Positive energy behind Entropia

Influential circle: Prashant (man without glasses) and his senior team (clockwise from Prashant) head of data Sourav Aggarwal, head of finance Saravanan Pathma, Zuraida, principal Jane Chong, principal Samantha Tay, head of integration Ramakrishnan CN, partner (social and content) Derek Tan and principal Goh Soo Mei

“IT’S not the tools but the people behind the tools that make the difference.”

This is the kind of statement that advertising agency heads tend to throw out casually when promoting the capabilities of their organisations to clients and, well, to reporters.

But when the statement comes from Prashant Kumar, senior partner of the newly-launched local marketing services agency Entropia, it does carry some weight.

It is true that when he was president (World Markets Asia) at media specialist group IPG Mediabrands previously, he had tremendous global resources at his disposal. However, it was under his leadership that UM Malaysia – the flagship agency under IPG Mediabrands – was named the most competitive media agency globally by research company Recma (in 2014), literally beating hundreds of agencies globally.

And it was under his watch also that IPG Mediabrands’ Malaysian office incubated and then exported numerous products and product innovations, including a social media marketing model, to the rest of the New York-headquartered IPG Mediabrands network.

When asked in an email interview whether it would be more challenging to run an agency without multinational resources, Prashant replies: “Anyone who has worked in an agency for a mature period of time knows that it’s not the tools but the people behind the tools. Even in my last stint, the best tools were the tools we conceptualised and developed locally, whether it was the social marketing tools, or the DMP (data management platform) offering, or certain proprietary research. Many of those were exported to different parts of the world.”

He continues: “You have to understand that advertising industry is not exactly inventing rocket science stuff. It’s a service business, and ultimately boils down to talent, culture and leadership. The best technologies today or the best data sit in Silicon Valley, not on Madison Avenue (the US advertising industry).”

Prashant points out that Entropia has its own Integrity process and suite of tools, some of which he believes are ahead of the curve. “Clients who have seen it are loving it. But then again the real magic is in how we use these, and not the tools themselves.”

On whether Entropia plans to team up with a multinational marketing communications group later, he says: “We don’t think we need a multinational agency partner in Malaysia for Malaysia. I can’t think of ways they would bring any value that we can’t bring to clients ourselves locally. If at all, our partnership would be either on the execution side, or in areas which are lower priority for us, or for overseas work, or with players outside the agency ecosystem. In fact, we have already struck a battery of partnerships there.”

Chaos to order

Entropia, which offers fully integrated marketing services (strategy, media, digital and creative), opened its doors in Bangsar South last month. It currently has a staff strength of 28.

“Entropia” is a word that combines “entropy” and “Utopia”, denoting a movement from chaos to order.

Explaining further, he says: “The advent of deep data and marketing technology has caused massive chaos and complexity in the marketing ecosystem. However, no one has a credible and consistent answer to what the right way out should be. As a result, the industry is fragmented into a myriad of silos – each of them living in their own echo chambers, selling their potions, but not being able to take responsibility for the outcome.”

By starting Entropia from a clean sheet, Prashant and his fellow co-founders seek to re-conceive what the marketing of the future could be like. They are able to put together “the right mix of people, organisational design, culture and technology” to offer services in a way that is seamless yet sophisticated.

“Like our chairman Zuraida Mohamad says, if you look at how Accenture, Deloitte and McKinsey are approaching this space, you realise that they bring industrial size left brain analytics. The likes of Adobe and Salesforce are focusing on automation and owning the technology default. Agencies tend to be skewed towards the right brain with a sprinkling of research and inventory play. But each one of these sectors are weighed down by legacy engagement models.

“We hope to bring to the play an agile, hybrid and ecosystem approach, which is native to the digital age – made in future. In the process we hope to break a few norms, and call a spade a spade, even if at the risk of being wrong,” he says.

Commenting on chairman Zuraida, Prashant says he first came to know her when she was the marketing lead at Telekom Malaysia in 2009 (Telekom became IPG Mediabrands’ client in 2008).

“She also did marketing leadership roles in RHB Bank and NSTP group. Before joining marketing, Zu had a fabulous stint with Grey. Zu combines impeccable integrity, with tremendous positive energy. She is a natural leader and a bold decision maker committed to make a difference to whatever she undertakes, and works to build constituency for it relentlessly,” Prashant says.

“She is our big sister. And we lovingly nicknamed her The Powerpuff Girl.”

The investors behind Entropia are individuals, local and US-based. Prashant says this may change, without elaborating.

Prashant is tightlipped when asked who are the agency’s shareholders. “Suffice to say, we are a very special platform for top class talent, to get exceptionally rich versus their industry peers, if they are willing to fight a good fight together.”

He also thinks it’s too early to share Entropia’s “long list of clients”. The agency’s annualised billings is about RM150mil.

Entropia has just taken on Permanis’ 18-brand portfolio that includes all the PepsiCo brands as well as Lipton, Wonda, Calpis and Goodday.

“We have had excellent reception in the market, and are in fact trying to slow down the pipeline, as we are acutely conscious of the responsibility that a client’s trust places in us. Winning is easy, delivering is where the rubber hits the road, and we take our promises rather seriously. And with our current size, we can commit attention from the senior most people to each client,” says Prashant.

Pacing the growth

He says the agency also got an excellent reception among investors, with some wanting it to expand faster than what is planned.

“We are actually trying to pace our growth carefully. It is important to go deep before we go wide. It is important that we entrench the new culture, practices and processes deep first,” he explains.

Asked about the timing for launching Entropia given the current economic environment, Prashant says: “Well, when my UM journey started, it was 2008 and we were into the throes of a deep recession; yet we turned that into an advantage. Yet again, we like to see the slowdown and uncertainty as an opportunity. Crisis forces reappraisal of existing choices, and we are a choice made for the future. Some of our early clients are also looking at the market in the same vein, and we love that.”

Prashant thinks Entropia is “the perfect match” for world-class local companies, or those that aspire to be world-class, as it combines global class with local essence.

“We are also a great choice for global companies that have the freedom and boldness to look beyond hand-me-down rosters, and bet on good people and what will help them better their network peers,” he adds.

Prashant is a strong believer that Malaysian brands have the best chance at becoming strong Asean brands, and sees a window of opportunity at present.

“Singapore seems focused on being the ‘gateway to Asia’ and lacks a big local consumer market due to small population. Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines have a massive potential with their local consumer markets. Thailand has less language scalability; Philippines companies seem to be interested more in lateral diversification.

“Malaysians have good English and they are comfortable with diverse ethnic groups. They also have fairly developed local market, and well poised to expand across Asean,” he says.

He notes that though many Malaysian multinationals have invested hundreds of millions in building brands across Asean, the recall levels continue to be low, and emotional connection seems lacking.

“It clearly needs a fresh approach,” he says. “We have a window in time to move ahead aggressively and grab share of mind, as down the years, once Indonesian companies gain more and more scale due to much bigger local consumer base, the competition will get tougher and tougher.

“At Entropia, several in our leadership team have been in regional roles, helping build brands across Asean countries. That should be quite rare at least in the agency ecosystem. So we bring a hands-on understanding of Asean markets right here in Malaysia, without importing any ‘showtalent’ for pitches.”