Legacy agencies have a lot of handicap, the future is with MarTech, say Wondrlab's founders

Clients are going through a huge crisis as the marketing landscape has shifted completely and yet the solutions are not in line with what they really need, says Wondrlab’s Founder and CEO Saurabh Varma. 

November 10 - Entry deadline for BuzzInContent Awards 2020 ENTER NOW

Clients need platforms that are scalable, drive ROI and not driven by human intervention but a lot more innovation, he told BestMediaInfo.com.

Varma, along with his partners Vandana Verma and Rakesh Hinduja, recently announced setting up of a technology-led, new-age communications agency called Wondrlab.

The company is a platform-first startup with three key verticals – Content, Experience and Digital Business Transformation. 

Varma said Wondrlab will cater to the demand of clients by setting up MarTech platforms to deliver bespoke execution at the push of a button.

“Clients need platforms which are scalable, drive ROI and not driven by human intervention but a lot more innovation. From a service perspective, clients need a platform-led approach, specialists and not generalists, people who understand the platform and create incredible stories on it,” Varma said.

“We feel there is a huge amount of handicap, having lived in legacy agencies for decades. We know what's coming their way in terms of challenges and how we can take care of it. That way it will bring much more effective solutions for our partners at much better pricing and much effective business,” the co-founders said.

Varma said that in order to be a platform-first start-up, they have internally organised themselves around each platform, too. “The team structure is platform-first, and doesn't have traditional structures comprising copywriters, art directors, etc.”

Hinduja said every piece of data indicates that people are different on different social media platforms. The future lies in creating technology products that help in giving business to consumers.

Verma said traditional event activation, retail and shopper marketing space have become very tedious to execute in current times.

According to Hinduja, all that the legacy agencies used to deliver will be delivered by Wondrlab, whether it is digital, ATL and BTL communications. But the key differentiator is that the approach to content is going to be the platform by itself.

Hinduja said consumers are different on different platforms; they are different on LinkedIn versus Instagram. Brands capitalise and put the most relevant and important connection with consumers.

“What happens at agencies is that a one-size-fits-all solution is created. A good content piece is slapped on different platforms. It will be much more ROI-driven and effective if you draft the communication as per consumer mindset on an Instagram vs Twitter or LinkedIn as they are on all these platforms during the day,” Hinduja said.

According to Hinduja, lifestyle influencers today are being repeated just because it has worked for some other brands whereas there is data and science behind the most recent the most conversations that each influencer having, the influencer type, the kind of ROI they have pulled. All those things become critical at a tech platform by itself and that gives much more returns to clients invested money rather one size fits for all.

Varma said in terms of innovation on these platforms, we should be the first ones to use it, curate it for clients and that’s the service model.

Varma said the Martech company competes with different people at different points of time. “When we focus on the content play, we compete with some traditional agencies. When we talk about experiential, then the competition is experiential companies.”

Apart from the traditional retainer, commission and project-fee models, Wondrlab will offer new and evolving structures; these include an objective-based model in which a significant portion of the fee will be tied to the achievement of key client goals and a unique sweat model focused on helping start-ups scale and succeed.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com