Advertising giant WPP to ship some US jobs to India

New York: Global advertising firm WPP is planning to send finance-related jobs to India to prop up its North American operations where growth has been falling as the US slowdown forces companies to slash their advertising and marketing budgets.

The WPP group advertising agencies embarking on this plan to send jobs to India include Ogilvy & Mather, JWT, Grey, Young & Rubicam (Y&R) and Wunderman.

Marketing and advertising magazine “Advertising Age” reported on Tuesday that over 100 positions would be eliminated in the US in the coming months and moved to India.

A WPP spokesman was quoted saying the agencies had “decided to seek greater efficiencies in their companies and presently plan to have ’non-client’ facing services delivered from an offshore specialist center in India.”

Most of the jobs moving to India deal with finance and could fall into India-based billings service provider Genpact’s lap, according to company executives.

In 2009, WPP which currently has 146,000 employees in 107 countries, axed 7,200 jobs in Britain, Europe and the US. To offset the slower growth in the developed markets, WPP has been pushing aggressively into China, India and other emerging economies. It currently employs more than 40,000 people in the Asia-Pacific region.

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell told Bloomberg l ast month that he had made increasing the firm’s footprint in Asia a priority as it promised high-octane growth.

“If the Gross National Product continues to grow at 7 to 8%, which is where India and China are at the moment, you would expect the business to grow certainly in the double digits, or about 10% to 15%,” Sorrell said. “Which means you’re going to double every five or six years.”

Meanwhile, John Seifert, chairman of Ogilvy & Mather North America, talked about the India plan in a town hall meeting last week. The Manhattan-based agency owned by WPP is planning to send 85 jobs to India this year. For now most of the jobs revolve around the company’s finance operations.

Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Chief Marketing Officer Eleanor Mascheroni told Advertising Age the move would reduce “overhead costs while maintaining the quality and level of support we provide to our clients and partners. We have entered into an agreement with a top-tier business process outsourcing-services provider specializing in this kind of service delivery at lower costs to handle the processes. Many of our clients have been working with this model for many years.”

The four giant conglomerates that dominate world advertising, including WPP, control 96 percent of India’s advertising market.