When an American advertising agency of stature like Wieden+Kennedy decides to shut its shop in a market like India — on the back of what many have said to be a ‘decline in revenue opportunities’—it is sure to send a signal of doubt and viability concerns among other global agencies in the country.
However, one of the leading consulting and design firms— Landor— bucks the qualm and has expressed confidence in India’s growth prospects.
Read more: “Impossible Dream”: Why Wieden+Kennedy couldn’t ‘just do it’ in India
While the country might not be in Landor’s top three markets at present (in terms of revenue)—it is upbeat about the growth opportunities, says its Global President, Christian Schroeder.
In an interesting conversation with Storyboard18, Schroeder, who joined Landor in January this year, talks about where India fits in the company’s global scheme of things for the agency.
“India has been a huge success story— we’ve been here for 17 years now— it started with five people and now it is 200 people. The country is an incredibly exciting opportunity and has been one of our core growth areas over the last 10 to 15 years.
While in terms of the size of the agency and growth opportunities, it is amongst our top three markets, in terms of revenue it is not—but we see enormous potential,” he says.
He further talks about the expansion plans, industry trends, client-agency relationships, relevance of visual identity, and evolving language of design.
Edited excerpts:
How does it feel to be back to Landor after 17 years—what is your long-term vision for the agency?
To be completely candid, it is the same agency as I left 17 years ago. Intrinsically, its roots, culture, and all elements of the agency remain the same. Only the world in which we have to operate now is fundamentally different.
We live in a highly fragmented and atomised media landscape, today— so the way consumers experience brands on a day-to-day basis has fundamentally changed.
Amidst all that, the role of a Landor remains the same—trying to identify, create, and deliver memorable and iconic brand touchpoints that can affect the perception of consumers. However, how we have to deliver it has evolved enormously over that period— therefore, the strategy going forward is to double down on that.
Going forward, amongst other things, the agency plans to be able to challenge the client’s brief that is written according to ‘what a marketer believes needs to happen’.
With the new role, one of the things that I want us (Landor) to focus on is getting a clear articulation of the client’s problem we’re trying to solve, followed by the ability to answer it— and if we are not able to answer it, illustrate or suggest somebody who can answer it.
In a nutshell, answering a business problem through the lens of the brand. Articulating it in a way that changes the perceptions and the minds of the consumers.
So, how has the year been so far for Landor?
The company has evolved quite a bit this year and expanded its offering in terms of the agencies in the broader group— we now have ManvsMachine in the motion space, amp in the sonic branding space, BDG in the environmental and architectural space, and US-based creative technology experiential agency Deep Local— apart from the core Landor elements as well.
The focus now is on ensuring that we underpin our brands that operate within the Landor Group portfolio to meet the needs of the clients.
2025 will be the year of integration and navigating how all brands work together. In terms of growth, I have high hopes. We’re in a scenario where we want to continue to be the world’s leading branding and design consultancy— so will look at it through a qualitative lens rather than a quantitative lens.
What drives the growth of the agency— in India or globally?
Within the broader world of WPP, Landor has a very specific role to play at a global level and equally within India.
In India, the relevance and the prevalence of both large Indian conglomerates and holding companies and the burgeoning growth of brands across India require us to focus on delivering against their specific needs. That probably allows us to be more multifaceted, more multi-sensorial in our approach, but equally ensuring that what we deliver is relevant to their needs.
Also, the group now has nearly 1500 talented people, globally. We’ve got 40 offices across the globe and hundreds of clients that range from the very big to the very small.
Where does India stand in the global scheme of things for Landor?
India has been a huge success story— we’ve been here for 17 years now— it started with five people and now there are over 200 people.
It is an incredibly important market and this is a market with a broad spread of conglomerates and direct-to-consumer brands where there is an opportunity to help deliver not only from a design perspective but also from a strategic perspective in terms of portfolio, architecture, or demand planning.
So, India is an incredibly exciting opportunity—it has been one of our core growth areas over the last 10 to 15 years, and I see it continuing to be one of our core growth areas.
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In terms of the size of the agency and the growth opportunities, it is amongst our top three markets. But in terms of revenue, it is not—that’s more of a function of the fact that it’s still a growing and developing market.
Does Landor believe in long-standing relationships with clients?
All relationships with clients start as a project and when you do multiple projects, at one point in time it becomes a relationship. The aspiration should always be to provide the best possible service to the clients and then a project-based scenario becomes a relationship-based scenario very quickly.
Everything starts as a project and hopefully, everything ends as a relationship.
How is Landor leveraging WPP’s leading tech capabilities to build solutions for an AI (artificial intelligence) future?
We’re not a stranger to AI and that is something that we have to embrace very quickly. The ability to augment guidelines, and brand governance and management through AI is something that we are focusing a lot on at the moment.
With WPP Open (WPP’s intelligent marketing operating system powered by AI), we now have a broad understanding of consumers, channels, and products.
AI helps with the ability to aggregate huge amounts of data together with quickly at scale and helps to augment the creative process. It is something we are working on with some of our clients already and will become increasingly important for us.
AI is a question of augmenting the process rather than replacing the process.
In today’s highly competitive market landscape, visual differentiation has become a critical component of a brand’s overall strategy, alongside product differentiation. Consequently, does this increased demand translate to higher fees for design agencies?
Unfortunately, it has not given us the ability to significantly increase our fees—I wish it had!
Clients are prepared to pay for a service that provides results— I don’t believe that just because there’s more demand, the fees go up.
It’s not a question of cost but a question of value—if we can provide measurable value to the clients, then they will continue to work with us.
When you talk about measurement and giving value to brands, what role does design play in measuring a brand’s performance?
Design is a part of an overall brand experience. The way that we talk about design is not purely through the lens of graphic design— it could be a sonic design or experiential design. It’s everything that represents the brand across various touchpoints in some shape or form.
The valuation of it depends on what brands are trying to achieve— whether it is a function creating more awareness, expanding into a new geography, or a reputation that needs to change.
The agency today has various ways of looking at that—whether that’s around portfolio optimisation or whether it’s about understanding the impact of a brand refresh in terms of the balance sheet.
How has brand expression or the language of design evolved over the last few years?
When I started in this business nearly 30 years ago, it was very analog and quite simple— limited TV channels, print media, cinema, out-of-home, radio, and a limited range of products. Today, we have hundreds of TV channels, millions of digital platforms, and hundreds and thousands of competitive brands and products in every single sector—it is a completely fragmented space and infinitely more complex.
Read more: Landor & Fitch is now Landor
At the end of the day, the brands that have always stood out and will always stand out are the ones that provide that level of distinctiveness and differentiation to the consumer, which they can understand and buy into.
The underpinning principles of differentiation remain as important today as they were 100 years ago.