Dialogue
If you just focus on the creative work, all the good things will happen – the brands will get healthy, the agency will grow, you will get new business, you’ll make more money, you will be able to pay bonuses. Creative work is the whole agency.
“I am not gunning to be the number one agency, I am looking to be a good, respectable and profitable agency. We start with knowledge and the first thing I am doing is strengthening our knowledge resources. Because that, I believe is the starting point of our demonstration. We will look forward for integrated communication solutions. I think we are best with challenger brands and that is what I want to focus on.”
For clients, apart from media agencies, there are at least 150 other companies in the marketplace that can offer an array of solutions -- web, tracking, search and so on. There are many stakeholders who approach clients -- ours and competition’s. This is a challenge because it means marketing managers have more than their own agencies, to discuss communication problems today. We believe if we are able to understand digital domain well and start giving clients due recommendations, we can earn our respect back from where we are today.
The current ratings system is the biggest disservice that broadcasters have done to themselves. I don’t believe our rating system is universal; it is focussed around a few large pivots and the niche channels suffer as a consequence. The parameter of our rating system is based on the Chief Wage Earner who may not necessarily be the target audience. There is no language or genre preference. Our concepts of measurement in this country are limited. They need to be challenged. They need to expand into many more markets and recognise the size of the television industry.
The whole English entertainment channel space is much smaller than the English movies space. The biggest seller on Star World is ‘Koffee with Karan’, which is a Bollywood celebrity show. Movies Now, again is a library channel. They will show the movies that have already premiered on other channels. Our USP is if you want to see a movie for the first time, come to HBO. We have premiered movies which did not even get a theatrical release in India.
Advertisers do not want to go beyond their set platforms of media planners and buyers. But this divide (between English and Hindi news channels) is ending. And if they can’t read the writing on the wall, then there is something wrong. Today, an aware person does not mean that he has to be an ‘English’ person. Media planners and buyers have to get out of this misconceived notion. They need to understand that buying power is in the Tier III and IV cities. They cannot be ignored.
“You can’t be a leader and be modest. But I do feel that generally, we all should be modest. If you’ve got good upbringing, some modesty should be there in you, but leadership is about confidence, and about communicating that confidence. It depends on who your audience is and who is listening to that communication. It may very easily be the case where a confident assertion is misunderstood for arrogance, and sometimes while communicating that confidence a knock on your head teaches you a lesson. So it’s always good to trip once in a while. I don’t think we as a Star Plus team are more modest or anything. It’s about being more agile. Leadership cannot be taken for granted. And that is where the agility comes from.”
“If I am able to convert an analog guy into a digital one, I am creating a revenue stream for the government and they should reward me and not punish me. So there is a case for substancial rationalization of the tax structure. Nonetheless we continue to struggle on, so we deserve to get more encouragement than that. But that said and done, the momentum is firmly in. The last piece of the puzzle needs to fall into place is the role of these rating agencies which is dubious to say the least - even as we speak we have 29 million homes in DTH. The guy who buys a DTH is a better customer than the guy who buys analog cable. The entire digital platform in the eyes of noble rating agency has got only 11 per cent weightage. This is an anomaly which needs to be corrected.”
<p align=justify> “Believe me, all the emotional outburst is natural. This is what we need to convey to our viewers. I can sense that people think there is lot of scripted stuff that is going in the reality formats but for FremantleMedia reality means- all natural. If we had to do formats in terms of scripts then I think formatted shows would die. People would have no faith in them. It’s totally unscripted and real.” </p>
It’s not about looking at the whole account and doing the full thing. The way BBH works is that we tend to work on the high end of the brand idea and like to work closely with the client in cracking that big idea. We could well bring in other partners to work on different areas, for instance, in the area of specialist design or direct marketing… It’s more of a collaborative model and I think collaboration is the future mantra.
“360 degrees is the most abused term, in my view and I think it is completely archaic. As you have pointed out it is a crutch used by the old world creative agencies in pitches only. In reality they do not implement it. The new world, however, is beyond 360. The challenge now is 365. The trick lies in being in touch with you consumer 365 days of the year through various media, particularly using the ever evolving Digital and social media because the consumer is making choices about the brands he or she will buy 365 days of the year.”
"Biggest learning I have is that if you can provide a product with an assured guarantee and which is a known brand at a value that is unmatched then everyone shops, regardless of which geography you belong to… All tiers have disposable incomes and they are hungry for good quality products but access to products was missing earlier. Today even the best of brands normally distribute their products to 30-50 cities. But India is all of 5000 cities and there are consumers in each of them. The reach of television surpasses the reach of any mall or retail chain one can think of."
"DDB has always believed that 'creativity is the most powerful force in busines'. Today, people are more empowered and connected than ever before - they are the most important media - so creativity itself needs to change. Today, we use our creativity to produce ideas that people play with, participate in and pass on. Ideas that connect people with people, not just people with brands. We call this Social Creativity."
"DDB has always believed that 'creativity is the most powerful force in business'. Today, we use our creativity to produce ideas that people play with, participate in and pass on. Ideas that connect people with people, not just people with brands. We call this Social Creativity," says Lucy Jameson, Executive Strategy Director, DDB UK, and Chair of DDB's Global Planning Futures Group.
“Everest has been lucky to have had some great leaders guiding it in its 60 year journey to stay focused on building brands with effective communications. In a highly competitive and dynamic environment, you retain business by the virtue of your understanding of brand dynamics, its performance in the market and how nimble footed and responsive you are in leveraging the opportunities and challenges.”
I have been meeting a lot of CMO's and CEO's, in the past year, I have been to 27 countries and visited about 35 plus offices- the thing which I find is the universal truth- it is complexities. Clients have more choices for media, more and more of data and information, digital is more, everything is more. And what we see as an over emerging need in the market place is basically someone to make sense of it all. Someone who can basically tell me what matters and what I should do about it, what is important, how should I respond
I come from the world of doing things, I come from the world of trying to build companies out. And I think at this stage of the game it is too early for people to believe that India has lost. The flipside of the coin is that India has to work much harder to bridge this gap which has opened up. A huge gap has opened up, we can't deny that. China is four times India's size Having said that the institutional strength of India is extremely strong as well, the entrepreneurial strength of India is extremely strong as well. Where India lacks and virtually languishes frankly, is in the ability of Indian state to become entrepreneurial and take risks.
"Two things stand out. Content is already quite fluid and there is a culture of creativity and ideas which might not exist everywhere else. So you would think that USA is idea centric but it is not. Often with big countries, implementation becomes so important that strategy becomes less important. India and China to a certain extent are exceptions. The other opportunity here is the database because there is a lot of data and a lot of information and we have been talking about how we can address this as a business."
Marketing and sales are often confused. In India, the terms are used interchangeably, perhaps because of the fact that we've had a very controlled economy and a vast pool of low-cost educated people. India has always had a big emphasis on the feet-on-street model of sales. Marketing is required when you want to do 'pull', or want other benefits like a brand premium or loyalty.
<p align=justify> We planned to make a Globalocal magazine out of the already existing product. Here we took the Global title and enmeshed the global and local content. Hereby, a perfect match for advertisers and readers was created. We look for the leading magazine in its segment in a particular country and import it over to one of our markets in Asia. The strategy has worked. Each of the magazines imported to Thailand and India are leaders in their respective categories, command high average ad rates and a higher cover price than their competitors. </p>
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