Without compromising on Samsung, Cheil India to now focus on building Cheil X brand: Sanjeev Jasani

For years, the industry-wide perception of Cheil India, as an agency, has been that of a Samsung-focused agency and for valid reasons, but what is also true is that the business-connected agency is now making progress in the non-Samsung side of things, one step at a time.

Speaking to BestMediaInfo.com, Sanjeev Jasani, Chief Operating Officer, Cheil India, mentioned that while the year, 2023, has been hard owing to the global economic turbulences and changing audience behaviours, it has also been good in many ways for Cheil India whose first priority is towards the brand Samsung but at the same time, it is also trying to make a dent in the non-Samsung side of things.

In the past three years, the way the agency has grown its non-Samsung side of things and established itself as a ‘well-oiled unit’ therein, as per Jasani, it is finally time that the pedals be pressed on the non-Samsung side of business with Cheil X which in the recent past has won a slew of accounts ranging from TVS X, P.F. Chang, Vishal Mega Mart, etc.

“We've also bolstered the number of people in Cheil X this year with the team size not only increasing in the junior and mid-level roles but also in the senior leadership. This year at Cheil X Gurgaon, we have onboarded Amit Nandwani as Creative Head (Gurgaon Office), Kanika as VP- Head of Operations (Gurgaon Office) and Neeraj Bassi as Chief Growth Officer. And now we're expanding Cheil X’s footprint into Mumbai by the end of the first quarter wherein we have hired a separate team and set up a separate office. In 2025, we’re likely to expand our services to Bangalore as well, ” he said.

With this, he also emphasised that given the fact that Cheil India as a company is a little bit of a conservative agency which doesn’t get into something new unless it is 100% sure about it, the agency’s plan of Cheil X entering the Mumbai market in 2024 followed by Bangalore in 2025, is driven by the confidence and growth of Cheil X Gurgaon.

That being said, he also highlighted that the Samsung business is doing fairly well for itself and will continue to do so since the agency is not willing to make any compromises on its Samsung side of business in the pursuit of growing the Cheil X brand and Experience Commerce.

“As an agency, we have always been there to create business solutions in India, but now we've also expanded our reach beyond the India market, especially under the technology solutions domain, to other countries such as Korea, China, Indonesia etc. for whom our work is similar to that of an offshore development center,” he said.

On the road to next phase of growth for Cheil India as an overall company, wherein Cheil X and Cheil India are both about communication and consulting and Experience Commerce is all about content production and technology solutions, Jasani also echoed that the agency will soon, positively by the end of this year, announce an acquisition in the performance media marketing domain.

Commenting on some of the challenges that the agency has faced in the past couple of years, Jasani stated that the first and foremost challenge for Cheil India as an agency is that not too many clients are neither aware of the agency nor of what it brings to the table and therefore the priority is to not just set the context right but actually get its story out there.

In his views, this also reflects in both the onboarding and retention of talent because there is a certain kind of DNA that an agency has and in the case of Cheil India, it is about impacting the business of its clients which is why the objective is to hire people who are comparatively more matured, have a business acumen and ability to see the bigger picture.

“For Cheil X, we will be following a hub and spoke kind of model wherein the offices be it in Gurgaon, Mumbai or Bangalore in the foreseeable future will function as independent offices which will have independent targets and will therefore be running their own show,” he said.

Sharing his views on how the adworld has been faring out at large given that this year’s adex growth has once again boiled down to high single-digit numbers despite various ad agencies projecting it in double digits, Cheil India’s Jasani expressed that he isn’t worried about the ad market going down because at the end of the day, the same is strongly linked with the economy of the country and as long as the economy of the country is growing, there will be enough room for brands to sell and therefore there will always be a role for advertising.

With that being said, he did mention that what has happened in the past decade is that advertising in itself has undergone some sort of a transition wherein even though the core or fundamental principles have remained the same, what has changed is the prioritisation of media and its growing fragmentation and cluttering, largely because a massy chunk of audience is digital-first today.

“I think the real challenge for advertising agencies today lies in the fact that how can you tell a uniform story across the entire fragmented market and how can you land up giving a great unique experience to the users because that is where it all eventually boils down today. This particularly is where a lot of traditional agencies will struggle because unless one can play in this fragmented ecosystem, it's very hard for you to be solving your client problems because the clients’ problems are also evolving with changing times,” he opined.

Upon being questioned as to how the different verticals under the Cheil India umbrella have grown and evolved in the past one year given that the advertising business in itself has undergone a transition, Jasani replied that since today television is not the only weapon that agencies have in their arsenal, all the other functions such as creative, media, retail, OOH, brand experience and e-commerce amongst other functions have become all the more important since the modern adworld is all about building consumer experiences across various touchpoints.

“For us, various departments such as content, media, creative, brand experience and retail have seen tremendous growth in the past two years. We've created our own 2500 sq feet content production hub in Mumbai where we can do everything from building content to production and even post production all under one roof,” he said.

Jasani also opined that given the fact that the tech giant, Google, will begin phasing out its third-party cookies in a phased manner in 2024, what will happen is that all of the aforementioned touch points will become active as capturing first-party data will be the only solution that one will have to provide unique experiences at various touchpoints.

“Mentally, we are geared for that and while I will not rattle off technology and CDP platforms that are in place to capture first-party data, at the core of it, it is not about capturing data and building your own data lake but identifying what is it that you can do from it to understand consumer behaviour and basis that tap into great consumer insights to eventually grow your business. I think that’s where the trick lies and that's where our focus is as well,” he added.

Furthermore, he also mentioned that today, two criterions majorly influence the client’s choice of a strategic agency partner- one is business impact and the other is awards, and having said that it is very difficult to communicate what kind of business impact has an agency made on the client’s business as that is sensitive information which need not be discussed. But what can be or is discussed publicly, as per him, is the number of businesses one is closing or the number of awards that the agency is adding to its kitty.

“There is no other external ingredient apart from awards which showcases an agency’s mettle because, at the end of the day, awards are just the industry’s way of recognising that an agency has done a good job. Unfortunately, in the past couple of years, we haven’t done well at awards and therefore we still need to cover a lot more ground in that area here in India. However, the case is not the same when it comes to the global stage. Awards is an improvement area for us and hence it is definitely on the cards for us to pick up and improve upon,” he said.

Commenting on how he foresees the advertising landscape unfurling in the country in 2024, Jasani stated that given the hefty prioritisation of building consumer experiences for brands, the adworld will be more focussed towards providing better and connected CX next year and in doing so there will continued role for media and content, but more importantly, media will be more targeted and performance-oriented.

“Today, people have been emphasising a lot on AI, but the thing for next year will be that people will get more mature when they’ll have discussions around it, meaning that people will move away from the flash in the pan kind of AI usage into far more serious pieces which will go on to transform businesses because doing an idea for the sake of doing it doesn't make sense, unless you are creating a business impact and that is why clients are reserved about spending a lot of their ad monies today,” he concluded.

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