Executive Dossier

OMD CEO Stephen Li on why agencies are struggling to retain talent

Published

10 years ago

May 25, 2016

MUMBAI: Stephen Li’s takeover of OMD’s Asia Pacific business as the new CEO made several headlines in October last year, after former CEO Steve Blakeman relocated to London. After all, Li’s movement from MEC as the CEO for Asia Pacific after a happening 10 year stint in the company surprised many. In addition to launching the sports and entertainment partnership company MEC Access Asia Pacific, Li also handled MEC’s multinational clients in APAC, such as Chevron, Singapore Airlines and Citibank.

At the same time anticipation grew over his upcoming new role in Omnicom Group’s subsidiary OMD, and his plans for the company in the India market, which is part of his mandate. With a keen eye for detail and a well-seasoned foresight in a new market, Li was the perfect fit to take on a challenging and dynamic market like India.

It’s been six months since he took over the role and now at the edge of his ‘honeymoon period’ in India, Li reflects on the goals he set for himself and the company, the progress he has achieved and the emerging new challenges of working in a market like India.

In a candid chat with Indiantelevision.com’s Papri Das, Li shares his fears on becoming too complacent, his plans on upping the ante for the agency’s performance in 2016 and why it is a task to retain good talent within agencies these days.

Excerpts:

Q1. What were your initial goals for the India market when you took on the portfolio at OMD?

Ans: My initial goal in India was to keep the motion going, not to stagnate the progress and keep innovating. From a business development perspective, I wanted to ensure that our global clients who are currently not working with us in India, become clients here as well. By working with the global teams in London and New York, we wanted to bring those businesses to OMD in India. Though they are old partners, the mandates would be different and the communication would require a completely different treatment in India.

Q2. Have you achieved the goals you set for yourself for India when you joined office?

Ans: We are making progress. I have been here in OMD for a little over six months now. I guess you can say in some ways I am coming to the end of my honeymoon period. Now I have got to make things happen. It is beginning to take shape in India.

Q3. What challenges have you faced in India so far on the path to achieve your vision for the company?

Ans: The two challenges that we have faced in India are at two fundamental levels. On one side is the eminent question of how do we ensure to keep developing the best possible work. Which is not always easy. Especially when you have clients who sometimes put you in a box as an agency, guided by their’ ‘I want this’, ‘I want it this way’, ‘I want it by this time’, ‘ I want it with this much money’. Our ability to innovate within the parameters of the clients requirement, not being reckless and or not in a way that is totally counter cultural, or breaks the back every time, but to challenge ourselves creatively for our clients is the real concern in India.

It is not an India specific problem, it is a universal challenge, to be honest. As a media agency we must challenge ourselves to be more creative.

Q4. Agencies are swearing by data these days. Does that take away from the creativity you are striving for?

Ans: In most industry award shows we see media and creative being judged differently. I think that our definition of creativity needs to change as well as data can be applied in a very creative fashion also.

Q5. Between your global and local clients who are more particular and restrictive about your work?

Ans: I think it’s not a matter that can be generalised into global and local clients. There are some global clients who are very open to creative innovations and willing to take risks and then you have some local clients that are incredibly conservative. It comes right back to the attitude and mentality of the agency. We have a broad sweeping set of clients from large global conglomerates to very niche eCommerce ones. It is a challenge for us to be doing equally great work across the board.

Q6. Which is the biggest challenge to a media agency right now?

Ans: How do we continue to ensure that we are attracting and retaining the best talent in the industry’ is the single biggest issue currently in our business.

Q7. What is holding back media agencies from retaining good talent? Surely, money isn’t a factor.

Ans: Yes it is more complex than that. I think a lot of aspiring creatives enter the industry with the vision to make ‘good ads’. But the definition of advertising is now so broad you could even be creating communication for brands, whether you work in a media agency or creative agency, or working for Google or Facebook, or for a digital agency or you can even do a user generated work from your own living room. Also because the ability to create is now so broad that you are no longer forced into a particular profession. Therefore as an agency that means we have to compete with so many different people or businesses for that gene pool of talent.

Q8. How are you planning to counter this issue?

Ans: As an agency it is crucial to always be seen and known for doing great work. People don’t come into this business to simply get paid well, but for the satisfaction of doing great work. They want to go back to their friends, family and peers and say, ‘look what I did’. We need to be able to always offer each individual the opportunity to do great work.

Q9. Speaking of talent, do you think the talent in India is at par with the rest of the world

Ans: There is a definitely a desire amongst the talent I see in India to push boundaries and be future facing. My question to agencies and also to clients is that are we allowing that talent to really shine, and giving them enough opportunities? When you ask them if they are looking at things from a globally relevant perspective, I would say definitely yes. India is such a connected country in every shape and form. There is very little that happens in the rest of the world that India is not aware of. I don’t think the challenge is in if people have a broad view or education. I think the challenge comes back to us — do we have the guts as agency leaders and marketers to recognize their spirit and creativity and do all we can to nurture them to their full potential.

Q10. Are you happy with the number of new businesses that OMD media has acquired in the last six months?

Ans: I am never happy with the amount of new businesses. We can always do better. In terms of OMD India, the opportunities we are getting are good. I want that to be bigger and better, and of course that is not a purely an Indian responsibility. The Indian team really puts its best foot forward to ensure it is leading as much growth as possible domestically in India. But it’s the responsibility of the rest of the OMD network as well to ensure that when it comes to global clients and opportunities, they are brought to India as well. It is happening now, but I want to see more of that. That is part of the priorities for us this year and for 2017 as well. I think having a balance between a top down global growth to a bottom up local growth is very crucial for any big agency.

Q 11. The marketing scene in India is going through a disruption. How equipped is OMD India to deal with it?

Ans: We are very much equipped in that area. We are no longer looking at communication as ‘branded content’ or digital activation, but smart and engaging content. What I mean by that is its no longer enough to just entertain, we have to be able to engage audiences or consumers while entertaining them. This starts from having a deep seated understanding of consumer insights. I think media agencies have a head start in this as we already have a comfort around data and systems and processes in place for its analysis. The comfort also allows us to measure any piece of content that we put out to be measurable. This why I think OMD has an advantage as we are already looking at it not only from the ideation and creating standpoint, but from delivery and measurement as well.

Q12. What is your target for OMD in India in year?

I think I have two primary targets for India. Firstly, I was really keen to up the ante when it comes to our award presence and our award successes. Campaigns like the ones we have done for Kinder Joy and Johnson and Johnson have already won a few awards and we hope they will be recognised in few more places as well. That is one of the targets we aim to hit. Secondly, recalling what I said about retaining talent. We plan to continue to challenge ourselves to attract the best people into OMD. That is what I am currently working very closely with the management team to do. We are looking far and wide and not just the media agency side of the business. We are looking across the segment agencies, communication partners and creatives to bring digitally savvy future facing people into the team. I will be back in India often to ensure that it’s on track.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

3 weeks ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.