I Do Not Want To Be The

Biggest"
The youngest CEO amongst the global communication networks, Yannick
Bollore on his maiden India sojourn, shares the game-plan for making Havas a
formidable force, in a world obsessed with size and scale
Outdoor hoardings are expensive and mostly used to make a political statement.
Chief executives of ad agencies are rarely accorded that privilege. Possibly why Yannick
Bollor, chairman and chief executive officer, Havas group was surprised and selfconfessedly embarrassed to see his mug-shot, over half a dozen hoardings, en-route
from Delhi airport to the business district of Gurgaon, also the stronghold of the group's
India operations. It gave the 35 year old Frenchman a taste of the famed Indian
hospitality on his maiden India trip.
He is here with a clear agenda: sharing his vision and plans for Havas with Indian
employees who make up nearly 450 of the 16,000 people that the Paris-headquartered
group employs. In attendance were both creative and media operations headed by
Nirmalya Sen and Anita Nayyar respectively. In India, currently both the creative and
media businesses are nearly of the same size, according to Bollore. In a world
dominated by big-daddies like WPP, Publicis and Omnicom, the Paris-headquartered
company does have a challenge when it comes to size and clout. Bollore is quick to
point out, Havas has the ideal scale. We are the fittest group in the industry today and
our size is the key to our current success. He avers that scale is very important but
has its riders. For instance, if you give me another 10000 people -for free -I would not
know what to do with them, he says. It'll just make us slower. I do not want to be the

biggest.This (obsession) is nonsense, and for what? The group's organic growth is
5.1% for 2014 without the impact of acquisitions or the exchange effect. Some of the
sizable global business mandates include LG Electronics, Paypal, Disney, Emirates,
Telefonica, Iglo etc.
Havas being part of a fully familyowned group, there are constant allusions to the
dynastic approach and the inability to attract and retain talent.It's not something that
Bollore is too bothered by: What makes Havas so different is precisely the fact that we
are family owned. Being part of the Bollor Group enables us to assert our
independence and it even gives us a little more soul! The ownership allows benefit
from a longterm vision and huge resources as well as helps attract top-talent, he adds.
Closer home Havas in recent times has been known mostly for solid work on Reckitt
Benckiser (RB) brands like Dettol along with output on Max New York, Red FM etc.
Typically , the agency's evolution in many markets including India has been
characterised by overdependence on one major client. In India the business, at
different times, has been pillared around Philips, Microsoft, Dell and RB. RB's predominance -it accounts for over 13rd of the agency's revenues for India -has also
meant the agency adheres to a certain kind of functionally coded work. It's delivered for
Reckitt but not necessarily won plaudits for its creative partner. A definite quandary for
an agency when its biggest client is not particularly known as among the most creative.
It is changing, assures Bollore with the new global CEO taking charge at RB. They are
be coming deliberately creative and pushing us harder, he adds.
Overall, he agrees that while good at working on communication for clients, Havas
needs to work on itself. Moving forward, one of his key objectives is increasing the
creative awareness of the Havas brand in all markets, India included. To be fair, Havas
Creative, (for merly Euro RSCG), is amongst the youngest agencies in India -just about
20 years old in an ecosystem where the Top 5 have been around for perhaps 50 years
or so, points out a former Havas senior executive on condition of anonymity .

In media, the brand has around 5% market share in India and some of the key
relationships include Parle Products, Hyundai, Quikr, LG Electronics, Tata Motors, Voltas
India, etc. According to Bollore, Since we have a more centralised organisation there is
much more leverage with the media. We do not feel any problem of scale -we have the
minimum scale on the local basis and on global basis we are one of the most high
performing media networks, armed with all the programmatic and social tools as well as
the partnerships with tech companies. There are specialised offerings like Artemis (the
global data management network), Mobext (mobile network), Socialyse (social
networks) and Affiperf (global trading desk). Bollore cites the example of the Global
Music Data Alliance set up with Universal that would enable the billions of data points
that UMG and its artists generate through music, ticket and merchandising sales,
streaming, social media and airplay to be aggregated and contextually analysed by the
data scientists at Havas.
One weak spot on the group's report card has been the lack of activity on the
acquisition front especially in a world that is going ballistic acquiring companies, both
globally and in India as well.Closer home, Havas is known to have been in talks with
Rediffusion Y&R and 22feet, as per sources, with an acquisition agenda but neither of
them eventually worked out. Bollore is not a great believer in acquiring companies just
for the heck of it since, according to him, it's much more about how to integrate new
companies than just acquiring. The strategy is not to buy and collect companies but be
integrated. For instance, the acquisition of the biggest crowdsourcing agency, Victors &
Spoils in 2012 and its relevance. We are now living in a sharing society. Consumers
love to be part of the conversation and contribute to the brand experience and
development; therefore we'll see more and more open source campaigns, he adds.
I'm not saying that the future of advertising will be in the hands of crowd sourcing
agencies but it is very important to have one in-house in order to anticipate and
understand the mechanics.

One of the biggest tasks that Bollore has earmarked for himself is the creation of
the `Havas Village' -essentially a place where we integrate all the teams from across
the functions of creative, media and digital to deliver a unique experience and service
to the client, he says. The walls are being broken to foster collaboration, a process that
was started two years ago and is being rolled out at most of the offices. The Gurgaon
office is also getting set to move to a swankier Havas Village sometime next year, we
are told.