Dialogue
The way Zee works is that we are clear that we have to deliver value to our shareholders and stakeholders and on a constant basis. We are not here for six months, one year and go somewhere else. Unless, I sell the company, where would I go? But executive-run companies can burn money. For an executive, it doesn’t make a difference – they will move on to another job and at double the salary again. What are they losing? But the bottom-line of what I am saying is that is there anything wrong and right about these things. Success is mostly in hindsight, it is not guaranteed.
I would say the biggest challenge for GroupM in India at the moment is talent motivation, because all agencies are under pressure in retaining talent and this is one challenge even we have in India at the moment, and motivating and providing incentives to them. I believe the management challenge is about motivating people who work very hard, when you’ve got very limited goodies to give a handout because financially things have been tight.
I have this curse that I only see what we are doing wrong every time. I don’t see all the great things that we do. I am just the complaint department. I go to the problem; I am paid to deal for the things that don’t work, not for the good things. I don’t get to enjoy as much as I’d like to the pleasure of a relationship like the one with UTV. Instead I am always saying ‘How come Ronnie we aren’t doing this’, or ‘should we do that’. The pressure is to be excellent in all the various areas and to meet the deadlines that we journalists live with. It is not the nature of our work to relax – it is one deadline to another...
We are one of the top five agencies in the country. You may say that our creative products have slipped over the couple of years; maybe or maybe not. But in the Asia Pacific context, Grey India is the key driver in both its top line and bottom line numbers. And India is the jewel in the Asia Pacific crown.
We have done better than 99 per cent of the global networks in terms of new business, consolidating with our global clients and the quality of our works. But every market has been hit hard, there isn’t any market that has escaped the global crisis. The good news is that we’ve been incredibly resourceful in terms of continuing to invest in what we think are priorities and we haven’t ducked in any changes. So why we are excited about 2010 is because we can see the great shape that we are in as a network as well as in India.
You can expect us to continue to fight for the freedom of advertising and for a framework that would enable us to advertise more efficiently and effectively. This will absolutely affect India. We are in very close collaboration with the Indian Association, and when anything happens in India, we will work in any way that we can to help enable us to continue advertising. You can also expect us to have a closer look into India in the way medium like mobile can be picked up, or the way in which new media can be explored.
It is impossible to give a figure like we will grow by 15 per cent, or we will win seven awards at Cannes next year from India. But we have very high expectations that in the next year or two. Creatively, India would be in the top five because we now have a very good team there. The agency has been gaining critical mass that we did not have before, and many other roadblocks are out of the way. Even as TBWA\Worldwide, we are focussing and supporting the offices in India in a much stronger way and it is needed. Today, clients want good teams in India and we cannot let anyone down. So, you can rest assured that you would seeing and hearing a lot from India in the days to come.
About the kind of channel we want to build, at this stage let me say we want to avoid the trend towards tabloidism. Our intention is to respect the viewers and recognise that a very large number wants good quality news… we’re not aiming to be the No. 1 channel, we are not driven by that. We aim to be big enough to be relevant to viewers and advertisers, but mainly focus on creating a different news experience for viewers. I like to tell our team ‘Let’s be like Aamir Khan. Let’s be big, but not obsessed with being No. 1. Let’s be different and better, but in a way that is widely appealing’. Of course, the trick here is not to become too different or too intellectual. That was the mistake I think the old NewsX made. It was so different and rarefied that it ended up alienating the viewers.
<p align=justify>Let’s put it this way, we won’t create any confusion; we would clarify the brand offering that is relevant to local as well as to international clients and would help clients to make the right decision on which area they want to be the most serviced in. From the Mudra point of view, that gives Mudra the opportunity to clearly be the competitive brand and it gives DDB the opportunity to clearly be the international corporate. As a creative organisation, we don’t want to change local cultures or re-orientate them to western minds and that is where our local and international talent comes in.
It is not nice to do work for just the heck of awards. It is putting our industry in a bad light. I know that these are expressions of creativity, but we should be very clear that these are the ads that are specifically done for that. Why should we hide this fact? Yes, it is tough, but we are going to make sure that the work that we do for the clients is award worthy, but not on the cost of scams. We have to start getting the youngsters to think larger, they have to start being more responsible on brands.
We can see some very strong signs when you see the macro indicators of what was happening, Asia was not really that damaged… Some of the markets had a very dramatic slowdown and some markets just had slowdown, but still there was a growth, and then there were a couple of markets like Japan that had their own markets; Korea is very export-dependent, so they are now also picking up. The overall advertising market should grow – it is an overall positive picture. We are having another decent year.
It is not nice to do work for just the heck of awards. It is putting our industry in a bad light. I know that these are expressions of creativity, but we should be very clear that these are the ads that are specifically done for that. Why should we hide this fact? Yes, it is tough, but we are going to make sure that the work that we do for the clients is award worthy, but not on the cost of scams. We have to start getting the youngsters to think larger, they have to start being more responsible on brands.
The ‘Indian’ qualification is perhaps not required any more. World over, the builders of business – that is, both clients and their agencies – have tough challenges, mandates and some compulsions. Ideally, both groups need to keep their eye on the ball (read brand) at all times. Engaging and enduring brands get built when both these groups excel at their respective jobs
The reality is that the world is changing more quickly, more rapidly than we have ever seen before. Digital is becoming omnipresent. The concept of old media is dying. And to be effective, you really have to be across the thinking processes. You need to get your people engaged with what people are doing in the region at a level of excellence. What we are saying is that here is a learning experience – you need to either change the intellectual adopters into real adopters or enhance skill quotient of the real adopters by exposing them to the world’s best practices.
In India, today there are huge opportunities in the areas of retail, experiential and digital, and clients are looking for agencies that can offer multiple specialisations and the ability to blend it all effectively around a client need. At iris, we have remained committed to our creative vision of integrated marketing – ‘Media anything, Idea everything’ – combining integrated thinking with some of the best in class retail, digital and promotional activation.
India is a genuinely free and liberal democracy, which simply means that the news media has to be free and has to go according to its own code of conduct. Anybody who doesn’t believe in that has got it wrong, it’s as simple as that. If India has to remain a free democracy, then the news media has to remain free and has to regulate itself. Nobody can come and tell it what to do, and if anyone has such thoughts, then those thoughts are all wrong. Media will pick up this debate, television shows will continue to run, politicians will speak a few lines, but I firmly believe that nobody can interfere with the freedom of the media, particularly news media.
I believe nobody is against content regulation, but the difference of opinion is on the mechanism. I am against the view that the Government should have the key for it. I think news broadcasters are capable enough to chalk out a self-control mechanism. In fact, News Broadcasters Association has already made a body under the chairmanship of Justice JS Verma, which keeps guiding the member channels and also has a redressal mechanism. I am also a supporter of clean and responsible journalism, and believe me, the people of this country are mature. The way they oust their leaders in elections, they can also do the same with channels with objectionable content.
I think we are still very TV-centric and need to grow our capabilities in other disciplines. Also, while we tend to do great work for theme ads, we treat tactical advertising like stepchildren. That’s not how the consumer sees it. We need to handle those with the same love and affection as the theme ads.
Launching the Red FM brand nationally fulfills our vision of creating the single largest FM network across the country… The rebranding exercise will be comprehensive and incorporate the Red FM DNA into all the other stations in programming style, content, format and presentation, and entails complete re-training of the staff… Nisha Narayanan will now be heading the programming for North, East and West radio stations. I will be looking into the group’s operations as the COO, whereas Shanmugam K will be the CEO.
I expect the days to come to be really exciting. Budgets, agency size, team size, efficacy, conventions, luxury of time, ROI – everything will be questioned. Even without the recession the world has been a bit confused about where advertising and communication should be going. Digital, integration, mobile, new media, social media are words and phrases that have been baffling the pundits for sometime now. The rapidly evolving communication needs has anyway brought a 30-year old network agency and a two-year old independent agency on the same plane.
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