Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Nirvik Singh may be a 27-year veteran of the marketing and communication industry, but his ceaseless energy emanates from a fundamental belief that transformation is at the heart of a successful agency.
He admits, “I have been in the Grey network for 25 years and have played a critical role in its transformational from a traditional advertising agency to the creative agency it is today. When I took on leadership for the India market in the mid-1990s, I championed for innovation-- not just in our solutions for our blue-chip roster of clients, but internally in terms of operations and processes.”
Nirvik has served as Chairman and CEO of Grey Group Asia Pacific since 2009. And although his career began with Lipton India, a Unilever company, he joined Grey as head of Grey Kolkata in his native city at the age of 26. Under his leadership, the agency grew to become the city’s second largest, producing some of India’s most breakthrough campaigns and winning Agency of the Year four consecutive times.
He then accepted a role as the head of Grey India at 33 and led its transformation to a total communications company, while also extending the agency’s reach to Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, New Delhi and Chennai. Today, Grey is one of India’s top ten agencies in India and its re-engineering is a B-school case study in success.
This success led to Nirvik Singh’s next position as Chief Operating Officer of Grey South Asia in 1997, where he created new joint ventures in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Today, as Chairman and CEO of Grey Asia Pacific, he oversees 20 geographies that include Japan, China and Australia, and a staff of over 2000 people. In the past few years he has acquired organizations in China, India, Hong Kong and Singapore and expanded Grey’s offerings in the digital space.
“Grey Group has been known as a traditional advertising agency for the longest time,” he says. “To ensure that the network is future-ready, I championed cross-training and created an accountability process where leaders of each individual market are held accountable of their various revenue streams, i.e. ATL, BTL, digital, activation.”
This approach has Grey Group to produce work that goes beyond the traditional medium by providing communication solutions, as well as actual business solutions to clients. Nirvik established an innovation hub in China by challenging his team find initiatives that would provide innovation to clients—something uncommon in China.
He adds, “Grey Group is a solutions provider and to stand out in a competitive B2B environment, marketing definitely plays an important role. To me, innovation is not just about technology, but is really more about doing something differently.”
Nirvik Singh has also been on the forefront of a number of thought-leadership initiatives. Grey Group Asia Pacific was the first creative agency in the region to invest in a pan-regional consumer research study called “Eye On Asia.” The study focuses on key topics from “Mothers” to “Retail” to “Digital,” and asks consumers for the reasons behind their behaviors in an effort to uncover what drives their passions, influences and motivation. This has culminated in 12 “eyesights” on the upcoming trends in Asia’s digital landscape.
Nirvik states very clearly, “To me, innovation is about looking at and doing things differently.” And he has proven it-- from the very start of his career. In fact, last December, the Advertising Club Calcutta, in his home Indian city, inducted Nirvik Singh into their “Hall of Fame” for his contributions to the advertising industry.