The Hindu Business Line : What's the big idea?

On impact: (From left) Meenakshi Sachdev of Good Relations, Roshan Abbas of Encompass Events, R. Kannan of Ramms India, Pranesh Misra of Lowe, Bhaskar Bhat of Titan and Shumone Chatterjee of Levi's

The business sessions of the Ad Club Madras' Future Shock convention saw many ideas and varied experiences being tossed about. Kiran Khalap, co-founder of creative agency Chlorophyll, was at his witty best. "I've never had a welcome anywhere as in Chennai, with a large sandalwood garland. I was next expecting a 200-ft cut-out outside the airport," he grinned, having the audience in splits, before going on to dissect the weighty theme.

Khalap elaborated that advertising ideas unify various unrelated frames of reference but what, he asked, are they trying to unify when the world around is "splitting." He gave a few examples: employees are splitting jobs faster than before; the average tenure in Asia has changed from 15 years to 30 months while the churn rate in BPOs is 30 per cent. The tenure of marketing directors in companies in the US is now barely 10-15 months. So, while agencies are splitting, clients too are, in different ways. "The job of creative is to unite, but the world's fragmented and it's going to increase," said Khalap.

He raised some interesting questions. "Is advertising into the business of solving problems with ideas or into selling ideas for business?" he asked. All brands in the future will be corporate brands: there's no getting away from the fact that companies will get more closely associated with their brands and consumers will ensure that corporates stand in line with the power of communication. "The role of the creative person today is no longer restricted to communication," stressed Khalap.

Alok Nanda and Sujata Keshavan of Ray + Keshavan Design, also on the same panel as Khalap, talked about how their respective agencies grew. They both set out on different paths from the agencies they worked in because they recognised the need for a new structure to respond to corporate requirements. As one can see, they are both specialist creative-design agencies which evolved out of the conventional agency structure, which reminded one of the theme: disintegrated agencies.

Asit Mehra, Executive Vice-President of Omnicom Group in London, an old Chennai hand as he spent four years as the head of Lintas in the city, had a key takeaway for the audience when he said, "Rather than focus on new technologies one should focus on the big idea for a brand. If your brand does not have a central idea then it's going to be held hostage by the consumer."

And, for those who are in gloom about the state of the advertising industry, what he had to say would not have enlivened their spirits. Said Mehra: "Ten-fifteen years ago, the quality of our ideas in the industry was far better than now, in general. We're scared and leadership of companies is scared about what is happening, and the future is uncertain. We are missing the woods for the trees. We are getting caught up with funky, sexy new gizmos and technologies and saying consumers are changing. But, let's look at ourselves. We are changing behaviourally but the primary motivator and what engages us, what makes us emotionally attached to brands, hasn't changed one bit. The human DNA hasn't changed, so rather than focussing on technology, I think we should focus on the primacy of the idea."

The inimitable Sam Balsara, Chairman of Madison Communication, along with V. Ramani of Connecturf and Leena Basrur of Direm, were together on a session on media might. Balsara started off his presentation with a sharp statement: Media might is a myth. Neither the media owner nor the advertiser have the might, he said, because there are balancing factors everywhere, contributed in no little measure by increasing media spends, higher growth rates, growth of media itself and a shifting media mix. Giving a broad canvas picture of the media industry and its fragmentation, his exhortation to advertisers, who need to respond to this scenario, which he dubbed Sam's four mantras, were to use multi-media effectively. Seventy per cent of brands, he said, use a single media but use of multimedia improves effectiveness.

Then, he emphasised that brands need to look at engagement, not exposure. Pay for value received and not for time and TRPs. And, his last mantra was to use media insights to develop media plans and not just for reach and OTS. Given the growth of Madison over the years, Balsara certainly knew what he was talking about and had the right mantras!

The closing session of the convention, sparkled with some wit, banter and ripostes from Ramanujam Sridhar of Brand.Comm who chaired the session.

He pointed to the other four on stage: Pranesh Misra (Lowe), Arvind Sharma (Leo Burnett), Shumone Chatterjee, Managing Director, Levi's and Bhaskar Bhat (Titan), saying that the four from IIM-A were ganging up on the sole person from IIM-B — himself! Talking on branding, Sharma was emphatic that brands don't need to bring out new creatives with different tag lines. Instead, agencies need to keep reiterating the core values of a brand in all their communication.

Chatterjee of Levi's spoke about what could be and how agencies need to connect with the youth and new audiences. Agencies must identify and target media of the future such as blogs and video streaming sites such as YouTube." "If one has even three per cent of blog space - about 6 million consumers - one can further reach out to many more millions through social networking sites," he said.

Misra of Lowe said that things would go a full circle and clients would again want to work with only one agency rather than a clutch of firms that specialise in only a few services. "Clients will look for one throat to strangle," he quipped. Full service agencies and boutique agencies will co-exist, he emphasised. He had a word of caution for both advertisers and agencies.

"Any medium that we work with, we're infesting it and killing it with ads," he said, adding that this overkill would be detrimental to both ad agencies and clients. Sridhar had the last word, though. As he pointed out today agencies are seeing a dearth of talent, they're not recruiting from the top B-schools as they were about 10-15 years ago as agencies cannot afford them. He urged the agency heads to be aware of this and do something about it, "otherwise, there won't be a future to be shocked about!"

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