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VivaKi Specialist Services launched in India
The integrated hub of specialist services brings together retail/trade marketing, experiential marketing, Out-of-Home and rural marketing units under one roof.
VivaKi India has announced the creation of a new entity, VivaKi Specialist Services (VSS). This entity will become the hub of several specialist service units, which are currently part of the Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG). It is being combined with the experiential marketing and retail/trade marketing services of Solutions Integrated.
While Xpanse Asia will continue to be led by Sandip Bansal as its country head, Enhance, Navia and Vector will continue to be headed by Kaushik Chakravorty as the chief operating officer. Barinder Bahadur Mathur, executive vice-president at Solutions Integrated, moves to the hub and will partner with both Chakravorty and Bansal, focussing on developing new businesses and maintaining commercial compliance.
The out-of-home, rural marketing and retail branding units were created over the last decade to service clients of Starcom MediaVest Group. They evolved to support clients of sister agencies ZenithOptimedia and Digitas, besides some clients of the creative agencies within the Publicis Groupe in India.
The creation of VivaKi Specialist Solutions stemmed from the need to derive synergies, and capitalise on growth opportunities across a much-broader canvas, where these brands can service clients outside the home agency. SMG will focus on its core product and look at scaling up digital, content and insights verticals.
Discussing the development, CVL Srinivas, chairman, Starcom MediaVest Group - India, says, "Aggregating and scaling the specialty service structure will benefit clients and help them get closer to consumers in more ways than before. SMG created these units over the years, which are today brands in their own right. This realignment will help these units expand further within the VivaKi community. The mainstream media planning companies will continue to work closely with these units."
Sastri adds, "VivaKi is an accelerator and aggregator of the media, digital and marketing services we offer clients. The creation of VivaKi Specialist Services will increase the ambit of these offerings and act as a force multiplier for all VivaKi agencies; going beyond being practices within just SMG or Solutions Integrated, and helping all VivaKi clients achieve their performance goals."
For the record, VivaKi is part of Publicis Groupe and was launched in India in 2008. With its around-the-world activities spanning more than 104 countries on five continents, the Group employs as many as 44,000 professionals.