The Hindu Business Line : ‘It’s the intangibles in brands that endure’

Unified we stand: (From L to R) Sir John Hegarty, Worldwide Creative Director, BBH, Partha Sinha, Managing Partner, BBH India, Priti Nair, Managing Partner, Simon Sherwood, Group Chief Executive Officer, Subhash Kamath, Managing Partner, and Nigel Bogle, Group Chairman, BBH.

Vinay Kamath

BBH continues the conversation on its entry into India, brand-building and ROI.

What else have you done internally to structure the agency?

Bogle: As you know, there has been a huge separation from the creative process and media in most parts of the world. While that made good commercial sense in some ways it isn’t making sense now for brands to have walls between media and creative, and that’s why we started a new division two years ago called engagement planning, which should be part of our future here in India also. Essentially it’s putting sophisticated channel planning and thinking back at the heart of the development process because now with so many different platforms operating you need to see how they work for each other and how you create the consumer journey is an important part of what we do.

You lay a lot of emphasis on return on investments for the advertising you do for your clients; do you tell them clearly what you bring to the table?

Bogle: Johnnie Walker has just won the Grand Prix at the UK advertising effectiveness award for the Keep Walking campaign. We look at ourselves as being in the manufacturing business and we think of ourselves as making the invisible component in brands and add value and making those brands more emotionally desirable and valuable. Brands are as much about feelings. It’s the intangibles in brands that endure and create the value. Obviously, the whole question of ROI and viewing our responsibility as driving shareholder value is fundamental to the way we work ... something like ‘Keep Walking’ in its tenth year becomes more valuable over time and ROI gets better as that property becomes more seamless with the brand. For Audi that ad (see Page 1) continues for 26 years. Long-term brand properties is what BBH is about.

Shashi Ashiwal.

1BBH’s creative for Vodafone.

Could you take me a bit through the creative process behind your brand building process?

Sir John: Johnnie Walker is a great example of the way BBH functions. It was a category in decline because it rested on its laurels and hadn’t projected a different kind of image. It was projected as “if you are successful you would drink this whisky”. It may sound simple but the great strategic direction it was given is that success isn’t a place, it’s a constant journey; really successful people never arrive, they are always on a journey. This little change is significant because if it’s about progress then you’ve got to keep walking; it’s not about a destination but a journey, and that’s a perfect example of how BBH creates great values for a brand. Once you get there you then get to create distinctive advertising that stands out in the market, you suddenly get people to reassess the brand.

How did you get that insight?

Bogle: We worked almost 12 months with the Johnnie Walker team to get to that final articulation. It involved huge amount of consultation with people in their key markets around the world, lots of research to get absolute insights into the core target group; we were looking for a campaign, a single one, to replace what was 40-50 campaigns around the world. So it was important that we got to unify fundamental truths. The point about progress and journey is that it unifies people around the world, nobody wants to go backwards.

That’s the other point to enduring brands, they have to reside in some kind of fundamental and human truth. Or, if you take the Axe Effect; everybody knows how teenage guys get nervous and need all the help they can in the mating game and that’s a fundamental unifying truth that crosses borders. The whole process of getting to an insight that unifies people is what makes BBH distinctive.

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