Ahead of Cannes Lions 2025, FCB in India decided to rebrand itself in what can be considered a defining year for the new leadership. Dheeraj Sinha, Group CEO, FCB India and South Asia, whose agency Group managed a Silver at Cannes Lions last year talks about why he is not pressurising his agency to win at the festival even as they are sending a host of entries.
Q) What is the logic behind dropping the word ‘Group’ from the name FCB India?
The attempt is to simplify the nomenclature of the brand in India and also signify the momentum that the brand is getting in India over a period of last 15-18 odd months. Globally our agencies are called FCB Toronto or FCB New York and therefore, FCB India — it's just simpler and easier. Either way, everybody calls us FCB India from a global perspective. Plus, we also wanted to signify the coming together of the four agencies under one structure, one positioning, one worldview and the great momentum that each of the brands have been delivering over a period of time. So that's really the objective of this rebrand.
Q) Back in 2021, FCB was restructured and the agency brand FCB India was launched. Now, it’s FCB Neo. So, besides the name change, what are we going to see at Neo?
FCB Neo now, what was FCB India earlier, is one of our cutting-edge, leading-edge brands in the group. That's the agency where we do campaigns for all the new age brands such as Uber, Google, KFC and so on. If you look at the entire body of work which is coming out of that agency, it's very new age, influencer led, tech led, and act led considering that it is positioned around modern marketing, at the leading edge of creating new age, data led, tech led outcomes. And therefore, the positioning of FCB Neo for them. And they're doing so well under the leadership of Ashima and Mayuresh, attracting some great talent, winning businesses almost every month and putting out some great work out there. The name FCB Neo really suits them.
Q) The countdown for Cannes has begun. Last year, it was too soon for it to become a report card on Dheeraj Sinha. Will this year be a defining one for you?
My bosses, I or we as a team never look at it as individual report cards, we believe this game is a team sport. So, we are always about the collective, we are always about the ‘we’. I'd say all the good things would be credited to the team, all the bad things to me. I never pressurise the organisation for awards. We don't engineer the agency for Cannes. But the agency is producing interesting work, e.g., on Flipkart from Kinnect, or the work on Uber from FCB India or the work for the Navbharat Times from FCB Ulka or that around Indian railways and Lucky Yatra from Interface. In fact over a period of last 6 to 12 months, there's a huge body of interesting work – popular, cutting-edge and new age— which has come out. It's delivering to the vision that we set out for ourselves. Some of them will compete at Cannes. However, Cannes is unpredictable. Would we be happy to win? Yes, but nothing is being engineered for that.
Q) Recently, Royal Challengers Bangalore sued Uber for the ad made by FCB. When it comes to a situation like this, would you say any publicity is good publicity, or does it really put you in a spot as an agency?
No, we're not in the spot because we're not in the wrong on that piece and the matter is with the court, so I can't comment much on it. But as far as the brand or response to the piece is concerned, it's fantastic. It was trending, going viral, and all our audiences loved it. The swing is on the part which is a bit of technicality and that will get managed in the court. So, it doesn't impact us in any sense.
Q) After you came on board, there were a couple of things you launched like the FCB Now program, where you bring brands and agencies together and brainstorm. How has that creatively elevated the product at FCB? Which campaigns have come out of that exercise?
FCB Now has become such a huge part of our culture. There are so many tie ups. For example, there's Jasleen Royal piece which came out in the Navbharat Times the other day, a tie up facilitated by FCB Now for the newspaper on introducing gender positive words for women, for celebrating women and their success in Hindi as a language. There's so much work which has gone through where we've done partnerships with media platforms, with celebrities, or clients, driving solutions and KPIs with FCB Now. In the 12 months since we launched that program, it has been a huge success. It's not just doing tie ups, it's also a revenue stream for us and thus part of our yearly revenue plan with a proper business plan dedicatedly worked upon by a team. One of the ideas also is for agencies to build services or products where typically agencies don't play. Content, celebrities, influencers, platforms and bringing all of that together to solve for client KPIs is really the attempt with FCB Now and I'm very glad that it has taken off.
Q) You also formed the FCB Creative Council in India—which existed globally. How has that fuelled the creative process?
That's one of the most satisfying things in retrospect that we've done, and at one point in time when I joined, the question was, do we establish a singular structure with one creative lead for the group, or multiple structures? I battled with that for a considerable period of time before I decided on going ahead with this structure, and in retrospect, it's done so well at multiple levels. One is that this creative council is so well connected to our global creative council. They travel physically two times in a year, but they are literally connected every day on a WhatsApp chat. That's the beauty of this network and this council.
I know that they are discussing a pitch which is happening in Chicago with somebody from the council here, such as Suchitra in Bangalore, and they're discussing an idea which is being worked on by FCB Horizon with Anusheela in Delhi. We are doing a pitch here and we're getting inputs from creative leaders across because it's all just on WhatsApp. It's such a friendly and casual group.
Thirdly, they've all come together to look at the work that we're doing for brands, give inputs to make it better on a daily basis. From global connectivity, collaboration on work across the world and coming together, enhancing and improving the quality of work together, and getting creative people to feel connected to a larger network—it has been a fulfilling initiative. I know of an incident where just five to eight hours before a certain pitch, there wasn't any work on the table and somebody put a message in that council that we have a pitch in a few hours, and if anybody has any ideas, please share. Each of the creative leaders gave so many ideas that we ended up winning that pitch.
Q) Last year, you were the first FCB Group CEO in India to take the entire top leadership of the agency to Cannes with the rationale that you want them to get inspired looking at the great work. How much inspiration has really come their way and which are the entries that you're sending to Cannes this year?
We would be sending 5-6 entries this year and some of it is work in progress. The work on Uber One where the promotion was targeted at people with 'one' in their name featuring Bhuvan Bam, the piece on building gender positive names in Hindi for Navbharat, the work we've done with Indian Railways on Lucky Yatra would be entered.
Q) You were brought in to bring in that Digital mindset to FCB, while Kinnect already was Digital first. Were you able to convert the other three agencies and is that also reflecting in your Cannes entries this year?
Yes, for sure. Kinnect is our leading agency as far as data and tech is concerned where most of the innovation sits. But we've made sure that each of our other agencies are full funnel. Now for a change, each of these agencies such as Ulka, FCB Neo, and now Interface, are winning mandates, which are purely social, or fully integrated ones. So that change has happened already. Most of the new pitches that we are winning at each of the four agencies are, in fact, full funnel pitches and full funnel businesses, including Kinnect. So a lot of the Kinnect businesses, if you look at the Flipkart work or the work that we do on HDFC, is fully integrated. We don't know where the boundary is between mainline or digital. In fact, I was at Amul last week where our young leaders presented to the client and it included a huge amount of new age ideas, like AR and one to build an activation on the second screen while people are watching cricket on the first screen. And all of those ideas got sold and are now in production. So in that sense, it's very heartening for me that that transition and transformation is actually being seen on ground in the work we're doing for our clients, and in some of the work which will go to Cannes Lions as well.
