Sixty years and shining: FCB Ulka’s meteoric journey

A new logo, a new app and a year-long celebration marks the 60th anniversary celebrations of FCB Ulka, an agency that started with a bang, but had to weather many storms, yet shines bright still. Ulka, which means a meteor in Sanskrit, was set up in 1961 by Bal Mundkur, the courageous, fierce ad man who never hesitated to call a spade a spade. It was, as veteran adman Ambi Parameswaran, who was CEO and ED of FCB Ulka Advertising Mumbai from 2003 to 2013, points out one of the few Indian agencies that climbed to the top league with iconic campaigns for Zodiac, Nerolac and Amul, among others.

In 1997, Foote Cone & Belding (FCB) acquired a 51 per cent stake in Ulka and by 2007, after a global merger of Draft Worldwide and FCB, DraftFCB bought over the entire stake.

The agency has now metamorphosed into the FCB Ulka Group, with an array of divisions, and ranks among the top five ad networks in the country. Excerpts from a chat with Rohit Ohri, group Chairman & CEO, FCB India:

How are you marking this important milestone? For your 50th, you had a coffee table book, seminars and alumni meets, et al.

We are doing a fair amount of stuff virtually. We have launched an app where we have put together the milestones of the agency. It gives a good history of what the agency’s achievements were decade by decade. The way we look at it is instead of a one-day or one-week celebration, we are going to have a year-long celebration, culminating on December 31, 2021.

The new special logo captures the agency’s brand tagline - we call it our belief line actually – which is “Never Finished”. It is shaped like infinity with sixty inside it. The idea of 'Never Finished' implies an innate ability to change, evolve and grow with the times. Everything we do is always work in progress. We are always learning, always adapting and always asking what’s next.

Your sixtieth year journey begins at a tough time, what with the pandemic dealing a body blow to the industry. How are you reinventing?

“Never finished” actually is a very beautiful and apt thought in the Covid context too. Covid brought a lot of businesses and industries down to ground zero. We have had to relearn, unlearn a lot of things. In this context, this is the most appropriate message that we could send across to our people.

How much did you have to reinvent to meet the accelerated digital trends sparked off by the pandemic?

This digital transformation was something that was waiting to happen for over a decade now. Digital has been truly one aspect of the ecosystem that has really done well in the last year.

For the last five years, we have been restructuring our digital capabilities. We have done it by building integrated digital capabilities within the organisation, into all the functions, be it planning, creative and management.

When I joined FCB, we had a digital agency, which was an independent digital agency, and worked in a silo. What I did was to disband the agency, took the people from there and integrated them within the main agency. They were people with capabilities but were sitting outside. Digital was being dealt with in a silo. By bringing them inside, the transformation effect was akin to planting a seed in the soil - the whole thing grows in a better and stronger way.

Many agencies faced a problem executing campaigns during Covid times. Did you find any innovative ways around it?

The work we did for Amul was innovative – it was more a media-led solution, where we ran 45 nostalgic ads over Doordarshan.

For Nerolac, which was celebrating 100 years, we did a campaign around colours that care. “ Aaj careful toh kal colourful ” was the line. Overall, for us, 2020 turned out to be another great year on the awards front.

Personally, what were the learnings from the pandemic for you

For everybody, last year was a masterclass. What the Covid lens threw up was to bring to the surface what truly matters. Typically, life becomes a whirring fan in motion – you cannot see the blades. It is only when you switch off the fan, you see the blades. This is what happened last year. Health, family, friends, became the focus. And that is how it should be. Everything else is extraneous.

The second learning was to find opportunities in constraints, and understand that the human race is part of nature’s larger balance. You cannot afford to disturb the equilibrium with conspicuous consumption.

Given the amount of introspection that happened, do you think advertising will see a change. Considering it promotes consumption, will it see more sensitivity going forward?

Well, great advertising is about reflecting the sentiments of the people. You can’t be at diverse points from what the consumers are thinking. If people have become sensitive to health and safety, and people are being responsible about the environment, brands also need to be like that. If you notice, advertising did reflect a lot of that concern. That is one end of the spectrum.

At the other end of the spectrum, after a year of fear and fatigue with isolation, people want to resume normal life. Brands also need to play a part in removing the fear and creating a positive mood. They have to make people feel happy and joyous again. Advertising will now have to swing between these two spectrums.

Finally, after a bleak year, what’s the sentiment among advertisers this year? How is demand shaping up?

Very clearly, there is an uptick in demand. Certain categories especially have turned around fast – like the auto industry. Two-wheelers and four-wheelers are showing sharp recovery, as the importance of personal transport comes home. Health and wellness are booming. Many clients have pivoted their products focused on wellness. We definitely are seeing an uptick in demand. Hopefully with IPL, we should see the market coming back.

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