Digitial dreams

Of all the awards that full service media company Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has won since it set up shop in India in 2007, Jasmin Sohrabji, chief executive officer (CEO) for India and South East Asia is proud of the work done for Kan Khajura Tesan (The Earworm Channel), a radio station on a mobile platform that reaches out to ‘media dark’ areas of the country, where mobiles are aplenty but entertainment channels limited or are hampered by lack regular electricity. "Take the example of Bihar,” she states, referring to the eastern state of India where TV reaches 23 million people, and mobile telephony 55 million. OMG was the media partner of Hindustan Unilever (HUL) in setting up a platform that integrates one of the oldest mediums of entertainment, the radio, with the most used device today, the mobile phone. The work that her company did for their client won a Media Lion at the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (formerly the International Advertising Festival), the global event for those working in the creative communications, advertising and related fields. This, Sohrabji says is a first for an Indian media company, all previous Indian winners having been advertising agencies that focus on creative work only. "Imagine,” she exclaims, "an Indian company won the Lion in a much-evolved category, not in the traditional print, TV, cinema categories!” In 2015 she was a juror at the Cannes festival for the media awards.

Jasmin Sohrabji

Jasmin Sohrabji with Harish Shriyan on winning PHD India’s Cannes, 2014 Gold Lion

Hemant Bakshi, Sohrabji, Sam Balsara at IMPACT award for Top 50 most influential women in marketing and advertising

Speaking to Parsiana in her sunny, award filled office in mid-town Bombay on September 8, 2015, Sohrabji explains that the precursor to this innovative campaign was the Wheel Missed Call Campaign, in early 2012, also for HUL wherein possessors of mobile phones could call in on a toll-free number and hear snippets of humorous conversations between a husband and a wife, along with advertising for HUL’s famous detergents and soaps. That was real innovation she emphasizes, and beams, "We were among the first to understand the importance of digital advertising.” Explaining that 20% of OMG’s business comes from digital advertising, when on average, companies spend only 10% of their advertising budgets on online media, the CEO estimates that by 2020, digital advertising will account for a third of OMG’s business. Digital advertising is now so well entrenched in clients’ minds, says this professional who set up OMG’s operations in India eight years ago, that the "pull for digital spends comes from clients and we don’t need to convince them about the advantages,” affirms this professional.
Under the OMG umbrella, the OMD and PHD networks of advertising agencies provide the full range of media services that include media buying, media planning and digital services and counts Johnson and Johnson, Renault Nissan and Unilever among its largest and most prestigious clients. Sohrabji is tight lipped about the industry buzz that states that Mudra Max a subsidiary of the DDB Mudra Group that focuses on outdoor advertising will soon be part of the OMG world. "Let’s just say we are working together on some pitches and may be even closer in the future,” states the CEO who has featured at number 11 in IMPACT magazine’s list of 50 most influential women in media, marketing and advertising in 2015.
Explaining why both OMD and PHD brands of OMG operate in India, the CEO states that it is the global policy of this American conglomerate to encourage varying cultures and diversity; also separate companies ensure that there are ‘Chinese walls’ where staff do not work on competing clients at the same time. "And most importantly, to encourage growth within the group,” states this people-oriented chief executive. "We need to give our people opportunities to work on varying clients, from diverse industries,” she clarifies.
Sohrabji who has a track record of setting up successful companies in India, having in an earlier avatar set up Mediacom, another global advertising agency’s India operations, states that she "misses being in a start up.” We were braver then, she states. She recalls in the second year of operations, going to headquarters in New York with a plan for 118% growth, which surprised the finance controllers who asked her to slow down. The boss lady stuck to her guns and achieved the self imposed target. Working from coffee shops and business centers in 2007, this professional cum entrepreneur grew the team size for OMG from scratch to 300 today. In terms of ad spends, OMG now ranks fourth in India, states the proud CEO. "It was very important to scale up quickly back then,” she reminisces, as scale is important in client’s minds.
The executive is not optimistic about the future of print as an advertising medium. "The outlays are just too high,” she complains. "Money moves from print to digital,” she summarizes, "not from TV and cinema.” Cost rationalization in print is not possible, she states but one bright possibility for growth could come in the shape of more competition. More newspapers and magazines will mean more opportunities.

At the OMD launch, 2007

Named Agency Innovator by Internationalist, UK, 2009

The go-getter CEO states that a recent employee survey rated the work culture within OMG in the high 90s on trust, fairness and feeling of security scores. "You will see my door is always shut, and it has to be, as my colleagues are very bubbly people,” she says with a wave to the chirpy, colorfully clad staff outside the glass doors. But each one knows they can pop in any time, even just to talk, she states.
Sohrabji’s who travels for business for "half a month on average,” has responsibilities that include business development and operations for five other countries in the Asia Pacific theater – Singapore, The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. The countries that she oversees in her CEO role contribute 22 to 23% of Asia Pacific revenues, the remaining shared equally between Australia, New Zealand and Greater China. Speaking of the varied maturity levels of the markets in these countries she laughs that working in Indonesia takes her back to her heady 2007 days in Bombay, where she was involved in setting up OMG’s operations. No stranger to that country, she shares that she had run Indonesian operations for Mediacom back in 1997.
The young Sohrabji had a dream when she started her advertising career as a media planner two decades ago to "have a media plan for every country in the world.” Were parents Jehangir and Rati supportive of her media dreams? "My poor father, being a marine engineer did not have a clue of what media planning involved.” She would tell him that she got paid to spend other people’s money. Sohrabji’s sisters Farida Miranda and Nilufer are academicians in the USA. An alumna of Villa Theresa School and St Xavier’s College in Bombay, Sohrabji recalls meeting Zoroastrian advertising doyennes Roda Mehta (O&M) and Nergish Wadia (Interpub) at the start of her career. "‘Do you have a boy friend,’ I would be quizzed,” she laughs and on answering in the negative, she would be told that was good, as there wouldn’t be time for one in the career she had chosen.
Sohrabji says that her breather from her hectic work life comes from shopping for shoes and bags. On weekends she indulges her passion for detective shows with downloaded TV series, and watches "till four or five a.m. when the birds start chirping.”
Twirling her gold Farohar pendant, the last gift from her late mother, Sohrabji states she knows little about Zoroastrianism, but states she is proud to be a Parsi. "I do believe in a divine presence, and some days if I feel too stressed and want solace even go light a candle at Mount Mary Church,” she states. Of the inter-faith controversies that Bombay is buzzing with currently, she states that "I don’t want to be blinded by dogma.”
The workaholic states that 10 years hence, she would be working in a different region, a different market, who knows! The year 2025 will not see her relaxing on a beach, for sure, she avers. More of a city person, she hates attending conferences at beach resorts. "Being single, I don’t have anything to stop me from working anywhere in the world,” states this veteran.
"One thing is sure, OMG will be in the top three,” she says confidently.