Media agency network IPG Mediabrands is rolling out a bold new structure based on market size rather than geography, with Malaysia CEO Prashant Kumar assuming a major new role, president of world markets Asia, at the start of the year.

Kumar retains his Malaysia responsibilities but now adds oversight of a large market band that spans the Asia-Pacific region but excludes Australia, China, India and Japan, its four biggest markets.

IPG Mediabrands teams working in these countries, part of a new global cluster the network is calling G14, will report directly to global management in New York, reflecting their strategic importance.

This leaves Kumar to focus attention and resources on the rest, a diverse bunch from large growth markets such as Indonesia to smaller more mature markets such as Hong Kong.

They all share a common challenge, however: smaller teams, without the resources to apply the breadth of tools and processes deployed in markets with larger sales and ad volumes.

“Scale affects a lot of things,” Kumar explains. “Scale changes the way teams are structured. Scale changes the type of investment, and the new products you can invest in. Scale changes the level of R&D you can do in a market.

"With markets of similar sizes you can do a lot of best practice exchanges, which may not be possible when scales are very different.”

Different structures

The increasing importance of large growth markets has already prompted multinational advertisers to reorganize operations in Asia, where Japan is often run separately and independent reporting lines are becoming more common for China.

Agencies have tended to adopt ad hoc approaches in response, but Kumar argues Mediabrands’ formalized way of working goes one step further.

“No-one has come out with a decisive model that addresses these ideosyncracies with a pioneer model point of view,” he says. “In that sense, we have gone ahead and placed our bets on this model by realigning the whole global management around that.”

Goodbye APAC?

This isn’t a farewell to APAC roles just yet – Mediabrands will retain these as long as current client structures justify their existence. Kumar’s appointment however, following the departure of former regional COO Daniel Simon, marks the end of the old APAC hierarchy for Mediabrands’ C-suite managers.

The restructure, implemented after Matt Seiler became global CEO early last year, has run parallel with a number of organizational changes promoting the role of data and analytics with Mediabrands, including a stronger performance-based positioning for its two main agencies, Initiative and UM.

At the same time buying division MagnaGlobal has been divided into separate investment and intelligence arms, while Mediabrands Ventures, which specializes in targeting consumers on digital platforms, has been refocused to prioritize on G14 markets.

Arun Kumar, Mediabrands’ former head of digital in Asia-Pacific, also took up a new role at the start of the year, as president of Mediabrands Audience Platform, including specialist mobile, search and social units, for the network’s G14 markets.

“The focus on data and analytics has a great logic in the context of the cluster approach, but they are not aligned,” Kumar explains. “Certain things will be rolled out in G14 markets first, some may be scalable across the world. We will take a call on that product by product.”