what we call as the new age clients, the so-called startups, the education technology companies, the food tech companies, like you said, fintech, all funded by venture capital money, but the companies that are making, you know, setting the foundations of business growth for the next five years. Mark, if you were to look at how your business is stacked up in India right now, what are the few things that you think, from an Indian perspective, you can export to some of the other parts of the globe, especially the developed economies. Are there any learnings that you had in India in the last few years? Your team has been very stable. Srini has been part of WPP for a good part of your leadership teams across almost all agencies. I can barely think of any, has been extremely stable last many years. Piyush now sits, obviously, on the global Ogilvy board. What are the learnings that you think from India you can export to the rest of the world? Yeah, I think there's many things, many ways India could contribute to what we do globally, one of the reasons we had our executive team meeting in India in March. In the first is, as a sort of technology development, have I mentioned the 4,000 people? I mean, actually in some ways, even before we get into that, the main thing is that the Indian market is the opportunity for us in India is not that different from the rest of the world. And actually, what I think is really interesting is our ability to deliver transformation to clients in India in exactly the same way that we would in any other market to help clients think about purpose and reputation and how to build that. And that's going to be even more important coming out of the market, how to invest in the technology partners. There's some specific Indian companies like Imobi, but broadly speaking, it's the same set of companies, Google, Facebook, plus local Indian champions. And I think we will be seeing more Indian champions, which is a good thing. So part of it is India is part of the mainstream way in which we work around the world. And I think that that's fantastic. Now, at the same time, you have particular strengths from a technology and production perspective. And we are looking increasingly at how we offshore work, if you like, not into these things aren't necessarily lower cost hubs, but more sensors of excellence. I think India can play a much bigger role in building that center of excellence. And Shrini is working with me and our team on, you know, a very strong investment strategy that we can invest in the market there. And as you say, you can play a role creatively. So I think it should be a massive contributor. I'd like to see more executives from India take on, you know, bigger jobs inside WPP and move around into other markets. It's probably something that we haven't done enough of, if I'm honest. But I think that there are many ways in which we can use the insights we get from the Indian market around the world. Let me ask you a bit about your numbers agency, so to say, Group M, which is India's largest media agency and pre-COVID estimates for Group M industry share at close to 60%. I don't know what the share today is. And Group M has been also a very strong, you know, driver of numbers in India. And the shape and the structure of media agencies has changed significantly in the last few years. The role they play in the client's life from being a pure play media buying planning agency. It's not an ideation in an agency. It is also at the forefront of a lot of technology driven changes that you're introducing in the marketing ecosystem. What would you like the post pandemic shape of a agency like Group M to be? Look, I think that Group M and the Group M agencies are extremely strong parts of WPP, that mind share, media comm, wave maker, and the other parts of Group M, you know, really are fundamental. I think there's something about media people. Maybe it's because they're closer to the dollar, that sometimes they can be very strong commercially. That strong kind of commercial bent is important. I think we have the opportunities, as we did with this access to create and invent new business models, ways of getting clients access to inventory in the right way. So I think that the Group M agencies can really play a very important role because they're closer to... One observation I would make is I think that our media agencies manage the sort of analog digital transition much more effectively than our sort of creative agencies. It's something we talked about our investor date back in December. One of the reasons to bring sort of the so-called creative and digital agencies together was to help those businesses on an integrated basis make that transition. And I think that will help them do that. But the Group M agencies did make that transition very successfully. They were helped, I think, by the fact that clients want to look at their budget in one place, and they want to be able to understand how they express it across the digital channels. But I think that people in Group M, we have very strong leadership, very strong technology capabilities. And I think if you look forward, you will see Group M and Christian Jules vision for Group M much more as a software company than just a people-based business, many more investments in technology, a much greater understanding of data, more offshoring and automation. So a vibrant partner to our clients in helping them reach their consumers most efficiently and most effectively. Yeah, absolutely. I think media agencies have, as you rightly said, done the digital transformation much faster than some of the other agencies. And that's helped, I think Group M in India certainly gain a larger share of the money. Let me ask you a bit about the softer aspects of the business you run. And before I go that, Mark, one important aspect I'd like you to touch upon. As I mentioned at the beginning, sustainability has been a very important theme for brands over the years and brands that are kind of really own that did well pre-COVID. COVID has thrown a lot of things out of gear. Income inequality has gone up significantly because the bottom half of the world population is far more severely impacted than the top half. Do you think sustainability as a plank, as a position for a large number of companies will continue, more companies will sort of adopt it post COVID? Absolutely. I mean, I think that companies, I think business leaders recognize the importance of building sustainability or purpose into their company. We set out a new purpose at WPP to use the power of creativity to build a better future of people, planet, clients and communities. And those four groups, the people touched by the work. And even at WPP, or not even, but at WPP, we have a tremendous opportunity, think about it to use our voice. We're responsible in some way for one in five, one in six of the world's ads, even more in India, to use our voice to make the world a better place. And I think that that's something that we want to do because it's the right thing. And I think we want to do it because it's good, it's the right thing for business. And those two things should not, should not conflict. And you know, some of the work that we've done, let's say we've just done, leave us some of the water campaigns, many of the campaigns around plastic and waste reduction. I think all of these things are very important to consumers today. And the notion that we could carry on with our business without thinking about its impact on people or without thinking about its impact on the planet, I think have just, have just gone. And so companies need to be, you know, we talked about tailwinds. I think investing in sustainability is a good way of putting yourself in a tailwinds. It's something that we're very focused on investing in, in WPP, and a topic of conversation that we're having with, with many, many of our clients. And I think that, you know, if we can get business working in a better way, if we can have business work that doesn't cause tremendous plastic waste, you know, that blights the environment, if we can get business working in a way that provides jobs to people, you know, around the world, then many good things actually that business can do, and we have to do it in a way that's profitable. You know, some people thought we're moving to green energy, that's going to cost a company money, why would you do it? Well, actually, you know, the process of moving to green energy causes you to look at your energy consumption. It causes you to think about waste and other, otherwise, it should reduce your energy bills. So we need to think about this as a way of doing, you know, better business. And certainly that's important to us at WPP. I think it's important, I would say to all of our clients today. I think hopefully that'll be a silver lining of this pandemic. Last question before you go, I know you have other commitments scheduled. What's been the most challenging part of the pandemic? And I asked this question not from a client management and sort of brand management view, but as an individual for Mark Reed, you lead a company with more than 100,000 people across the world, and every country is very differently impacted. What's happening in the UK is very different from the US versus in India or a China. For Mark Reed, what's been the challenging part of the pandemic? Look, I think everyone's been differently impacted, but I think everyone certainly at WPP has responded fantastically well, and our people have really stood by each other. You know, I think my challenges are the same personal challenges that we've all had. You know, I've been talking to Srinni. He's been in the same room for 10 months. You know, I think we're all a little bit sort of this sort of incarceration that we're all facing is not easy for anyone. It's not easy for people with kids. It's not easy for single parents. It's not easy for people that live alone. You know, I'm probably one of the most fortunate, or certainly one of the most fortunate people to be in this position. When we were in India, we went to see the kids at the WPP Foundation, and they sent me a fantastic video over the holiday sort of on the visit. You know, I dread to think what life has been like for them over the last few months. Sadly, India, Mark, we've lost three people to COVID over the last 10 months. So a lot of people have had a tough time. So, you know, I'm not going to complain about, you know, any challenges that I faced. I think the one thing I have learned, if I can look at it that way, is the importance of communication and the importance of communicating to our people and to, you know, try to bring people closer together and to encourage people to understand, you know, that we are all in this together, and I said to our people, by the way, it's not just our people looking after each other. It's actually our people asking our clients how they are, those clients are, you know, people as well. How do we, you know, how do we really, you know, be there for each other? I think it's something that's really important to understand the situation that people are in and show, you know, a lot more sort of empathy and respect to people. There's been a lot of comment, increasing comment in the sort of business press about sort of empathetic leadership. But I think it is important, and that may be another permanent and good shift of this pandemic to sort of a less sort of focus on sort of the CEO as hero and a greater focus on what, you know, people and companies can do together when they have a strong purpose. I think that's very well said, Mark. And I do hope the pandemic leaves behind one legacy in terms of, you know, making us a species which is more empathetic to each other, which is more bothered about each other's well-being. Thank you, Mark, for joining us on a Monday morning. I'm sure you have a busy day and a week, but really appreciate you taking time out. Unfortunately, we don't have time to take any audience questions, but we'll collect the questions and send them to you. Thank you for joining us. It was useful and insightful for you to do this for us, and have a great day and a week ahead. And Noah, thanks very much for having me. And it's always a pleasure to talk to, you know, all our people and all our clients. And as I just say, now I have them on the court, you know, thanks to everyone for listening. Those are people from WPP. Thank you for everything that you've been doing to our clients. Thank you for your continued support. And thank you everyone for listening. And have a good week.