Taking risks is second nature for Sandy Agarwal, the head of interactive at Nokia. In 2001, he traded a comfortable vice-president role at Star TV for the uncertainties of mobile entrepreneurship at mobile start-up Enpocket.
Luckily for him, things worked out well. So well, in fact, that Enpocket was acquired by Nokia and went on to become a part of Nokia’s interactive advertising unit. Though some would argue that, even at a company like Nokia, any role based around selling mobile advertising still comes with a degree of uncertainty.
Seven years in the broadcast industry with big players, such as Discovery, ESPN and Star TV has given the chatty Agarwal a strong understanding of the media sector. And, as an enthusiastic technophile, he is always on the look out for new media developments. Vishnu Mohan, CEO of MPG Asia, counts Agarwal’s biggest strength as having a “pulse on the future, on where things are headed”.
What Agarwal’s television career had not prepared him for was the way the mobile industry would explode in less than a decade. He recounts an interview he did during his earlier days at CNN. “The presenter was fascinated by the fact that India had as many mobile users as Hong Kong. Now, India alone has 390 million mobile users. In the early days when I got into mobile, nobody, none of the analysts or anyone else, had perceived that mobile was going to be so big and that in 2008 we would have four billion mobile subscribers.”
The end goal was to build enough scale to attract advertising. But on the way, Agarwal was forced to find other sources of revenue.
“I would sell ringtones, wallpaper, generate social network users, generate subscription revenues, download revenues and then as the audience would build, I could build advertising revenue,” he says.
Today Agarwal is deeply involved in driving business development opportunities across the region, enabling Nokia services, publishers and telcos to build revenues from marketing services. But, despite his best efforts, advertising revenues in the mobile industry remain dismally low. Digital spend in Asia is generally tiny (it rarely exceeds five per cent of entire adspend), and mobile is still only a fraction of that.
Yet Agarwal remains convinced. He likes to equate this phase of mobile advertising to the time when cable channels were first launched in the early 90s. He points out that advertisers were reluctant to spend due to the medium’s niche nature. “I remember that during the first few years, a large portion of our revenue came from direct marketing clients or ROI-based clients. Over the years, brands eventually understood the value of niche audiences and how to take advantage of them. However, cable is no longer niche. It’s now part of the mainstream.”
Agarwal concedes that mobile still lacks a proposition for brands. “It’s like saying that I want to advertise on TV but there are no TV commercials. That’s the kind of evangelising going on right now. We are talking to brands and getting them to start building a proposition. The challenge now is that lots of brands are not ready for mobile. Nokia is serving as both a platform to reach mobile consumers and also a consultant to help brands be enabled on mobile,” he says.
Arguably, it is Apple, not Nokia, that has been driving the mobile marketing sector, popularising mobile applications via its App Store. Yet Nokia is not standing still; it is changing its focus from handsets to a more far-reaching service - and that goes for its relations with brands too. “Applications and branded content represent a really interesting opportunity for brands, and Nokia has in the past worked with the likes of Nike, Dolce & Gabbana and Hyundai to help create and distribute branded content,” says Agarwal.
He says Nokia’s new multimedia Ovi Store will act as a global distribution hub and allow brands to engage even more consumers using the mobile medium. “Today Ovi Store serves millions of users accross 100 different devices, in more than 180 counties in five different languages, we are in a sense building in real time thousands of Ovi stores,” Agarwal says.
“We often talk about solutions - by this we are referring to how we are blending together advanced mobile technology, personalised services, and contextually relevant content. In terms of what we can offer to brands we go beyond traditional mobile advertising. With our access to 37 per cent of mobile devices, our suite of services and the apps and content that come bundled on device we can work with brands to create much more integrated experiences.”
Agarwal is a natural evangelist. He points to the fact that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever and Procter & Gamble have hired full-time digital executives working on mobile both regionally and locally. Agencies handling mobile business have also appointed someone specifically for mobile.
Mohan adds: “He’s very persuasive and conviction and belief. He is also fantastic at nurturing relationships while at the same time maintaining professionalism.”
His proselytising appears to be paying off. This year, Nokia Interactive Advertising signed contracts with Unilever and P&G, to name a few, to work on six mobile projects in each market in Asia. The entry of these FMCG “engines of growth” into the mobile arena is a positive sign for the industry, explains Agarwal. He emphasises that this kind of engagement didn’t happen for television this early in its development.
And, Agarwal argues, the economic climate has helped. “We have always known that mobiles have reach and that marketers have been looking for hard, accountable media. It seems odd to say this, but recession has been wonderful for us.”
Sandy Agarwal’s CV
2001 MD, Enpocket Asia-Pacific; moving to director, Nokia Interactive Asia-Pacific, Singapore
2000 Vice-president, Star TV News Corp, Hong Kong
1998 US business development director, ESPN, New York
1994 Sales manager, Discovery Channel, New York
This article was originally published in 10 September 2009 issue of Media.
Luckily for him, things worked out well. So well, in fact, that Enpocket was acquired by Nokia and went on to become a part of Nokia’s interactive advertising unit. Though some would argue that, even at a company like Nokia, any role based around selling mobile advertising still comes with a degree of uncertainty.
Seven years in the broadcast industry with big players, such as Discovery, ESPN and Star TV has given the chatty Agarwal a strong understanding of the media sector. And, as an enthusiastic technophile, he is always on the look out for new media developments. Vishnu Mohan, CEO of MPG Asia, counts Agarwal’s biggest strength as having a “pulse on the future, on where things are headed”.
What Agarwal’s television career had not prepared him for was the way the mobile industry would explode in less than a decade. He recounts an interview he did during his earlier days at CNN. “The presenter was fascinated by the fact that India had as many mobile users as Hong Kong. Now, India alone has 390 million mobile users. In the early days when I got into mobile, nobody, none of the analysts or anyone else, had perceived that mobile was going to be so big and that in 2008 we would have four billion mobile subscribers.”
The end goal was to build enough scale to attract advertising. But on the way, Agarwal was forced to find other sources of revenue.
“I would sell ringtones, wallpaper, generate social network users, generate subscription revenues, download revenues and then as the audience would build, I could build advertising revenue,” he says.
Today Agarwal is deeply involved in driving business development opportunities across the region, enabling Nokia services, publishers and telcos to build revenues from marketing services. But, despite his best efforts, advertising revenues in the mobile industry remain dismally low. Digital spend in Asia is generally tiny (it rarely exceeds five per cent of entire adspend), and mobile is still only a fraction of that.
Yet Agarwal remains convinced. He likes to equate this phase of mobile advertising to the time when cable channels were first launched in the early 90s. He points out that advertisers were reluctant to spend due to the medium’s niche nature. “I remember that during the first few years, a large portion of our revenue came from direct marketing clients or ROI-based clients. Over the years, brands eventually understood the value of niche audiences and how to take advantage of them. However, cable is no longer niche. It’s now part of the mainstream.”
Agarwal concedes that mobile still lacks a proposition for brands. “It’s like saying that I want to advertise on TV but there are no TV commercials. That’s the kind of evangelising going on right now. We are talking to brands and getting them to start building a proposition. The challenge now is that lots of brands are not ready for mobile. Nokia is serving as both a platform to reach mobile consumers and also a consultant to help brands be enabled on mobile,” he says.
Arguably, it is Apple, not Nokia, that has been driving the mobile marketing sector, popularising mobile applications via its App Store. Yet Nokia is not standing still; it is changing its focus from handsets to a more far-reaching service - and that goes for its relations with brands too. “Applications and branded content represent a really interesting opportunity for brands, and Nokia has in the past worked with the likes of Nike, Dolce & Gabbana and Hyundai to help create and distribute branded content,” says Agarwal.
He says Nokia’s new multimedia Ovi Store will act as a global distribution hub and allow brands to engage even more consumers using the mobile medium. “Today Ovi Store serves millions of users accross 100 different devices, in more than 180 counties in five different languages, we are in a sense building in real time thousands of Ovi stores,” Agarwal says.
“We often talk about solutions - by this we are referring to how we are blending together advanced mobile technology, personalised services, and contextually relevant content. In terms of what we can offer to brands we go beyond traditional mobile advertising. With our access to 37 per cent of mobile devices, our suite of services and the apps and content that come bundled on device we can work with brands to create much more integrated experiences.”
Agarwal is a natural evangelist. He points to the fact that Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Unilever and Procter & Gamble have hired full-time digital executives working on mobile both regionally and locally. Agencies handling mobile business have also appointed someone specifically for mobile.
Mohan adds: “He’s very persuasive and conviction and belief. He is also fantastic at nurturing relationships while at the same time maintaining professionalism.”
His proselytising appears to be paying off. This year, Nokia Interactive Advertising signed contracts with Unilever and P&G, to name a few, to work on six mobile projects in each market in Asia. The entry of these FMCG “engines of growth” into the mobile arena is a positive sign for the industry, explains Agarwal. He emphasises that this kind of engagement didn’t happen for television this early in its development.
And, Agarwal argues, the economic climate has helped. “We have always known that mobiles have reach and that marketers have been looking for hard, accountable media. It seems odd to say this, but recession has been wonderful for us.”
Sandy Agarwal’s CV
2001 MD, Enpocket Asia-Pacific; moving to director, Nokia Interactive Asia-Pacific, Singapore
2000 Vice-president, Star TV News Corp, Hong Kong
1998 US business development director, ESPN, New York
1994 Sales manager, Discovery Channel, New York
This article was originally published in 10 September 2009 issue of Media.
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