My close encounter with Dominic Proctor, President of GroupM Global Operations

Dominic Proctor, President of GroupM Global Operations visited Singapore recently and addressed the Singapore team during a company town hall. As expected, we had a full house! All agency folks were eager and excited to hear Dom take us through GroupM’s current strategy given the changing digital landscape. Some lucky ones also got a chance to meet him over lunch and personally learn from his experiences. I was fortunate to be chosen as one of these young talents.

I was thrilled at the opportunity to speak to him in person and understand more about Group M’s vision and where we are headed as a group. Without being too intrusive, I started shooting my questions. Here is a short narration of my time with him. 

When you meet Dom, you are first charmed by his personality. In spite of being extremely knowledgeable, he is a very humble.  Being a young employee, you tend to feel intimidated around the company of senior management. But Dom made sure he made me feel at ease. You only get to experience such comfort level at a flat organization like ours.

GroupM's aim is simple and unsurprisingly ambitious. It is working towards a universal goal or as Dom puts it, "for your advantage". The company has grown tremendously both in terms of absolute business and talent pool. The traditional media buying business has shifted from 90% to 65% and yet our overall business has grown. It has seen a growth in social, programmatic and research, which GroupM Singapore has successfully delivered to its client through its new agencies Vocanic and Xaxis.

There is no dearth of reports and researches available online that confirm that Asia is now leading the growth in mobile penetration and internet consumption. I was curious to understand from Dom his personal views on how the region is adapting to these changes. From his global perspective, he agrees that Asian consumers are fast paced. However from a client perspective, there is still a lot that we need to do to support the traditional media buying game. We need to provide them with integrated solutions. Clients are looking for agencies that can provide complete solutions to their connected consumer. The era of approaching different marketing touch points in silos is now over.  The beauty of GroupM is that it owns all these agencies within its umbrella. Group M can help bring media experts from across its agencies to build a strong case for our clients.

Another interesting thing he pointed out was that every conversation with our clients today needs to start with mobile, especially in Asia. The smaller the screen,the more difficult it is for brands to provide uninterrupted communication. In that sense, the billboard age was easier. I couldn’t agree more. Given that the new age consumer is always on his mobile, you have to think of innovative ways to make his experience positive.

 I asked him to choose between data driven marketing and content driven marketing and he said that he was putting his bets on data driven marketing. He thinks this will be a game changer and a strong tool in the hands of a smart marketer. Data can help answer critical business queries such as ‘What product to design”, “What content to post” etc. One can truly unlock the power of data by analysing and interpreting the right insights from it. Technological tools alone cannot help you answer that. You need to strengthen your analytics and insight capabilities as well. The recent decision of the group to acquire Greenhouse Group shows GroupM’s focus in this area.

To summarize, meeting Dom was a huge learning experience for me. Not only did it help me get an overview on the group’s ideology and industry best practices, but it also provided me with areas to focus on from a personal development perspective.

This post was first published on Vocanic blog.