CELEBRATING 12 YEARS OF WATCONSULT

For Rajiv Dingra, CEO, WATConsult, 2018 has been an exceptional year. Some of the agency’s work got noticed at international award festivals, winning the agency awards at Lisbon International Advertising Festival, CLIO Awards 2018, Prague International Awards Festival, Tangrams Effectiveness, and Shorty Social Good Awards 2018. Moreover, the agency bagged a nomination at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity too, which until now has been a turf for mainline creative agencies. As the agency celebrates its 12th anniversary, Dingra talks to us about the journey so far and what lies ahead…

THE JOURNEY SO FAR: It’s been a long, eventful journey for us. I didn’t think it would take 12 years for Digital to become 16-17% of the overall advertising industry. It’s taken far longer than I imagined, but I am glad we are here. It’s also nice to have reached a level where we command respect not just in India, but also globally. As a digital agency, we are moving towards creating excellence and integrating strongly by upgrading our creative prowess.

WHAT THE FUTURE LOOKS LIKE: One of the reasons we are successful is because we look at the immediate future. So, for us, the coming year is the most important. In 2019, we want to make sure that 2018 was not just a fluke year, when it came to us breaking the glass ceiling in terms of getting recognised globally. We would love to be the first ‘digital only’ agency to win a metal at the Cannes Lions.

THE CHALLENGES AHEAD: The biggest challenge is talent, followed by the need to constantly upgrade that talent. For us, the business is not a challenge. The market is moving at 30%. Even if you do worse off than market, you will still grow at 22-25% as an agency, which for mainline or other agencies, would be great. We are growing 40% year-on-year. It’s the management of growth and growing well, and not just growing haphazardly which is the primary challenge.