FCB Global CEO Turnbull would give Dheeraj Sinha ‘A’ grade

Interpublic Group (IPG)-owned FCB Group in India has been through many changes over the past few months. It roped in former Leo Burnett South Asia chief Dheeraj Sinha as Group CEO for India and South Asia, and followed it up with the appointment of new deputies to head the marketing communications company’s agencies in the country.

We caught up with Tyler Turnbull, global CEO of the FCB Group, on his first India visit after the rejig and spoke to him about his vision for the local market.

Edited excerpts:

This is your first visit to the country in 2024. How have the past few months been for FCB?

We are coming off a very strong 2023 globally. And I think the reason for that is because of our people and our belief in the economic power of creativity. And so when you think about the work that we have been able to develop for some of the world's biggest brands, we are proving day in and day out the results that we can drive in today's climate.

When I think about what we've done here in India in the last three to four months, we have obviously brought in a new group level CEO in Dheeraj… And we have four incredible agencies here that have really hit their stride. We have had one of our most successful quarters in India in our history. We've seen incredible growth through new business wins and launching new work across brands like Google, like Tata EV and many others.

Dheeraj Sinha took charge as CEO six months ago. So what is his six-month report card like?

The type of energy that he brings is great. And when I was looking for our new leader, I wanted someone who first and foremost believed in creative as much as I do. And secondly, I wanted someone who had a track record of building great teams and great agencies. And third, someone who has a modern view of what clients want and where clients are going.

And Dheeraj had the perfect blend of creative passion, technology experience and a data-driven mindset as a former planner and strategist. His first six months have been phenomenal. He is bringing in incredible talent from inside India as well as outside. He's really brought together our four agencies in an incredible way. So if I were to give him a grade, I would definitely give him an ‘A’.

When you joined the FCB Group as CEO of Canada, you were known as the turnaround guy – from 35th rank, you brought the agency to the top. Do you expect Dheeraj to be the turnaround guy for India?

I wouldn't say we're in a turnaround here in the same situation that I was certainly in a number of years ago. We're much stronger from a creative perspective and a team perspective. What Dheeraj can do in the next couple of years is really define for our clients how to show up and how to partner with the proper agency ecosystem.

What I've seen in our other markets around the world is clients today, they want to simplify their model. They want more accountability and they want partners who can provide end-to-end services across the entire marketing mix. And what Dheeraj has been able to do and our teams have been able to do is we can help clients across the entire spectrum of what they are doing in a way that I think is very unique in this market.

What are some of the tasks that you have cut out for the new CEOs that you have roped in for your respective agencies under him?

It starts with the quality of the creative work. We want to be… helping brands do the best work.

And so first and foremost, what we look at globally is: Are we making work that our clients are proud of and that the market loves? And so every agency is very focused on unleashing that creativity, everywhere.

Secondly, we are investing in places where clients are investing, in areas like performance or in social or in technology. We really feel like there's an opportunity to apply creativity there like never before.

And what excites me is the canvas for our creative products has never been larger. But I think in many ways we haven't reached it as an industry in areas like social or influencer or CX/UX in the same way that we have in others.

So bolstering those areas is something that you are looking forward to?

We launched FCB/SIX here in India just over 10 months ago – the growth of that unit specifically has been phenomenal in India and around the world. And really, the premise for that was helping clients who have taken big platforms and implementations like Salesforce and apply a more creative lens to their communications within those platforms.

Is the FCB Group participating in any of the 64-65 elections in different countries in terms of representing a political party?

We do not do political advertising worldwide, both at the FCB level and at IPG.

Any reason to shy away from political advertising?

It's just that we have specialists within our PR world in different communication areas that I think are more focused in those spaces. From an FCB perspective, we really want to represent the consumer. And I think we've seen polarisation, certainly of side-taking, in different markets. And I think many brands today want to appeal to a wide base of consumers, not just a specific subset that aligns themselves to a political party.

We heard rumours that the group in India was approached by a certain political party?

(laughs) I can't comment on that.

Moving away from politics, tell us your opinion on AI and its impact on advertising.

AI will be massive – there’s no understating that. How we've been thinking about it from an FCB perspective is how to have the right foundation in place to drive the fundamental change that AI will have. Creatively, it's very easy. Right now as an industry, we need to focus on tactical ways AI may be helping to conceive an idea or produce a specific piece of work. I view it as much more foundational.

AI is going to impact really three areas across our agency. First is the workforce. Second is the workplace. And third is our work itself. And so from a workforce perspective, we have been very focused on training and having enterprise-wide partnerships with some of the major platforms so that people can start to experiment and get a sense of how that could impact.

In the workplace, we're really focused on a lot of the foundational elements that AI could impact. For example, right now we have very labour-intensive parts of our process scoping for new business or responses. We are making our own custom FCB LLMs now, taking all of our best kind of work from around the world and giving our people a faster kind of shorthand, answer to some of those questions.

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