GooRoo Advertising - Case Study
From the Asialink Business India Country Starter Pack
Cultural sensitivities play an important part in creating an advertising and marketing strategy in the ancient-meets-modern melting pot of India. “While on the one hand you have a booming class of people living very modern lifestyles and enjoying Western tastes and cultures, on the other hand, you have a 6000-year history of tradition and heritage that you have to treat with respect and sensitivity,” says Rod Vallis, Creative Partner of GooRoo, an Australian advertising agency operating in India.
GooRoo is a creative agency providing advertising advice and services to Australian companies operating or selling in the Indian market. Its three partners – two Australian and one Indian – met while managing global advertising agency Ogilvy’s Global Creative Hub in Bangalore in the 2000s and decided to set up a firm in Bangalore in 2015. Their unique approach arms Australian companies with the knowledge and insights of a local company.
“The advertising landscape in India is highly developed and the standard is quite high,” notes Vallis, who stresses the importance of adopting both traditional and social media strategies when marketing in India. “We’ve seen a real surge in the effectiveness of social media marketing in the last two years, especially in the last six months.” Vallis advises that many of the platforms Australians are familiar with at home are just as popular in India, and that with the rapid uptake of smartphones, Indians are finding more ways to engage with new products and services.
“It is a hallmark of the culture that Indians love being part of a conversation, so social platforms will always be extremely popular here.”
Vallis acknowledges that Australian businesses are often put off by an expectation that setting up a business will take longer in India than elsewhere in Asia, but emphasises the relative ease of doing business once up and running. “In India, people compare themselves to China all the time and see [China] as a benchmark to beat,” observes Vallis. In his experience, this competitive nature makes many locals amenable to not only doing business with foreign companies but also to buying foreign goods and services.
Vallis also praises the positive business atmosphere Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies have created in India. “Foreign direct investment is a lot less restricted now and greater foreign ownership is encouraged,” he says. For this reason, the local accounting firm advising Vallis and his business partners recommended that GooRoo set up as a wholly foreign-owned subsidiary, allowing them to take advantage of the relaxed foreign ownership rules in their industry. “Getting advice from a local accounting firm that Austrade recommended was very helpful to us in performing our due diligence and making sure we picked the best business structure for the way we wanted to operate,” Vallis added, acknowledging the helpfulness of various Australian state and federal government resources on the ground in India.
Overall, his years of experience have taught Vallis that although processes can become protracted in India, and that at a superficial level the business and bureaucratic landscape appears to be chaotic, it is still a great place for Australians to do business.
“Indians are proud of their work and the contribution that they make to the system,” says Vallis. “If that means things take longer because more people have input into a process, that is something we simply need to take in our stride in order to access all the opportunities India has to offer us.”
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