Storyboard18 | India is seen as an alternative to investments in China, says Sir Martin Sorrell

Storyboard18 caught up with advertising executive Sir Martin Sorrell, currently Executive Chairman of S4 Capital and former CEO of WPP. While sharing his predictions for the year 2023, he said that the world is fragmenting and India may benefit from that.

“India is increasingly seeing, along with Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, as an alternative to investment in China,” he said.

He also shared his views on how will past year’s woes and opportunities shape the advertising and media landscape.

“2022 was a pretty tough year for many people but 2023 is going to be an interesting year,” he said.

When asked, in a market destablised by war in Ukraine, big tech troubles, rising interest rates, cost of living crisis and a new COVID variant, what will be the outlook for 2023, he replied, “The world has changed. I don’t know whether it is an era of de-globalisation. The last four years have been of free trade. Reduction at trade barriers has stimulated growth in gross domestic product (GDP). And the challenges that we have around inflation, around higher interest rates, potential recession, stagflation, the Ukrainian war, the issues around US-China relationships and long-term issues around Russia-Iran, all these things are confusing to many people,” he explained.

Storyboard18 also spoke to Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and President, Healthcare Business at Mastercard. He shared his views on global sports marketing outlook and Mastercard supporting women sports.

“It makes a tremendous amount of good business sense to focus on women,” he said.

Many of the organisations go where the consumers are because at the end of the day they are appealing to the fans.

“Where the fans are, that’s where the brands go, it is sort of a vicious circle in some sense and somebody has to break that vicious cycle. Once one brand jumps on, the other also see the benefit and catches on. In that way, momentum can be built,” he added.