BBH India MD Himanshu Saxena and the case for borderless agencies

Himanshu Saxena is not particularly interested in labels. Not agency labels, not city labels and certainly not the comforting silos that advertising has relied on for decades.

That instinct sits at the heart of his expanded mandate at Publicis Groupe, where the managing director of BBH India now also takes on the role of president for Saatchi & Saatchi and Propagate across North and East India.

On paper, it looks like a complex juggling act. In practice, Saxena frames it as a response to a market that no longer has the patience for neat organisational charts.

“If you look closely at what clients and brands need today, the starting point is the modern marketing playbook,” he says.

From there, the rest, including agency brands, structures and hierarchies, becomes secondary. The decision to place multiple agency brands under a single leadership umbrella is not, Saxena suggests, an experiment born out of convenience.

It is a calculated response to what he describes as a moment of flux for the advertising industry, a churn that has been most visible in Mumbai but has sent ripples of anxiety through boardrooms in Delhi, Kolkata and beyond. 

Clients, he notes, are not scanning the horizon for novelty. They are searching for stability, predictability and senior leadership that stays put long enough to understand their businesses.

That search for reassurance also explains why Publicis has chosen to strengthen its presence in North and East India at this juncture. Media agencies within the group have already built significant scale in these markets, while Leo Burnett has steadily expanded its creative footprint.

Saxena says the next step is to give Saatchi & Saatchi, BBH and Propagate a deeper and wider footing in a region that is both commercially rich and unusually diverse.

Unlike Mumbai’s advertising economy, which leans heavily on BFSI, FMCG and pockets of automotive, the North and East present a broader canvas. Fintech, consumer technology, electric vehicles, construction materials and corporate brand houses all coexist within a relatively compact geography.

For Saxena, that diversity makes rigid agency boundaries feel increasingly redundant. “It is time to play for what the market needs rather than our own limitations defined by labels,” he says.

Each of the three agencies under his watch brings a distinct legacy to the table. BBH, he says, has rebuilt its creative reputation over the past few years, marrying highly distinctive ideas with a growing full-funnel muscle.

Saatchi & Saatchi, by contrast, has long been prized for effectiveness and longevity, with brands staying on for decades because the work travels across the funnel rather than stopping at awareness.

Propagate, meanwhile, he describes as a “silent killer wave”, a fast-growing digital, social and tech-led agency that now needs to replicate its Mumbai momentum in northern and eastern markets.

What ties them together is a shared shift in client expectations. CMOs, Saxena argues, are no longer interested in outputs. They want outcomes. Results trump effort, and marketing partners are expected to understand pricing, distribution, net promoter scores and hard ROI, not just campaigns.

That expectation has shortened CMO tenures and raised the stakes for agencies that want to remain relevant.

Talent, too, is changing the terms of engagement. Saxena believes the next generation of creative and strategic leaders is actively seeking exposure across formats, platforms and technologies.

“They are not just looking to do the next best TV commercial,” he says. They want to build influencer ideas, tech solutions, product experiences and everything in between. A more integrated agency ecosystem, he argues, offers precisely that breadth, while also giving existing teams room to grow without feeling boxed into a single discipline.

This philosophy extends to leadership culture. While Saxena retains his Mumbai base for BBH India, he is relocating himself physically and mentally into the North and East mandate.

He is clear that these operations are not intended to function as outposts waiting for instructions from the west coast. Sovereignty, local decision-making and a high-touch client culture sit at the core of the plan, even as senior group leaders remain accessible when required.

After nearly three decades across advertising, marketing, research and emerging technologies, Saxena is candid about what the next generation must learn. The era of being “just a comms person” is over, he says.

Future agency leaders will need to see themselves as participants in a broader marketing ecosystem, comfortable unlearning old models and relearning new ones as the ground shifts beneath them.

That shifting ground is perhaps most visible in the rise of artificial intelligence, a force that has unsettled agencies while emboldening consultancies and in-house teams. Saxena remains characteristically unfazed.

AI, he says, offers speed, scale and efficiency, but it processes what exists rather than imagining what does not. In a cluttered marketplace, that human ability to imagine the future remains advertising’s most defensible asset.

Rather than fearing the machine, he urges agencies to master it. Those who do not risk being replaced, not by AI itself, but by people who understand how to wield it better.

Through all the disruption, Saxena’s view is steady. The industry may be reconfiguring itself at speed, but imagination, curiosity and a willingness to step outside inherited boundaries still matter. Perhaps now more than ever.