The Hindu Business Line : `We will be the best in our class'

KINETIC, WPP's new entity in the out-of-home sphere, which came into being last year with the merger of Poster Publicity and Portland in the UK, promises to be the world's foremost agency in communicating with people on the move. And Kinetic India, the outcome of the union of four leading out-of-home brands — Ogilvy Landscapes, WallStreet David, Poster Publicity and Portland — claims to capture close to 70 per cent of the total out-of-home operations in India within the first few months of operations.

Pratap Bose

The agency is confident of doing so with a strong focus on creativity, which according to Pratap Bose, CEO (South Asia), Kinetic, would be its USP. Bose, in an interview with Catalyst, talks about the outdoor market in India and Kinetic's approach towards out-of-home advertising in India.

Excerpts:

What kind of impact is Kinetic going to make on the out-of-home industry in India?

By putting volumes together, we are going to attract good talent from outside the WPP world. Moreover, it will have the scale that no one has. If you control 50 per cent of the power game, there will be standardisation of rates.

Clients also believe that if the agency is big, they will get better rates. So, client consolidation will also happen.

Because we have volumes, we can also get into investing in research, dipsticks and make the business more accountable. Clients today are not able to measure what outdoor delivers. If it could be measured, one could compare this medium with the others, which in the long run would result in more investments. There is also a need to consolidate the specialist agencies and Kinetic is the catalyst for this process. You won't have 50 specialist agencies in future. There are a number of big international players waiting to come in and consolidate. But the actual challenge would be to consolidate at the buying end. There is a lot of anarchy on the supply side. Consolidation on the supply front will definitely happen, but it is going to be slow.

With the four out-of-home brands coming under one umbrella, how are you going to consolidate the business? How is an Ogilvy Landscapes different from a WallStreet David or Portland?

The operating companies will work as distinctive brands in the market as all of them are doing extremely well.

Ogilvy Landscapes offers skill sets beyond traditional outdoors which makes it different from a WallStreet David and Portland.

Similarly, David is all about wacky creatives. We won't create a particular style for the entire outfit. The style of each entity would be different; what would be common are the back-end functions, the planning tools, research and monitoring methods.

As the three brands will be separate profit units, will they compete in pitches?

The participating agencies will not compete in pitches. But in the odd situation, I may send two of my agencies for the pitch.

You said your biggest differentiator would be creativity. How will you achieve that?

Yes, we are looking at making a huge difference in creativity. We will be the best in our class. Out-of-home advertising today constitutes just 7-8 per cent of the total advertising pie.

There is scope for growth only if we are able to create new avenues for advertising. Today, out-of-home is not just the number of billboards a brand invests in but the new avenues it uses. It could be advertising on newspaper booths, wall-wraps, bus-wraps or even branding on lifts.

I have to encourage advertisers to advertise on new platforms. For instance, it would be a great idea for an FMCG brand to create advertising space around the Mother Dairy milk booths in Delhi. It can tap the entire city through those 500 booths, as many people visit them early in the morning or in the evening. I have to convince the advertiser to invest in it.

Would your focus on new avenues mean that you won't give much importance to traditional media?

I would be lying if I were to say that we are not going to use traditional media. It will continue to be my bread and butter, but we will try to be as interactive as possible.

For instance, we got a model to sit on the Knorr Soupy Snacks hoarding and bite into a Knorr snack in Bangalore every evening between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. This made the audience curious.

How are your clients going to benefit from this merger?

The clients will now have access to global best practices, inputs and learning. They will also get better-negotiated rates and have access to better planning systems and tools. As creativity would be our USP, our clients would be able to advertise on more creative and innovative platforms.

Will all the four brands operate in all the markets of Kinetic?

To start with, it's just going to be three. We are going to launch the fourth brand, Poster Publicity International, in April. As far as having the four brands in all the markets is concerned, we are going to decide as per the need of each individual market. Delhi and Mumbai, for instance, would require the services of all the brands, but a market such as Hyderabad may not.

Has Kinetic bagged any accounts?

We have just started pitching and would do so in full steam from February. We wanted to finish off with the launch first.

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