Self-regulation is key for major tech companies: Sir Martin Sorrell
In an exclusive interaction with exchange4media Group, on the sidelines of the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Chairman of S4Capital plc, speaks about the power of the unitary model, the shift to hyper-personalisation, the encroachment of tech platforms on clients of big agencies, the impact of AI on the industry, the focus areas in Asia Pacific and more. “A bit more of a tech emphasis” and “a tussle between tech and creativity” are what Sorrell expects from the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. However, he states that a key focus area for most will be personalization at scale, building highly personalized content creation models using data at super scale which he believes will require clients to make an internal change in their organization.
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Sorrell has been a proponent of the "power of the unitary” model for agencies and says, “I think there is a strong case for unitary organisations to be more successful than those that are split either by geography or capability or by client. So, bringing everything together as one makes huge sense and you do get huge traction as a result, that’s reinforced by AI.” He adds that there are five impacts on the industry – Visualization, Hyper-personalisation, media planning and buying, general efficiency and the democratization of knowledge.
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On being asked if the unitary model is ideal for competing brands being serviced by the same agency, Sorrell states, “Clients accept separation even within a brand. The paradox is they accept it with McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, why not in our case.” Commenting on the impact of AI on the industry, he says that AI is already impacting digitization and copy-writing, will drive hyper-personalisation and the use of first-party data to develop personalized content, media planning and buying will be revolutionized. He states, “You won’t depend on 25-year-old media planner or buyer. You will be working with algorithm execution and the outputs will be far more effective for human beings to use… General efficiency will be affected immediately and the last area the democratization of knowledge, we will slowly start to see that build and organisations will be revolutionized with the transfer of knowledge within.” Sorrell also highlights that he believes the tech platforms will encroach on clients of big agencies. The Big 6 – Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance – along with Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Adobe, Oracle and Salesforce will be the players to benefit from AI and will get bigger than they are due to AI. While this could raise regulatory issues he says, “Self-regulation is the key for the major tech companies, that is where the restraint has to be exercised.” He says, “India will continue to prosper as an alternate to China.There are still interesting opportunities in India and I will still continue to be a raging bull on India.” Talking about Media.Monks India he says that while the company has a good base in the country, the aspiration is to be bigger not just in India but also in Asia.
“Democratization of knowledge will have a huge impact on building the effectiveness of single brand companies. People being able to share knowledge at all levels is almost a revolution from below in terms of knowledge.”
He adds, “The two things that we have to do is to expand our tech services business and to expand our Asia Pacific business.” Media.Monks India has seen recent high profile exits earlier in the year and with a new team now at the helm, he says that the team in India and Asia now is strong and expects them to continue developing. On the priorities for team India he says, “Our content business is strong, we have to get some of the process and implementation better, data and digital media is strong, tech services in Asia Pacific is not as strong as it should be and we have to expand that. Those are the areas that we are focused on.”