I acquired Rediffusion to have fun: Sandeep Goyal

Being an ad agency that completed half a century of existence in 2023, Rediffusion had its fair share of ups and downs before Sandeep Goyal, an ad agency veteran, acquired the independent agency that was reasonably ‘demoralised’ in 2021. Goyal decided to rebuild the agency’s stature of being one of India’s most respected and venerated brand names in the agency business.

In a year-ender interaction with BestMediaInfo.com, Goyal, who in 2023 assumed the role of Chairman in addition to being the Managing Director at Rediffusion, mentioned that before he bought Rediffusion in 2021, the agency had gone through a lot of turbulence and negative sentiment over the past 10-12 years. This was because of its fight with WPP- the clash between Diwan Arun Nanda and Martin Sorrell which resulted in not just the loss of businesses like Colgate, Airtel, Citibank, etc. but also in a lot of loss of momentum.

Therefore, when asked about how the agency has evolved in the past one year, he truly believes that what Rediffusion has become today is a cumulative effort of the past two-and-a-half years. The agency which was believed to be in troubled waters at one point in time has now gained back the stature of being a reasonably large independent agency. It possesses the bandwidth, creative juice and business acumen to work with brands who are willing to look outside of the network agencies.

“In the last two to two-and-a-half years, we’ve won significantly large businesses like BMW, Dabur, Taj Hotels, Tata Power, Nerolac Paints, Capri Global Apna Club, Ashiana Housing, Nucleus Pax, etc. and some of them in highly competitive multi-agency pitches. But having said that, we’ve also had to rationalise the portfolio a bit by shedding both people and clients that were just completely uneconomical as the kind of assets that needed to be put on them were disproportionate to their billings,” he said.

It is owing to these wins and creative work that the agency has been pushing out in the past couple of years that makes him thinks that there isn’t any agency in this country that has done as well as Rediffusion amongst the so-called traditional agencies landscape.

He also mentioned that this year, Rediffusion also began its media discipline, wherein Red Lab and Smart Media have come together and started working on four-six clients. “It's not large as of now, but it's a comeback into active media buying,” he said.

Similarly, launched in August 2022, Everest also won new clients for itself and has kind of stabilised itself now as the exercise for the same in 2023 was more of consolidation, building the team and getting all the offices up to speed.

Another arm of Rediffusion, Ladyfinger, a women-only ad agency which was launched in April this year has also been doing a lot of project-based work for clients in the FMCG and jewellery space and is now on the verge of starting to work on a large bank. Most recently, the agency also executed a campaign for Free Press Journal.

What seems interesting to Goyal is that today, a lot many companies want to have women’s perspective on their business and even though Ladyfinger is fairly new, it will take another 6 months or so for the agency to start being as visible as it aims to be.

“This year, we also launched The Bharat Lab in partnership with Lucknow University and the kind of cutting-edge, kickass and original work that we do in consumer insights with the same and Red Lab is unparalleled with any other agency or Network in the country,” he added.

Additionally, Rediffusion Design Studio has also come up with some impressive work in design in the past and riding on the back of the same, the agency also opened its own AI design studio in India in 2023.

“I think as a package, Rediffusion is back to being an agency to reckon with and I believe that there's a lot more client stability and employee stability in the agency today, which is quite critical in these kinds of businesses. All in all, I think from our standpoint, this year was a year of consolidation as the businesses which had come in the last two to two-and-a-half years needed to be stabilised, internalised and sort of settled into the system,” he stated.

With this, he also mentioned that when he acquired Rediffusion in 2021 and made a return to advertising, it wasn’t because he was looking for fame or wanted to earn more money because that had already happened when he sold his stakes in Dentsu. Still, only because he wanted to have fun and in the past two to two-and-a-half years, he has had a lot of fun.

“The overall improving showreel for Rediffusion which is a combination of both the creative work and consumer insights has truly brought the agency back into very visible contention. In the past two to two-and-a-half years, we have beaten all the big agencies, in fact, we won both Tata Power and BMW on multi-agency pitches where there were agencies like Wunderman Thompson and therefore, from not even being outsiders into the game, what we did was we beat them at their own game- something that could not have happened over the last ten odd years. So, today when we go in on pitches, we are reasonably confident that we are going to win. And therefore, I have a sense of fulfilment,” he stated.

This sense of fulfilment is also rooted in the fact that, when Rediffusion was going through its hard times during the 10-12 years of turbulence, the agency along with its roots and foundation was shaken and therefore some repair work was needed to stabilise the agency.

To him, what has been one of the biggest challenges over the last two and a half years has been that of actually cleaning out the agency because to his understanding, what really happens when an agency has not been doing well for nearly a decade is that one attracts second class employees who are not the pick of the business and therefore the actual pick of the business don't want to come to the agency.

Hence, from the time Goyal came in, Rediffusion has been aligning the workforce which is a continuous and not easy process and that is precisely what the agency has been going through in the past two and a half years to re-establish a stable and dependable team.

“Most of the accounts that we have been handling over the last few years have been largely creative only and it is only now that we are slowly adding on the media component to them. What is essential is to understand that all of these are slow-haul businesses especially when you’re rebuilding an agency brand and in the process also fighting with giants like GroupM and so on. They have not only existed for a long time but are large in both size and clout, you may want to steer clear by understanding the comparative size because what may be your 100 would be there 1,” he mentioned.

Taking the discussion on pitches further, Goyal also pointed out that when Rediffusion goes to pitches, it only presents things that will actually move the client’s businesses forward - whether in terms of revenue, market share, profit, etc. In his viewpoint, advertising is only a catalyst to the growth of business and not an end in itself and once one understands and starts working towards that in the pursuit of helping client brands do better in the marketplace and also be better connected with consumers, clients will automatically throng to the agency.

“In the past couple of years, we’ve relaunched Rediffusion in Delhi and Bangalore, transferred offices in Calcutta and Chennai and also opened a new satellite office in Chandigarh. There has been a lot of emphasis on making the agency back to being a large and visible national player. In fact, when we took over the agency in 2021, the numbers over the last decade were not so good as the agency wasn’t working on a very large base. Today we’re again back to very good profits and 2024 is only going to be a landmark year for the same as the agency’s revenue has grown tremendously,” he concluded.

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