SINGAPORE: Indian brands and agencies lead Asia in terms of proving that their marketing strategies have delivered commercial success, according to a new report from Warc.

The latest version of the Asia Strategy Report, released today, analyses 186 marketing campaigns entered into the 2014 Warc Prize for Asian Strategy. More than 40% of entries were developed in India.

The study found that Indian entries cited more ‘hard' business success metrics, such as sales growth, than papers submitted from other Asian market. Indian papers listed an average of 1.1 hard metrics each, versus 0.8 in other papers.

What's more, Indian strategies were more likely to use sales, market share, or market penetration as success metrics.

Analysis of intermediate metrics (including awareness, buzz and PR value) showed that Indian papers cited 2.0 metrics per paper, exactly the same as the rest of Asia. Indian entries were more likely to use awareness as a benchmark of success, but less likely to look at social media or buzz metrics.

Kawal Shoor, planning head at Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai and one of the judges on the 2014 Warc Prize for Asian Strategy, argued that the findings reflected the background of India's agency-side strategists.

“Many Indian planners have a business school background, so there is a natural tendency and ability to connect creative work with business results,” he commented.

“As the industry becomes more competitive, work that results in improvement on hard metrics is valued more, and remunerated better.”

The study also found that, on average, Indian strategies used more media channels than those from other markets, and were significantly more likely to use television.

Access the Warc Strategy report here (Warc subscribers can access the full report; non-suscribers can download a summary version).

Data sourced from Warc