Ad agencies want to do it all. But the ultimate loser is the brand

Mint

3 days ago

Mumbai: In Indian advertising today, there's one common pitch: We do it all.Creative. Media. Martech. Influencers. AI. Commerce. If there's a funnel, every agency wants to own it, end-to-end.
But here's the problem: the more agencies chase dashboards and data layers, the more indistinguishable they become. And amid this convergence chaos, the oldest question in the business is being ignored: Who's thinking about the brand?
'Everyone wants to solve the full funnel, but the real moat is still in brand thinking," said Paritosh Srivastava, chief executive officer (CEO) of Saatchi & Saatchi, BBH India and Saatchi Propagate. 'Creative shops are now offering media, media agencies are hiring content teams, and consultants are peddling brand strategy. But if everyone does everything, who's standing for something?"
Srivastava adds that while Publicis Groupe's Power of One model helps agencies deliver integrated solutions, the danger lies in sameness. 'At some point, clients will ask what your real superpower is. You have to be famous for something."
Dheeraj Sinha, group CEO, FCB India and South Asia, 'It's no longer about just being a service provider. We're now in the business of business outcomes." Under his leadership, FCB has merged its creative, digital, and performance units into a single platform, building AI-driven content and full-funnel services. 'But amidst all this, our job remains to keep brands culturally rooted. That can't be captured by CTRs (click-through rates) alone."
Sinha is also quick to point out the value of integration, when done right. 'The creative idea is still the nucleus. If media and performance are not orbiting that, we risk becoming mechanical executors rather than cultural creators."
S. Subramanyeswar (Subbu), group CEO-India and chief strategy officer-APAC at MullenLowe Group, is taking a different tack: creating proprietary knowledge products like 'State of States' and pushing for what he calls "ecosystemised thinking".
'Too many agencies today speak in acronyms and tools, but where is the soul?" he asked. 'We're not just glueing services together. We're productizing ideas. And at the heart of it is cultural intelligence. Without that, you're just delivering media, not meaning."
That cultural intelligence, Subbu said, is becoming a rare commodity in a hyper-programmatic world. 'Even clients are asking: Who's bringing me that human lens?"
Marketers aren't blind to the shift. But they're also worried that creative ambition is being replaced by templatised efficiency.
'We deliberately pivoted from a functional, product-first pitch to emotional storytelling," said Ravi Chawla, managing director and CEO of Gulf Oil Lubricants India, in a recent interaction. 'Whether it's through cricket, retail or digital, the aim was to build resonance, not just impressions. The agencies that got us there understood grassroots insight, not just full-funnel fluency."
For Inderpreet Singh, head-marketing at Birla Opus Paints, this tension is sharper. The brand is a late entrant in a commoditised category, and its IPL investment needed to punch above weight.
'We constantly debate ROI (return on investment) versus memorability. If your agency only talks numbers, they're missing the point. Our mandate is to create memory structures. That comes from insight and consistency, not algorithmic success."
He added, 'We want to be a brand people remember, not just one they saw during a sale. That takes more than reach. It takes relevance."
That push and pull is being felt on platforms, too. Sana Shaikh, director at Flipkart Ads, sees both sides. 'The line between brand and performance is vanishing. Today, creative storytelling has to happen inside a cart, inside a scroll, inside a second," she said. 'We're giving agencies and brands tools to build relevance at speed. But that also means traditional agencies need to unlearn a lot."
But even as platforms reshape the playing field, some argue the bigger threat comes from inside the agencies themselves.
'There's a creative stagnation setting in," one independent agency founder said, speaking anonymously. 'You see the same templates, the same performance playbooks, the same KPIs (key performance indicators). If every agency looks like the other, where's the edge?"
Some clients are starting to notice. A senior marketer at a consumer tech firm added, 'We're pushing our agencies to stop being reactive. Everyone's optimising. No one's imagining. It's hurting differentiation."
Legacy agencies are trying. But the real challenge may not be transformation, but restraint. Not chasing every revenue stream, but knowing what to protect.
'The market is moving towards efficiency, but let's not forget the irrational power of stories," said Shubhranshu Singh, chief marketing officer (CMO) of Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles and a board member of the Effie Lions Foundation. 'You can measure short-term impact. But long-term brand value? That takes trust, culture and belief."
Dheeraj Sinha puts it bluntly: 'If you're not building long-term IP (intellectual property), you're just renting attention."
India may have had a big year at Cannes Lions 2025, with 32 awards and culturally sharp campaigns. But ask agency leaders and CMOs alike, and the unease is clear: creativity is at risk of being crowded out by commerce.