The Hindu Business Line : Whither advertising?

Raj Nayak, CEO, NDTV; Prateek Srivatsava, Group President, South, O&M; Bhaskar Bhat, MD, Titan Industries; Anurag Batra, Chief Editor and Chairman, exchange4media

Ramanujam Sridhar

Advertising has a few friends (?) who have described it in different ways over the years. Here is a sample…

“Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” - Stephen Leacock.

“Advertising is the fine art of making you think you have longed for something all your life that you never heard of before.” - Anonymous

“Advertising is 85 per cent confusion and 15 per cent commission.” - Fred Allen.

I am sure if you have anything [even remotely] to do with the advertising business, you will have your own creative spin to the business of advertising. Yet to anyone who is actively involved with the business, one fact is apparent. Even if the business is not exactly at the crossroads, it is certainly at an important and challenging juncture of its long and at times severely challenged journey.

Where is advertising today? What ails it? What will its future be like? How can it position itself better? What do the triumvirate of the industry think and feel — the client, the agency and the media? I sought answers to these and a few other questions in a seminar that brand-comm organised a few weeks ago.

The panelists included Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director of Titan Industries Ltd, who has been a discerning client for over two decades now; Prateek Srivatsava, Group President of Ogilvy & Mather for the South, an advertising professional who has spent two decades servicing a host of demanding clients across categories; and Raj Nayak, CEO of NDTV, a leading media professional whose forthright views made a few people look sheepish even as it held the audience enthralled.

Presiding over the session was Anurag Batra, Chief Editor and Chairman of exchange4media who had seen the worst of both worlds, having been in advertising and now running a successful media group with a string of offerings for the marketing and advertising fraternity. Sitting adjoining these distinguished speakers was a shy, tongue-tied individual entering his 25th year in advertising- the third umpire! In case you cannot figure out his identity, don’t even bother!

So, what did we have to say to the host of advertising and marketing professionals who were there and who are reading this column today? Read on.

Follow me

Remember the Hutch commercial? I always get confused between Hutch and Orange but then I am an Airtel user, so who cares about me? Anyway it is a brilliant commercial with a great analogy. The client is the boy in the commercial who cheerfully goes from one place to the other. Close on his heels is the pug [read agency] which will follow him to kingdom come. If they want to go to Timbuktu, the agency will open an office there!‘Faithful and friendly’ was the tagline of Syndicate bank, a bank I used to work for years ago.

It also had the visual of a dog!! Maybe there could have been a visual of a typical client service executive instead, as that might have been more relevant. But seriously there is a problem here and Bhaskar Bhat hit the nail on the head when he made an insightful observation. “Why is the agency keener on following the client than the consumer? Why is it preoccupied with the client?” It seems to be keener on following personnel changes in the client’s office than the sweeping changes that are happening at the consumer’s end.

Technology is impacting consumers and brands in a manner that makes the past look like a walk in the park. Is the agency ready? What is it going to do in the future? Yet, however uncomfortable the question may be, there is a silver lining. Bhaskar is a true friend of agencies, having worked with the same agencies Ogilvy & Mather and Lowe for ages.

In a day and age where clients change agencies more frequently than their cars if not their underwear, he stands as a well-wisher, if not a shining beacon of hope, for agencies. Yet, that does not make the agency’s task easier. It must do some serious soul-searching today if it must continue to grow in the future.

Agency speak

Prateek Srivatsava gave the agency’s point of view in his earnest, efficient and understated way. “How is it that agencies produce great work for some clients and mediocre work for other clients?” he asked letting the work speak for itself.

One recalls the famous adage that every client gets what he deserves. So the questions the client perhaps needs to ask herself are: “Am I providing the best environment for the agency to perform? Am I able to motivate my agency? Am I the stumbling block to great work? Am I deciding by committee?” Prateek also quoted David Ogilvy and said: “Don’t have a dog and bark yourself.”

The desire to tamper with creative, roll up one’s sleeves and write is as old as the hills. A malaise that seems to be global in nature. Prateek did have a sense of regret that agencies were not being accorded the sort of respect that they deserved. It was not uncommon for clients to make you wait for hours on end. My mind went back to 25 years and my client servicing days with BPL a client to whom I owe a lot of my success. But I had to wait for it. I remember usually carrying a book or even writing my service reports in their front reception. Looks like the more things change the more they remain the same.

Changing dynamics

There is never a dull moment when Raj Nayak speaks. He said the agencies were to blame for their current ills. Let us respect our own worth to enable both client and media to give us the respect we deserve he said. He also made an interesting observation about the real or perceived decline in the importance of the agency. There used to be a time and an age when the managing directors of major corporations used to be involved with advertising and the agency. Not any longer. Today, the agency gets to meet the product manager if it’s lucky. It is a global phenomenon that fewer and fewer CEOs are from the marketing area. We have a host of CEOs who specialise in mergers and acquisitions and spend more time with investors than they would ever spend with their customers or their advertising agencies. This is the new reality. So, what do agency heads do? Oh, I suppose they contest for the AAAI elections!

Anurag Batra, who is intimately involved with agencies and their present problems, did mention that advertising struggles to fight lack of credibility. It is not a new phenomenon but continues to dog the industry. This in turn impacts the talent that can come into the industry.

What of the future? Anurag believes the agency needs to keep pace with the changing business environment. The agency compensation structure will soon be linked to sales and profits, he said. Unbundling will be here to stay but there will be super specialists in each domain. Below-the-line may well be the next big opportunity for agencies, he said.

If wishes were horses

So what is my take on the advertising business? Rather than give “considered opinion,” I thought I would express a few wishes for the future, abusing my privilege of entering my 25th year in this profession that has given me everything including hypertension and a balding crown.

I wish agencies would believe there is more to life than a 30-second TV commercial. I wish agencies had a better appreciation of integration and not say “one voice” when they actually mean “one invoice.” I wish clients remunerated agencies better. I wish agencies provide better value to their clients. I wish we do not pay peanuts at entry and at all levels. I wish, just wish, that people in this industry were a little more loyal. I wish people would give back to this industry that they have taken so much from. I wish that agencies have a better appreciation of what public relations can do for themselves and their clients.

Finally, I wish clients gave their agencies greater respect and I do wish that agencies would be worthy of greater respect. Are these wishes or are they mere pipedreams? I believe in the future. I believe that answer will lie with today’s youth. Let’s get the right talent in and the future will take care of itself.

(Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO, brand-comm, and the author of One Land, One Billion Minds. )

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