AD Agencies
Sharma takes the wheel as Omnicom and IPG merge their Indian media empires
MUMBAI:The media marriage is official, and India has its ringmaster. Kartik Sharma has been handed the keys to Omnicom Media India, the freshly minted behemoth born from the $30 bIillion merger of Omnicom and IPG—the deal that will create the world’s largest advertising and marketing colossus by revenue.
Sharma, who has steered Omnicom Media Group India since 2020, will now preside over the delicate task of fusing two sprawling media operations into a single, muscle-bound trading machine. His deputy? Amardeep Singh, elevated to chief operating officer. And keeping a watchful eye as strategic adviser: Shashi Sinha, the industry veteran who previously helmed IPG Mediabrands and is now tasked with steering the combined ship across India.
It’s a power trio with a Herculean to-do list. Sharma’s immediate brief: preserve marquee client mandates whilst stitching together disparate trading desks, measurement frameworks and identity infrastructure across linear TV, connected TV, over-the-top platforms and performance channels. The prize? Pooled buying clout in a softer gross rating point market, standardised brand-lift metrics for multinational clients, and a crack at lucrative retail media and commerce mandates.
The merger—announced in December 2024 with targeted cost synergies of around $750 million —has been hoovering up regulatory approvals through 2025 and is expected to close in the second half of the year. For India, the combined portfolio is a veritable smorgasbord: marquee media brands from both stables and a client roster spanning fast-moving consumer goods, automotive, technology, banking and e-commerce.
Industry watchers reckon the merged operation will run a unified profit-and-loss account with a common trading desk and conflict-management protocols for touchy categories. Legacy agency brands—OMD, PHD, Hearts and Science, UM, Initiative and Mediahub—will likely continue facing clients in the near term whilst back-end tech, analytics, finance and billing get quietly consolidated behind the scenes.
Execution risk? Plenty. Stitching together platforms, reconciling data taxonomies and aligning commercial terms is no small feat. But the scale story is compelling: a broader toolkit and more negotiating heft for clients, assuming the integration doesn’t implode mid-flight.
Globally, Omnicom has positioned the tie-up as creating the industry’s most innovative platform. In India, that ambition now rests squarely on Sharma’s shoulders. With regulatory sign-offs progressing and the deal on track to close later this year, attention will turn sharply to pitch outcomes, connected TV wins, retail-media conquests—and whether this newly assembled juggernaut can convert sheer scale into market-share gains.
Meanwhile, Sinha’s appointment extends beyond India. An internal memo from Tony Harradine, chief executive for Asia-Pacific, confirmed that Sinha will advise the combined Omnicom-IPG media unit across the entire region, lending his decades of nous to what promises to be a fiendishly complex integration.
The merger may be a done deal on paper, but the real test begins now: can Sharma & Co. turn two rival operations into one well-oiled machine—or will the wheels come off before the ink dries?
AD Agencies
Fevicol releases its last ad campaign by the late Piyush Pandey
The adhesive brand’s last campaign by the late advertising legend Piyush Pandey turns an everyday Indian obsession into a quietly powerful metaphor
MUMBAI: Fevicol has never needed much of a plot. A sticky bond, a wry observation, a truth that every Indian instantly recognises — that has always been enough. “Kursi Pe Nazar,” the brand’s latest television commercial, is no different. And yet it carries a weight that no previous Fevicol film has had to bear: it is the last one its creator, the advertising legend Piyush Pandey, will ever make.
The film, released on Tuesday by Pidilite Industries, fixes its gaze on the kursi — the chair — and what it means in Indian life. Not just as a piece of furniture, but as a currency of ambition, a vessel of authority, and a source of quiet social drama that plays out in every home, office and institution across the country. Who sits in the chair, who waits for it, and who eyes it hungrily from across the room: the film transforms this sharply observed cultural truth into a narrative that is, in the best Fevicol tradition, funny, warm and instantly familiar.
The campaign was Pandey’s idea. He discussed it in detail with the team before his death, but did not live to see it shot. Prasoon Pandey, director at Corcoise Films who helmed the commercial, said the team needed five months to find its footing before they felt ready to shoot. “This was the toughest film ever for all of us,” he said. “It was Piyush’s idea, magical as always.”
The emotional weight of that responsibility was not lost on the team at Ogilvy India, which created the campaign. Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha, group chief creative officers at Ogilvy India, described the process as “a pilgrimage of sorts, on the path that Piyush created not just for Ogilvy, but for our entire profession.”
Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries, said the film was rooted in a distinctly Indian insight. “The ‘kursi’ symbolises aspiration, transition, and ambition,” he said. “Piyush Pandey had an extraordinary ability to elevate such everyday observations into iconic storytelling for Fevicol. This film carries that legacy forward.”
That legacy is considerable. Over several decades, Pandey’s partnership with Fevicol produced some of the most beloved advertising in Indian history, building the brand into something rare: a household name that people actively enjoy watching sell to them.
“Kursi Pe Nazar” does not try to be a tribute. It simply tries to be a great Fevicol film. By most measures, it succeeds — which is, in the end, the most fitting send-off of all.
