Omnicom Group's TBWA has promoted Deepthi Prakash to the new role of president international and chief product officer. 

With the creation of this role, TBWA is changing the way it approaches client relationships to offer both broad marketing strategies and deep specialization, or what TBWA Global CEO Troy Ruhanen calls “specialisms.”

“Our specialisms have been growing through our brilliant local agencies,” Ruhanen said in a statement. “Now we are applying our collective muscle to making, nurturing and evolving them into the products that will truly deliver for our clients on a global scale.”

In her new role, Prakash will report Ruhanen.

Prakash's background is suited for moving the agency beyond advertising and into consulting-like practices. She joined the TBWA in February 2020 as global director of product and marketing from Cognizant, where she served as co-head of Cognizant Interactive and global head of strategy and design. Prior to Cognizant, she was managing director at Accenture Interactive, where she led the content planning practice.

Noting that marketing decision-makers are now also often responsible for customer experience, Prakash said the goal is to help them create new ways for a brand to stick in consumers' minds across the full breadth of a brand's touch points.

“As CMOs across the industry evolve into chief experience officers, their focus is shifting from capturing existing demand to creating new stickiness for a brand in all the ways it interacts with its customers,” said Prakash. “Only a creative innovation partner with a suite of specialisms aggregated around a single, powerful brand idea can deliver the total experience those clients need today.”

She used as an example Adobe. “[The company is] very product-focused in that they can go deep into, say, Photoshop, but the real unlock is when you use the suite of products," said Prakash. 

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In her role as chief product officer, Prakash will oversee the global rollout of four nascent lines of business that the agency said go “beyond the confines of traditional communications.”

They include innovation practice Next, which specializes in using technology for brand expansion; Plex by TBWA, which focuses on helping B2B companies communicate their brand values through marketing, design and events; Inside, which supports a company’s employee experience; and Sold, which helps retail clients develop brand campaigns and promotions. 

The agency said more than one-third of TBWA Asia's revenue comes from specialties that didn't exist three years ago, noting that both Moderna and American computer chip maker AMD have used TBWA’s Plex unit.

McDonald’s chose Next as a marketing innovation partner and Inside to help with employee recruitment and retention, and the agency is also developing experiential ideas to engage with a new generation of McDonald’s customers who don’t use the same channels as the fast feeder's historical audience.  

“We've been able to connect the experts we have within the collective and build centers of passion and excellence, so that no matter where a client may come in, our agencies are able to bring together teams that are well-versed in these capabilities and can deliver for those clients,” Prakash said. “It’s a great opportunity for our talent who can now work beyond the borders that they may have had before.”