The New Nation - Internet Edition

BUSINESS REPORT

Global MindShare is poised to restructure its operations globally and integrated its traditional and digital units as part of efforts to reinvent the GroupM agency as a full-service marketing business.

The overhaul will result one P&L and will see 12 separate agency units and disciplines transferred into four new divisions: client leadership (two teams serving as client and operation leaders), business planning (go-to-market strategy), invention (creative development), and exchange (media planning and trading). The agency's Interaction unit will also be dissolved, with all functions and staff moving into the core organization.

According to the Ashutosh Sri-Vastava, MindShare CEO Asia-Pacific, the leaders for each of the functions and clients will be announced at the agency's regional meeting in Bali this week. Country heads from China, India, Bangladesh, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia will implement changes over the next three to six months.

"This is the biggest restructuring since the agency was launched in 1997. Rather than running a company with many different silos, we will have one P&L and the client's P&L to look after," said Sri Vastava.

"In most categories, we work with large global clients and so the new accounts that we can go after have dried up, which is why we have been building new streams of revenue. The growth for MindShare has been from expansion of revenue of existing clients and this will let us serve our clients in the way they want. We have been testing this with big, global clients like Unilever, particularly in the US market, to see how it will impact their business."

Do we at last, have a blueprint of the agency of the future? On the surface, MindShare's reinvention as a full service marketing business appears to suggest so. One P&L, media neutral ideas, content creation and ownership, and integration; the GroupM agency has done well to tick all the right boxes.

The 'new' MindShare will be dedicated to developing fully integrated business solutions. It will focus on the invention of intellectual property. Digital will not only play a central part, but will also be integrated into the very core of the organization.

But, perhaps most significantly, the new MindShare will operate in an open source structure, bringing together creative and media through its 'invention' unit. This business division will be responsible for translating s client's brief into a consumer engagement idea. It will orchestrate efforts for the effective development of creative, production and distribution.

Essentially, it will require MindShare to take the lead and pull together the creative network, direct marketing agency and other partners for the creative, production and distribution. Essentially, it will require MindShare to take the lead and pull together creative network, direct marketing agency and other partners for the creative and delivery process.