How important is digital media for Starcom?
Publicis acquired the holding company of Starcom MediaVest in 2002. In 2006, it acquired Digitas, the largest independent digital media company. Last year, it consolidated Digitas, ZenithOptimedia and Starcom MediaVest Group into a holding company called VivaKi. Viva meaning light and Ki meaning positive energy. The idea was to accelerate our investment in digital technology and leverage our scale. (Two months ago, Publicis acquired Razorfish, the digital media company of Microsoft). Earlier this year, Starcom launched a digital university in Asia in partnership with VivaKi. We want all Starcom employees to be digitally savvy and knowledgeable. One of our key strategies is social media. VivaKi has created tools that allow us to track conversations on the Web in social media. It gets information on what people are talking about and how they are talking about it. We believe that India is a really big social media market. We have done programmes for Samsung and Aircel on Facebook. When Ai
