Would you agree 2017 was an interesting year for the industry?
It was. Despite the challenges and disruptions, we managed to grow our market share and that is an important achievement. It merits putting a few things into perspective here. There has been constant conversation on the drop in ad investments in the region for the last three years. However, in my view, the analysts’ outlook of the market activity is not capturing the reality in this post-digital era.

Marketers are investing less in traditional channels, but they are investing through areas of the business that are more relevant. Businesses are transforming. Clients are focusing on new technologies and platforms, and most prominently this year, are shifting their focus to data, content, and ecommerce. With technology massively impacting consumer behavior, the significance of the omnichannel approach and attention paid to customer experience needs to be reinvented with investments focused into newer channels, and much of this is apportioned from what we know as ‘traditional’ media spends.

What do some of these changes mean to you, as an agency? 
As part of our continued effort to keep strengthening our media offering, we have shifted our organization to a client-centric model. As such, we have invested in our ecommerce capabilities and data offering, and generating new revenue streams outside of the traditional agency offering. This helped us contain the serious cuts in advertising budgets. These new services and capabilities are crucial to our clients. As their businesses are transforming, there’s need for a data first approach, and data impacts everything that we do, all the way from content to the media channel level. A unified approach to these services is how we will be able to meet client expectations. If you are able to deliver on those fronts, you will be able to continue to be relevant to your clients.

What has been the impact of the Vivendi acquisition?
After the acquisition by Vivendi globally, Havas has been all about catering for shifts or transformation in the business where content remains king and distribution is queen. Today we are truly data powered and content driven, and we are able to measure content effectiveness in relation to our client’s ROI. We are in a good position too. In our world, king and queen are equal, and we are truly at the center of this conversion. We are employing global learnings to service our clients and deliver value and growth to their businesses.

How has the Havas Together strategy manifested in the region?
It’s all about being structured to provide magic and logic. By logic, I mean being insights driven, and the magic comes by creating relevant content. You can only do that with a potent mix of talent in strategy, creative, engineering and planning. Havas’ Together Strategy ensures that all these key players sit under one roof and feed off each other. This is the key element that drives our strategy and differentiates what we bring to the table.