Ajay Gupte, CEO-South Asia, Wavemaker also shares his views on how the role of media planners and buyers are changing and the enthusiasm IPL has got for marketers
Ajay Gupte, CEO-South Asia, Wavemaker
Note to readers: Media Mavens is a new Storyboard18 series featuring media investment firms and power players – the X-Women and X-Men who make the big calls on how and where to spend advertisers' money. This is a peek into their minds – how they work in a dynamic landscape, the next big trends they’re watching for, insights into what advertisers need today, the disruptions driving change and the factors driving their decisions. Watch this space for all that and more.
These days Ajay Gupte, CEO-South Asia of Wavemaker, a WPP-owned media agency, is busy decoding new business dynamics and helping his teams write new media textbooks. Gupte has been instrumental in the agency’s entry into the areas of e-commerce, martech, adtech, performance marketing and content, among others. In the last few years, Wavemaker has changed its image from being just a media agency to being a brand consultant for all its clients.
In an interview with Storyboard18, Gupte, shares an in-depth report of the agency’s progress so far, his thoughts on generative AI, changing roles of planners and buyers, IPL, and more. Edited excerpts.
Q. How’s 2023 going for Wavemaker India?
It feels like time is on steroids. A lot of the seeds that we sowed over the last three-four years are now in proper motion. Therefore, for us, there are a lot of things to celebrate. It may sound cliché but the investments we made in diversified areas like e-commerce, martech, adtech, performance marketing and content, among others have become a part of an integral part of our business. All of these verticals have now become proper businesses. Let me explain this a little further. The BCG growth-share matrix (that helps companies decide how to prioritise their various business activities) contains four distinct categories: "dogs," "cash cows," "stars," and “question marks.” For us, the investments that we made were question marks in the beginning. However, when I look at them now they are all moving into star zones of our business at large.