Adsgrove Digital appoints Aanchal Kapoor as chief executive

GURGAON: Aanchal Kapoor, who spent over a decade at media houses including GroupM, Madison and OMD, has been named chief executive of Adsgrove Digital, a Gurgaon marketing agency betting that brands can no longer afford to separate storytelling from sales.

Kapoor joins founder Rajkumar Singh, formerly vice president at ANS Commerce, to lead the agency’s branding and performance operations. Her appointment signals Adsgrove’s push into what it calls “brandformance”, a clunky portmanteau meant to capture the fusion of long-term brand building with short-term performance metrics.

“Creativity gives brands their soul; data gives them direction,” said Kapoor, who has worked with LG, Shell, Bose, Honda and Duracell. “Our mission at Adsgrove is to blend both seamlessly to deliver meaningful, measurable impact.”

The agency’s pitch is straightforward: every rupee spent on advertising should be tracked, optimised and justified. Kapoor’s mantra, “Each penny needs to be counted, and we’re making it count,” reflects the pressure marketers face to prove return on investment in real time.

Adsgrove offers the usual menu of services (branding, performance marketing, social media, search optimisation) but claims to stand apart by refusing to treat brand building and direct response as separate disciplines. The agency uses automation and analytics dashboards to tweak campaigns on the fly, and has adopted what it calls “search everywhere optimisation”, adding answer engines, generative search and voice to traditional search engine work.

Whether “brandformance” catches on as more than jargon remains to be seen. But Kapoor’s appointment suggests that agencies, like their clients, are done treating brand awareness and sales conversions as if they live on different planets.