The Hindu Business Line : `People don't have time to watch bad advertising'

"We are the number one agency in India, an agency which creates the most effective advertising. Thus we have a passion and obligation to deliver to our clients and add more value to their businesses," says Patrick Pitcher, Area Director (Asia-Pacific South), JWT, who was in India recently. Pitcher says that as the agency moves towards its new vision, its most important goal is to improve its creative product and create more effective advertising for its clients, which in the long run will add value to their business.

In an interview with Catalyst, Pitcher and Colvyn J. Harris, Chief Executive Officer, JWT, spoke at length about the agency's various initiatives to step up its creative output.

Excerpts:

When you announced your image makeover earlier this year, you said you would concentrate on getting your focus back on creative. How far have you succeeded?

Pitcher: As part of our new worldwide vision we decided to upgrade our creative product so that we deliver more effective work to our clients and add value to their businesses. And for this, we are also looking at upgrading our creative talent. We have recruited 19 new creative people for the India operations in the last two months, who have lot of international exposure and are capable of doing effective and award-winning work. To start with, we have Bruce Matchett as JWT India's new National Executive Creative Director and Agnello Dias (of Leo Burnett) as Vice-President and Executive Creative Director, who is going to take charge shortly. Both of them have a wealth of international experience.

Harris: The agency will also be investing in organising leadership and training sessions with emphasis on creativity. We have an exciting task ahead as we move towards the new vision. As part of our focus on training, we are also going to have a training programme for our senior management, in which the top 28 people who are going to take us into the future will have a session with Michael Maedel, JWT's Worldwide President.

Colvyn J. Harris, Chief Executive Officer, JWT India

We are trying to engage everyone in the new vision. We get all our employees together every month at all our offices to discuss the work we have done the previous month. We are also going to launch an internal Web site through which the employees can view the work of the various offices across the region.

We also have a Lunacy Programme, in which every office hosts its best work, which is ranked by the worldwide creative council.

Pitcher: We also have an initiative called Young Tigers in which we select young talent from the Asia-Pacific region and conduct training sessions in creative.

The agency of late has been talking a lot about creating advertising which is more participatory, which will go beyond the traditional model of a 30-second TV spot. What have you been doing on that front?

Pitcher: People don't have the time to watch advertising, especially bad advertising. As an advertising agency, it is our duty to create advertising which is more engaging. We have to ensure that it doesn't irritate the consumers. How can we do more effective advertising? How can we outmanoeuvre competition?

Harris: We are constantly looking at new forms of generating advertising ideas. We have been doing a lot of promotions linked to sales for our clients. For DTC, for instance, we have been doing a lot of window displays and creative shows. Similarly, we organised a marathon for Stanchart.

Many Indian advertising agencies have been doing work for the global markets. How do you rate Indian talent?

Pitcher: I think India has great talent. In fact, we have transferred a lot of people from India to work for our international clients. We have creative workshops in which we take two or three creative people from India and China to crack ideas that could be used in both the markets. We recently hired Indian talent for our offices in South-East Asia.

Our India office has done a lot of work for Unilever which has been used in various markets in the region.

Which are the other areas are you focusing on, apart from creative?

Pitcher: We are looking at acquisitions in India. Direct marketing and digital advertising are areas where we feel there is a lot of scope to explore. We will be looking at acquisitions in these areas.

How has your relationship with your clients evolved over the years?

Harris: We are increasingly becoming more accountable to our clients.

The entire idea of creating more effective advertising is to help our clients achieve their goals. We are going to partner clients in a greater way in the future.

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