The Hindu Business Line : After the deluge

Like every other sector, the ad industry was affected severely by the Mumbai deluge. Catalyst talked to various top ad agency honchos to find out how they are coping.

IT'S going to be pretty much like the day after for the ad industry after the soaking the city got recently. The industry is bracing to work harder to make up for the lost time due to the heavy rains. With the festival season looming, most agencies will have to make up for the loss in man-hours as offices were shut for a couple of days, beginning 26/7. While for most of the ad agencies it is going to be business as usual, planned campaigns — and especially their execution — would face delays as deadlines have all gone haywire.

Mahesh Chauhan, President, Everest Advertising, says losing a week, especially in the run-up to the festival season, has caught the agency on the backfoot. There is time to catch up on and to deliver to clients' expectations as they have already spent huge amounts of money. "It is not just us but even our clients who have been affected, and it will take a while for their systems to come back to normal. Yes, there has been a hit in our operations and we will have to absorb it," he says.

Clients too, affected by the deluge, understand that advertising agencies will not be able to deliver on time.

As John Goodman, CEO India & South Asia, O&M, says, "Both the agency and its clients have been in the same situation. While some of the employees have been working from home trying to keep up with the deadlines, the clients have also been affected and supplies have been under pressure. But then everybody is fairly understanding under the circumstances."

But there were those unfortunate agencies which had the onus of launching certain brands planned during that unfortunate week of rains. DNA — the new newspaper brand to hit the stands on July 30 — kept its date with the city in spite of the rains. Its agency, Rediffusion DY&R, however, had a harrowing time trying to meet the deadline. While the work for the creatives was in place, executing the ideas amidst the flooding was the toughest part. "It was a sheer nightmare since it was quite a task to launch DNA during that week. We went through trauma; although the creatives were ready, execution of it was a big task since work had to be done with the vendors selling the paper," explains Deb Sen, CEO, Rediffusion DY&R. One of its other clients, Indian Oil Corporation, was the sponsor of the triangular cricket series on that week and executing the campaign for that proved difficult. So while clients' deadlines were more or less met, it was execution which got delayed. Sangeetha Shetty, Executive Vice-President, R.K. Swamy BBDO, says, "All the clients' deadlines were met; however, it was the execution time which got crunched. Since the employees were in office for more than 48 hours, the execution of the releases got pushed." For instance, the releases for Videocon got delayed as its office was in Andheri, and the shoot for Raymond got postponed.

Research undertaken by agencies also suffered a setback. For instance, JWT, which was conducting research for Rin's new campaign, had to put it on hold along with that of the Sunsilk campaign. "Work has been delayed but come rain or shine work will get done," says Colvyn Harris, Chief Executive, JWT. In fact, with almost 100 employees staying back in the office, some amount of work did get done at JWT during that fateful week. "There was bonding while at work," adds Harris.

In any case ad agencies are known to keep long, unending hours to stick to schedules and most agencies believe that they just have do the same under the circumstances. "There has been a huge impact in terms of the backlog. There are a lot of campaign breaks planned and all the schedules have turned upside down. However, everybody knows what happened and people are more understanding. We just need some extra hours and somehow will make up," says Nirvik Singh, CEO, Grey Worldwide.

Rajiv Sabnis, CEO, Ambience Publicis, says, "While there has been no calamity on the work front, it is just some rescheduling which will have to be done. We have to work much harder this week." Likewise, Subhash Kamath, CEO, Bates India, says, "Operational efficiencies have been affected but we will make up for it within a few weeks."

Even the media-buying agencies had a run of bad luck. Says Kunal Jamuar, Associate Vice-President, Insight: "In terms of critical activities, we had to suffer a slight delay. Critical activity for us entails sending release orders and ensuring that ads appear on time. However, we networked with our other branches telephonically (and indeed quite a few media houses cooperated) to ensure our planned activities were implemented through the branches instead of Mumbai."

But there are a few lucky agencies which claim the rains have hardly affected them. "Apart from a couple of shoots which got disrupted there has been no major impact in terms of meeting deadlines. Rain or no rain, nothing really stops us from working. I don't think there will be any financial impact. The agencies will catch up with their deadlines. After all it was a gap of just a few days," says an optimistic Pranesh Misra, President and CEO, Lintas. Rain or shine ad agencies are expected to make up for the lost time sooner or later.

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