Why tell consumers stories they don’t want to hear when you can make them stars of their own narrative? Mastercard’s marketing approach decoded BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN MUMBAI O ver the last few years, every other marketer and advertiser we’ve met has spun a tall tale or two about “storytelling”. Some have even fashioned themselves as not people trying to push product but as storytellers, wandering troubadours who subtly slip a brand into a compelling narrative, spool- ing out in anywhere between 30 and 300 seconds. And so it’s refreshing hearing someone writing ‘the end’ on what’s been a particularly overripe and mawkish era of marketing. Strangely enough, it’s the man at the helm of a brand that told a lot of enter- taining stories and whose coda to these nar- ratives, “priceless”, has made its way into even the memes that show up on our social media timelines. Because in the age of what he calls Marketing 4.0, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and chief communications of- ficer of Mastercard believes there’s compel- ling evidence proving the general public is no longer interested in the stories advertis- ers have to tell. He says, “Way back, a boss in marketing told me ‘don’t teach consum- ers about the product but tell them a story. People don’t like advertis- ing but they like stories.’ That held true till 8 years back.” He points to the ris- ing adoption of ad block- ers with 27 million users opting for these services in this quarter and Asian device manufacturers in- cluding ad blocking as a de- fault option. Or the 100 mil- lion plus subscribers who are watching content ad free on Netflix. Rajamannar believes, “The consumers are saying ‘I don’t want your stories. I want uninterrupted experiences.’ When consumers say that, we have to change.” It’s caused Mastercard to go back to the drawing board on its long running ‘Priceless’ campaign. While previ- ously the only way of getting the message across was television, outdoor and print, it’s become heavily reliant on more experiential as- pects. Describing the shift Rajamannar says, “Our strategy is to not tell stories but to enable consumers to make stories they tell their friends and family; to create and curate story material.” Mastercard now has four platforms push- ing these experiences: Priceless Cities, Priceless Surprises, Priceless Causes and Priceless Specials. “If it doesn’t fit into any of these platforms, we don’t do it,” he says. Priceless Cities involves experiences that are made possible only via Mastercard — experiences money can’t buy. For in- stance, viewing the Louvre in Paris by candlelight after closing hours. Or a selfie atop the shoulder of Christ the Redeemer at Rio De Janeiro. As a part of Priceless Surprises, Mastercard signed up Justin Timberlake. On offer was everything from exclusive songs to the pop singer spending a day with a fan. For the more civic minded, there are partnerships with the World Food Programme, where once a spend threshold is crossed, Mastercard will feed a child in Africa. Says Rajamannar, “We could adopt 40,000 children for a year in Rwanda. We hope this year, we will have close to 300,000 children and we are trying to expand this globally.” Pitched to the passion points of individual consumers, Rajamannar thinks these spread more positive word of mouth and curiosity than regular TV advertising which, of course, continues, but these days supports the priceless initiatives. The process has been one of com- plete transformation according to the Mastercard CMO: “It has taken about two years to get momentum and for people to emotionally buy in and start doing it in their own areas. When you look at the results on brand ratings, scores and business results, they’ve all been growing nicely across the globe.” Technology has been a huge enabler and Mastercard is currently piloting a proj- ect that melds celebrity endorsement, augmented reality and virtual real- ity. At the centre of it is having golfer Graeme McDowell walk one through a particularly tricky hole. Except everything, from the shirt the golfer is wearing to the club can be purchased without exiting the simulation. Which goes to show there’s a price to be paid for everything, even stuff that’s priceless. ravi.balakrishnan @timesgroup.com INSIDEBE On 2 INDIA’S OLDEST BREAD BRAND GETS MODERN NO KIDDING, TOYS MEAN BUSINESS INTERVIEW WITH TWITTER’S GLOBAL GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR, JAYANTA JENKINS YOUTUBE LEADERBOARD AND THE WINNER IS... the twitter index On 3 The Real Lions PartTHREE Hindustan Unilever’s Sachit Handa & Vikram Shashi Mohan SIDETAKE Ice-cream maker Haagen-Dazs is in rebrand mode On 4 Haagen-Dazs is no longer the ice-cream brand its fans have known across the globe for nearly six decades. The ice-cream maker, owned by the consumer goods giant General Mills, has rolled out the biggest brand overhaul in its 56- year history, complete with fresh packaging, a brand-new logo, plans to revamp its 800-plus global stores and a global advertis- ing campaign. The Haagen-makeover kicked off in the U.K. this May, and will be rolled out across the world except for the U.S. by summer 2018. The move was prompted by the marketer’s recognized need to stay relevant for a millennial audience that prefers to engage with brands that share their values and have strong and relatable stories, said Jennifer Jorgensen, Haagen-Dazs’ vice president and market- ing director. Source: Business Insider Marketing 1.0: Product differentiation holds sway. Bigger, better, faster, more – demonstrable benefits and features are highlighted. Marketing 2.0: An era where product parity leads marketers to talk about emotion instead. Mastercard, for instance, didn’t talk about wide acceptance or speed, but about how things are more important than what money can buy. Marketing 3.0: When companies like Amazon began using data in real time, making suggestions and recom- mendations based on a customer’s past behav- iour and what people with similar tastes bought. Marketing 4.0: Marketing in a world where transparency on pricing has put a downward pressure on it and where consumers expect to be rewarded, surprised and delighted by brands that also do good by society. CONSUMERS DON’T WANT BRAND STORIES. THEY WANT UNINTERRUPTED EXPERIENCES BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN & AMIT BAPNA | MUMBAI O ver the last few years many of the overlords of Indian advertising, who sat smug and comfort- able on seats of power for a decade or more, either opted for a graceful exit or came crashing to the ground. There have been management changes at MullenLowe Lintas Group, FCB, Leo Burnett, DDB Mudra, TBWA and Publicis. The only agency that led a seemingly charmed life even as its peers went through rebirth pangs was Ogilvy India. All that changed last week when the agency announced the departure of its national creative director, Rajiv Rao, who will be leaving to pursue a career in filmmaking. Returning to the agency after the gap of almost two decades is Sonal Dabral, chair- man and chief creative officer at DDB Mudra, who is set to take charge as vice chairman and chief creative officer - India, a freshly minted des- ignation. Dabral’s previous stint was in close association with Ogilvy South Asia, chairman and executive creative director, Piyush Pandey, and though they’ve not worked together in the interim, they’ve re- mained close friends. Several other changes are in the off- ing: Sumanto Chattopadhyay (Sumo) taking over as chairman and chief cre- ative officer at Ogilvy India’s second agency Soho Square. And a new inte- grated creative structure at Ogilvy: Ajay Gahlaut will be chief creative officer (CCO) of Ogilvy North and deputy CCO, Ogilvy India; Sukesh Nayak, Kainaz Karmakar and Harshad Rajadhyaksha are all CCOs at Ogilvy West; Mahesh Gharat and Azazul Haque are CCOs, Ogilvy South. Discussing the changes, Pandey says, “Sumo’s move to Soho is because of our complete belief in making it sig- nificant. The other changes are very simple. Ogilvy Mumbai is, we believe, the largest single office of any agency in South Asia. It’s very difficult to manage for one person.” >Continued on Page 4 The Second Coming Sonal Dabral and Piyush Pandey reunite at O&M: Is getting the old band back a new way forward? Or a nostalgic throwback to the past? ANIRBAN BORA BHARAT CHANDA BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN | MUMBAI Who made the first approach to get Sonal Dabral back? It’s very difficult to say ‘approach’. Sonal and I chat. Did he ask me for a job? No. That must mean I ap- proached (him). But Sonal and me working together has been a dream for him and me, both. I think he was ex- cited or he wouldn’t be here. I’m bloody excited! We needed a person who is a nur- turer, an inspirer, someone who takes accountability, so you can play the game. And therefore, Sonal. Half the world is saying in their social media feeds, that they knew this was going to happen. Did you know this was going to happen? No, I didn’t. It’s a development that took place over the last few months. >Continued on Page 4 A characteristically candid Piyush Pandey on why Sonal Dabral and what next for Ogilvy “I expect Sonal to be playing captain” BOTH SONAL DABRAL AND PIYUSH PANDEY WERE CLEAR THEY WANTED TO WORK TO- GETHER AGAIN Employees flying off the handle leave top management and brands scrambling for cover BY DELSHAD IRANI | MUMBAI India’s national carrier, Air India will be 70 years old next week, and the wrinkles are showing. The brand is in shambles. A glance at mentions of the airline in media, social and the tradi- tional kind, leaves a rather unflatter- ing picture – from seemingly unending delays, poor in-flight service and ro- dents for co-passengers to the more re- cent travesty - vegetarian-only flights for economy class. But with the right crew even the ailing Maharaja can find a moment of respite. Last week, photographer and film pro- ducer, Atul Kasbekar received a per- sonal note from the crew of the Air India flight he boarded. In the note, the crew thanked him for producing ‘Neerja’, a film based on the true story of an Air India flight attendant who lost her life during a hostage crisis. A “deeply touched n grateful” Kasbekar tweeted a picture of the note, naturally. Thus instantly raking up positive mentions for the airline amidst a sea of criticism. Now compare this to the United Airlines incident from earlier this year. The American carrier was hit hard when overzealous crew mem- bers manhandled an Asian passenger. Every view of the video of the bloodied passenger being yanked off the flight by UA employees, chipped away at its brand equity. The two instances highlight the in- fluence employees wield in shaping a company brand, for better or worse. Employees can be effective brand ambas- sadors and they can be deadly weapons of brand destruction (WBDs). 2017 is littered with cases of employ- ees, across levels - from founders to in- terns, drastically altering reputations of large and small, old and new brands. Most prominent is Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick’s dramatic fall after several employees were accused of fos- tering and contributing to a toxic work culture. It all began with a powerful es- say by Susan Fowler, a former employee. In March, Indian content company, The Viral Fever came under heavy fire after several women accused its founder of sexual harassment and se- nior management of being indifferent. In the same month, Café Coffee Day got a good pummeling when a customer who complained about cockroaches in the pantry was slapped by a staffer. And not two weeks ago, Tech Mahindra (TechM) was in trouble when an audio clip of an employee’s ruthless sacking by an HR rep surfaced on SoundCloud. >Continued on Page 4 From 1.0 to 4.0 MASTERCARD: FROM TELLING STORIES TO MAKING THEM IS YOUR EMPLOYEE ‘BRAND COMPLIANT’? this week that year { } Piyush Pandey Raja Rajamannar T HE E CONOMIC T IMES JULY 19-25, 2017
Transcript
Why tell consumers stories they don’t want to hear when you can make them stars of their own narrative? Mastercard’s marketing approach decoded
BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN MUMBAI
Over the last few years, every other marketer and advertiser we’ve met has spun a tall tale or two about “storytelling”. Some have
even fashioned themselves as not people trying to push product but as storytellers, wandering troubadours who subtly slip a brand into a compelling narrative, spool-ing out in anywhere between 30 and 300 seconds. And so it’s refreshing hearing someone writing ‘the end’ on what’s been a particularly overripe and mawkish era of marketing. Strangely enough, it’s the man at the helm of a brand that told a lot of enter-taining stories and whose coda to these nar-ratives, “priceless”, has made its way into even the memes that show up on our social media timelines.
Because in the age of what he calls
Marketing 4.0, Raja Rajamannar, chief marketing and chief communications of-ficer of Mastercard believes there’s compel-ling evidence proving the general public is no longer interested in the stories advertis-ers have to tell. He says, “Way back, a boss in marketing told me ‘don’t teach consum-ers about the product but tell them a story. People don’t like advertis-ing but they like stories.’ That held true till 8 years back.” He points to the ris-ing adoption of ad block-ers with 27 million users opting for these services in this quarter and Asian device manufacturers in-cluding ad blocking as a de-fault option. Or the 100 mil-lion plus subscribers who are watching content ad free on Netflix. Rajamannar believes, “The consumers are saying ‘I don’t want your stories. I want uninterrupted experiences.’ When consumers say that, we have to change.”
It’s caused Mastercard to go back to the drawing board on its long running ‘Priceless’ campaign. While previ-ously the only way of getting the message across was
television, outdoor and print, it’s become heavily reliant on more experiential as-pects. Describing the shift Rajamannar says, “Our strategy is to not tell stories but to enable consumers to make stories they tell their friends and family; to create and curate story material.”
Mastercard now has four platforms push-ing these experiences: Priceless Cities, Priceless Surprises, Priceless Causes and Priceless Specials. “If it doesn’t fit into any of these platforms, we don’t do it,” he says. Priceless Cities involves experiences that are made possible only via Mastercard — experiences money can’t buy. For in-stance, viewing the Louvre
in Paris by candlelight after closing hours. Or a selfie atop the shoulder of Christ the Redeemer at Rio De Janeiro. As a part of Priceless Surprises, Mastercard signed up Justin Timberlake. On offer was everything from exclusive songs to the pop singer
spending a day with a fan. For the more civic minded, there are partnerships with the World Food Programme, where once a spend threshold is crossed, Mastercard will feed a child in Africa. Says Rajamannar, “We could adopt 40,000 children for a year in Rwanda. We hope this year, we will have close to 300,000 children and we are trying to expand this globally.”
Pitched to the passion points of individual consumers, Rajamannar thinks these spread more positive word of mouth and curiosity than regular TV advertising which, of course, continues, but these days supports the priceless initiatives.
The process has been one of com-plete transformation according to the Mastercard CMO: “It has taken about two years to get momentum and for people to emotionally buy in and start doing it in their own areas. When you look at the results on brand ratings, scores and business results,
they’ve all been growing nicely across the globe.”
Technology has been a huge enabler and Mastercard is currently piloting a proj-ect that melds celebrity endorsement, augmented reality and virtual real-ity. At the centre of it is having golfer Graeme McDowell walk one through a particularly tricky hole. Except everything, from the shirt the golfer is wearing to the club can be purchased without exiting the simulation. Which goes to show there’s a price to be paid for everything, even stuff that’s priceless.
SIDETAKEIce-cream maker Haagen-Dazs is in rebrand mode
On 4
Haagen-Dazs is no longer the ice-cream brand its fans have known across the globe for nearly six decades. The ice-cream maker, owned by the consumer goods giant General Mills, has rolled out the biggest brand overhaul in its 56-year history, complete with fresh packaging, a brand-new logo, plans to revamp its 800-plus
global stores and a global advertis-ing campaign. The Haagen-makeover kicked off in the U.K. this May, and will be rolled out across the world except for the U.S. by summer 2018. The move
was prompted by the marketer’s recognized need to stay relevant for a millennial audience that prefers to engage with brands that share their values and have
strong and relatable stories, said Jennifer Jorgensen, Haagen-Dazs’ vice president and market-
ing director. Source: Business Insider
Marketing 1.0: Product differentiation
holds sway. Bigger, better, faster, more – demonstrable benefits and
features are highlighted.
Marketing 2.0:An era where product parity leads marketers to talk about emotion instead. Mastercard, for instance, didn’t talk about wide acceptance or speed, but about how things are more important than what money can buy.
Marketing 3.0: When companies like Amazon began using data in real time, making suggestions and recom-mendations based on a customer’s past behav-iour and what people with similar tastes bought.
Marketing 4.0: Marketing in a world where transparency on pricing has put a downward pressure on it and where consumers expect to be rewarded, surprised and delighted by brands that also do good by society.
CONSUMERS DON’T WANT BRAND STORIES. THEY WANT UNINTERRUPTED EXPERIENCES
BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN & AMIT BAPNA | MUMBAI
Over t he last few years many of the overlords of Indian advertising, who sat smug and comfort-able on seats of power for a decade or more,
either opted for a graceful exit or came crashing to the ground. There have been management changes at MullenLowe Lintas Group, FCB, Leo Burnett, DDB Mudra, TBWA and Publicis. The only agency that led a
seemingly charmed life even as its peers went through rebirth pangs was Ogilvy India.
All that changed last week when the agency announced the departure of its national creative director, Rajiv Rao, who will be leaving to pursue a career in filmmaking. Returning to the agency after the gap of almost two decades is Sonal Dabral, chair-man and chief creative officer at DDB Mudra, who is set to take charge as vice chairman and chief creative officer - India, a freshly minted des-ignation. Dabral’s previous stint was in close association with Ogilvy South Asia, chairman and executive creative director, Piyush Pandey, and though they’ve not worked
together in the interim, they’ve re-mained close friends.
Several other changes are in the off-ing: Sumanto Chattopadhyay (Sumo) taking over as chairman and chief cre-ative officer at Ogilvy India’s second agency Soho Square. And a new inte-grated creative structure at Ogilvy: Ajay Gahlaut will be chief creative officer (CCO) of Ogilvy North and
deputy CCO, Ogilvy India; Sukesh Nayak, Kainaz Karmakar a n d H a r s h a d Rajadhyaksha are all CCOs at Ogilvy W e s t ; M a h e s h Gharat and Azazul Haque are CCOs, Ogilvy South.
Discussing the changes, Pandey says, “Sumo’s move to Soho is because of our complete belief in making it sig-nificant. The other changes are very simple. Ogilvy Mumbai is, we believe, the largest single office of any agency in South Asia. It’s very difficult to manage for one person.”
>Continued on Page 4
The Second ComingSonal Dabral and Piyush Pandey reunite at O&M: Is getting the old band
back a new way forward? Or a nostalgic throwback to the past? A
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BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN | MUMBAI
Who made the first approach to get Sonal Dabral back? It’s very difficult to say ‘approach’. Sonal and I
chat. Did he ask me for a job? No. That must mean I ap-proached (him). But Sonal and me working together has been a dream for him and me, both. I think he was ex-cited or he wouldn’t be here. I’m bloody excited! We needed a person who is a nur-turer, an inspirer, someone who takes accountability, so you can play the game. And therefore, Sonal.
Half the world is saying in their social media feeds, that they knew this was going to happen.
Did you know this was going to happen?No, I didn’t. It’s a development that took place over the last few months.
>Continued on Page 4
A characteristically candid Piyush Pandey on why Sonal Dabral and what next for Ogilvy
“I expect Sonal to be playing captain”
BOTH SONAL DABRAL AND PIYUSH PANDEY WERE CLEAR THEY WANTED TO WORK TO-GETHER AGAIN
Employees flying off the handle leave top management and brands scrambling for cover
BY DELSHAD IRANI | MUMBAI
India’s national carrier, Air India will be 70 years old next week, and the wrinkles are showing. The brand is in shambles. A glance at mentions of the airline in media, social and the tradi-tional kind, leaves a rather unflatter-ing picture – from seemingly unending delays, poor in-flight service and ro-dents for co-passengers to the more re-cent travesty - vegetarian-only flights for economy class. But with the right
crew even the ailing Maharaja can find a moment of respite.
Last week, photographer and film pro-ducer, Atul Kasbekar received a per-sonal note from the crew of the Air India flight he boarded. In the note, the crew thanked him for producing ‘Neerja’, a film based on the true story of an Air India f light attendant who lost her life during a hostage crisis. A “deeply touched n grateful” Kasbekar tweeted a picture of the note, naturally. Thus instantly raking up positive mentions for the airline amidst a sea of criticism.
Now compare this to the United Airlines incident from earlier this year. The American carrier was hit hard when overzealous crew mem-bers manhandled an Asian passenger. Every view of the video of the bloodied passenger being yanked off the flight by UA employees, chipped away at its brand equity.
The two instances highlight the in-fluence employees wield in shaping a company brand, for better or worse. Employees can be effective brand ambas-
sadors and they can be deadly weapons of brand destruction (WBDs).
2017 is littered with cases of employ-ees, across levels - from founders to in-terns, drastically altering reputations of large and small, old and new brands. Most prominent is Uber and its founder Travis Kalanick’s dramatic fall after several employees were accused of fos-tering and contributing to a toxic work culture. It all began with a powerful es-say by Susan Fowler, a former employee.
In March, Indian content company, The Viral Fever came under heavy fire after several women accused its founder of sexual harassment and se-nior management of being indifferent. In the same month, Café Coffee Day got a good pummeling when a customer who complained about cockroaches in the pantry was slapped by a staffer. And not two weeks ago, Tech Mahindra (TechM) was in trouble when an audio clip of an employee’s ruthless sacking by an HR rep surfaced on SoundCloud.
>Continued on Page 4
From 1.0 to 4.0
MASTERCARD: FROM TELLING STORIES TO MAKING THEM
IS YOUR EMPLOYEE ‘BRAND COMPLIANT’?
thisweekthatyear{ } Piyush Pandey
Raja Rajamannar
THE ECONOMIC TIMES JULY 19-25, 2017
The creative briefThe brief was to re-launch Modern in a way that disrupts the category and makes way for it to consolidate and grow as a wholesome foods company. The solution had to handle the marketing tasks of different life-stages of the brand in different markets while still building it nationally. It had to be done market by market, at the ground level.
Bread truthsAs a category, it is ubiquitous but invisible. Modern’s latent equity was diffused, nostalgic and dated amongst slightly older audiences and amongst the newer audiences, it had no imagery and appeal. Given the nature of low-margin but daily consumption, the solution arrived at was to have micro-conversa-tions in popular culture across geographies on an everyday basis.
Stacking the slicesThe bread was given the voice of an optimistic and charming philosopher who could very light-heartedly find wholesome solutions to all the world’s problems. Thus, was born ‘Be Like Bread’ (BLB), a media-agnostic idea with the ability to be unpacked in any medium. Be Like Bread handles were created on social media. Facebook’s geo-targeting was used to create relevant content for various regions. A culture calendar was created as also market-specific/event-specific content.
This bread is differentThe relaunch of Modern is unlike any FMCG brand in the country, with its social-first approach, as well as the launch-strategy in one market at a time. The absence of the 30 sec TV ad is also something that marks the uniqueness of the strategy and execution.
BY AMIT BAPNA MUMBAI
“The best thing since sliced bre ad” i s one of those p u z z l i n g phrases we
hear – maybe even use – without pausing to think ‘what’s so great about sliced bread anyway?’ One company that’s betting on there being enough sliced bread en-thusiasts, is Modern, a 50-year old brand that’s going in for a
makeover. A significant move considering the
bread category has been de-void of any large-scale brand-
building. The last ads we remem-ber were from Harvest Gold which
promised ‘bakwaas advertising, first class bread’. Rajev Shukla, man-aging director, Everstone Capital Asia (the company that runs and controls Modern) admits candidly that none of the players (so far) have had any sharp, compelling and con-textualised positioning. A startling difference from his previous stint in skincare and facial care – he was with HUL for 21 years –where every inch was keenly fought over.
The overall `6,500 crore bread market has just two national play-ers – Modern and Britannia with a combined 15% marketshare. Another 30% is owned by regional players like Wibs (Mumbai), Harvest Gold (Delhi), Kitty (Punjab), Good Morning (Lucknow), Spencer’s (South) etc. The remainder is mostly scattered and ranges from neighbourhood baker-ies to upmarket artisanal ones like Moshe’s or Theobroma. According to Sahil Gilani, director - sales & mar-keting, Gits Food Products which ran Gardenia bread for a few years, the market has a unique nuance of being largely regional with strong distri-bution and customer loyalty. It is an uphill task for a national brand as low shelf life limits distribution scaling, he adds. Possibly why even Britannia
has been largely focussed on cookies and biscuits.
In this complex a landscape, one would well ask, what tempted a pri-vate-equity fund (Everstone Capital) to buy Modern lock, stock and bar-rel from previous owner Hindustan Unilever? Says Shukla, “We believe that there is a lot of headway for growth.” The PE Fund didn’t just in-vest: it integrated the team that came as a part of the buyout, and put an or-ganisational structure and culture in
place. Modern has been re-launched in key markets – with new concepts, recipes, positioning and pack-graph-ics, informs Aseem Soni, CEO & board member, Modern Foods Enterprise. The portfolio includes fibre brown bread, 100% whole-wheat bread, and multigrain super-seed bread.
Historically Modern was launched by Modern Bakeries, a public-sector enterprise formed in 1965 as a part of the then-government’s Colombo Plan, to promote wheat consumption. Then in 2000, Modern was among the first to be privatised, and was sold to Hindustan Unilever (HUL). In limbo for some years, owing to accumulated inefficiencies, around 2008 it was de-cided to transfer operating freedom to the existing 6 plants - with their own operating GMs - while still placed with-in HUL’s food business, shares Soni. It was a unique framework and strategy.
As per Bindu Sethi, chief strategy officer - JWT India who worked on the brand briefly, “It inherited a lot of problems when it moved from the government to HUL.” This included quality of packaging, design, brand-ing and proposition as well the fact that HUL’s existing distribution was
not a l i g ned to the category. Eventually HUL de-cided to divest its bread and bakery business in line with its strategy to exit non-core businesses and that is when Everstone took full con-trol in 2016.
Shukla is clear that heritage and nostalgia, by themselves are not a differentiating factor. The brand thus is being rebooted in a way to find the sweet-spot between authenticity and relevance. The creative part-ners include ad shop TBWA and Saffron, a global brand consul-tancy which has created a new vi-sual language for Modern. Shares Harshad Chitre, director – India, Saffron, “The new visual expres-sion is modern and respectful to the brand’s roots.” Market-visits by the agency’s team to over 400 shops across Mumbai, Kochi, Bangalore and Delhi reaffirmed the belief that the retail and POS at every one of them had something new to offer. The branding thus had to ensure that the packaging stands out on ev-ery available surface and be entic-ing enough to help customers make that decision, adds Chitre. Along with the visual overhaul, brand-renovation is being done through a slew of marketing initiatives (See: The New Bake-out).
Finally, bread is saddled with all the marketing issues of the rest of the food category - taste, convenience, perceived health impact, price and shelf-life, according to Siddharth S Singh, associate professor - market-ing, ISB, Hyderabad and Mohali. Last mile availability and a loyal customer base will decide the fate of a brand. On the positive side of the ledger, is its legacy, heritage and awareness; on the other, challenges that come with vari-ous kinds of ownerships over-time. Hopefully this time the toast would be baked well and golden..
MADE FOR INDIA 2“How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”— Julia Child, chef, author and TV personality
PRESENTING THE BRAND ENGAGEMENT INDEX AS ON JULY 12, 2017
The weekly Twitter Advertiser Index lists
the brands which have generated most
engagement with users on the platform
The index looks at the live list of all advertisers on the platform and measures the total number of user engagements with all the tweets
that they sent out that week - specifically this is a sum of all the replies, retweets and favourites
across all tweets that week.
1) @Moto_IND: @Moto_IND promoted its recently released smartphone #MotoCPlus with an animated video posted on Twitter that included the specifications and features of the mobile phone. For example, the fact that the phone uses the latest and stock version of Android 7.0 and the battery power that comes with it. @Moto_IND also provided a link for customers to #GetMotoCPlus.
2) @oppomobileindia: @oppomo-bileindia held a #SpiderManHomecoming exclu-sive fan screening. Tweets were sent out about the event and what fans could expect from the event. Oppo also gave away gifts and prizes including Ofan t-shirts to fans who retweeted its tweets. On the day of the screening, @op-pomobileindia posted event photos, including fans’ selfies with special guest, Spidey.
3) @HiHonorIndia Before launching its latest mobile phone #Honor8Pro, @HiHonorIndia built momen-tum and excitement around it with a video that teased fans with a glimpse of the phone. The video just showed the side view of the phone highlighting the slimness and a mes-sage that told fans to tune in to the Periscope live screening of the launch.
4) @MercedesBenzInd @MercedesBenzInd gave its fans a chance to engage with its newest automobile #NewGLA prior to the launch. Fans could retweet the tweet to get a direct message with information. During the launch event, @MercedesBenzInd live tweeted, posted pictures and retweeted many different tweets about the event, posted by different publishers and media companies.
5) @ExideLife: @ExideLife ran a conversational ad cam-paign on Twitter to get its customers’ views and opinion on how they would enjoy life with their kids. This was part of its #PartnershipsForLife campaign, to promote its product around protection, savings and in-surance. The video featured Indian cricketer MS Dhoni.
BY RAJIV SINGH | DELHI
The top five toy players in India, reckons Adnan Chara, log in just `300 crore in business. And when one adds the fact that branded players make up a meagre ̀ 650 crore out of `4,500 crore toy market in India, one gets to see why it makes sense to venture into the toy world. That was the trigger that led Chara to start his one year old fledgling venture Imagician.
“The biggest multinational toy brands operating in India barely have a turn-over of ̀ 100 crore,” claims the Mumbai-based entrepreneur, who spent over two decades heading toy divisions of com-panies such as Mahindra Intertrade, Milestone Interactive and Mitashi Edutainment. A decent-sized unorga-nized importer, he lets on, sitting in a wholesale market, has a bigger turn-over and better bottom lines than the so-called ‘biggies’.
That’s precisely why Chara is trying his luck at making it big in a country where the toy industry caters to nearly four crore children in the age group of 12 last year, according to a report by trade body Assocham. While over 70% of the toy market in India is unorganised, domestically manufactured toys account for a meagre 15%. The rest comes from countries like China, the US, the UK, Korea and Malaysia.
A kid population—be-tween 0 to 14 years—close to 400 million is more than to-tal population of most coun-tries and is a dream market for any entrepreneur willing to take a leap of faith. Chara’s business model is unique: a mix of import, selling licensed labels of foreign brands and peddling his own brands.
Apart from distributing licensed prod-ucts of Disney and Doraemon, he also im-ports labels from Thailand, Korea, the UK and the US such as Safsof, BK Balloons, Mookie, Juggle Bubble, SpinzOrbitz, Wedgits and Wave Play. And the move has started paying dividends: the company posted over ̀ 10 crore in revenues in a little under one year.
However, the game-changer for Chara would be in carving out a niche for his own brands such as KidsVilla, a preschool edutainment toy; Kratos, which deals with vehicles on wheels and tracks; Imagi Builder, with a focus on blocks, mechanix and mosaic, ThrillPort, outdoor sporty toys, and Wepon, which deals with combat role play.
“We will cross `100-crore by 2022,” he
contends. But isn’t that too ambitious? Chara sounds confident. The magic wand to achieve this lies in manufacturing. The company is exploring options with several toy makers in China and Thailand to start production in India.
Apart from setting up his factory, Chara is also betting big on the recently-rolled out GST, which will massively in-crease the size of the organised industry. Unorganized players, he reckons, thriv-ing on importing with under valuation and evading taxes will get hit hard. Even if brands elevate themselves to 50% market share as against the current 15% over five years, every organized toy industry player has the opportunity to grow at least three times, he claims.
The market opportunity, point out ex-perts, is indeed massive, especially for or-ganised players.
“GST blunts the huge edge that unorgan-ised players importing from China used to have in India,” says Ashita Aggarwal, head of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. “It will now be a level-playing field for all the organised and local players,” says Aggarwal.
However, she quickly adds a word of caution. Though the opportunity might look huge, the chal-lenge is equally daunting: getting kids back to toys, especially in urban areas. Emergence of video games and mobiles has dented the business across the world, as people are shifting from traditional toys and games. The situation, she adds, is alarming in India as well as kids get hooked to mobiles and tablets, early on.
Another big challenge is brand building. An Indian player, she reckons, has to spend heavily on mar-keting to take on biggies like Mattel and Funskool. Still, the chances of survival are bleak in top cities. “The real oppor-tunity lies in Bharat, not in urbanised India,” she says.
Chara, for his part, knows that the road ahead is bumpy. But he has strapped on the seatbelt. If Chhota Bheem and Motu Patlu can fight the popularity of Disney, Marvel and DC comics, then why can’t Indian toy brands entice kids better than multina-tional ones, he asks. Kids getting hooked to mobiles, he argues, is in fact an opportuni-ty. “If one has a great edutainment concept, kids will flock around it,” he says.
While Chara might not be kidding, the success of his venture weighs on whether kids, and their parents, toy with the idea of playing with toys.
ModernThe country’s oldest bread brand’s road-map to
become the preferred slice of India
No Kidding, Toys Mean BusinessCan Imagician, a one-year fledgling homegrown toy brand, take on the likes of Mattel and Funskool?
THE NEW BAKE-OUT TBWA’s CEO Govind Pandey shares ingredients of the Modern recipe
“Modern has been re-launched in key markets – with new concepts, recipes, positioning and pack-graphics.”Aseem Soni,CEO & Board Member, Modern Foods Enterprise
“The brand is being rebooted in a way to find the sweet-spot between authentic-ity and relevance.”Rajev Shukla, MD, Everstone Capital Asia
A KID POPULA-TION—BETWEEN 0 -14 YEARS—CLOSE TO 400 MN
IS MORE THAN THE POPULATION OF MOST COUN-TRIES AND IS A DREAM MARKET
SIDETAKE:Harley-Davidson, one of the world’s most iconic motorcycle brands, is struggling. Motorcycle sales at Harley-Davidson, which represents about half of the US big-bike market , were down 1.6 percent overall in 2016 ver-sus the year before. U.S. sales fell 3.9 percent. The company shipped 262,221 motorcycles overall, which fell short of expectations of 264,000-269,000 units. Investment management firm Alliance Bernstein cited the millennial generation as a key contributor in the brand’s demise. “Our data suggests the younger Gen Y population is adopting motorcycling at a far lower rate than prior generations.” Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers in numbers
to become the largest generation pool in the US. As Business Insider has previ-ously reported, these 18 to 35-year-olds grew up during a recession, which has impacted their spending habits. “I think we have got a very significant psychological scar from this great reces-sion,” Morgan Stanley analyst Kimberly Greenberger told Business Insider. “One in every five households at the time were severely negatively impacted by that event. And, if you think about the children in that house and how the length and depth of that recession re-ally impacted people, I think you have an entire generation with permanently changed spending habits.”
Source: Business Insider
Millennials are destroying America’s most iconic motorcycle brand
the twitterindex
OOH campaign in Mumbai
Modern’s digital campaign
2THE ECONOMIC TIMES JULY 19-25, 2017
If you don’t mind the question, how did you come to be called Jayanta?That’s a wonderful question! My father was Buddhist. And the monks from his temple, the Vihara had a naming ceremony and he picked Jayanta Kumar – Victorious Prince because he wanted me to have a name with meaning; some-thing to live up to. And so I was given a Sanskrit name at birth. It’s the most wonderful gift my
father has given me: a name that means to rise above.
What have been the highlights of your time at Twitter?There are so many: It’s changed the trajec-tory of my career. I was an agency cre-ative for 17 years and I feel I’ve gone from being a construction worker on brands to an architect. I’ve been working closely with (CMO) Leslie Berland, (VP – global brand strategy) Joel Lunenfeld and of course Jack Dorsey is always orbiting.
This brand has been proactive about what it wants to represent itself as in the world. I couldn’t think of a better place to be. And, we won our first Cannes Lions Grand Prix for out of home.
What was the brief for the campaign that won the Grand Prix?The brief was we want to do some out of home, build relevancy for Twitter and to show how it’s about what’s happening in the world. Before I came on board, I had numerous conversations with Jack, Leslie and Joel. The question was ‘What would you want to do with Twitter? Why Twitter?’ I thought of the hashtag as something Twitter put into the world. It’s been appropriated by brands and movements in the most wonderful way. How do you bring that back and make people understand all these conversations happen on Twitter in the most visceral manner, rather than any other platform?Hashtags are attached to words. But if you say #blacklivesmatter, some people ask ‘what about
white lives and blue lives’, and all the other itera-tions of lives that matter. But when you take a hashtag and put it next to a person with their hands up, with the police lights flashing, and it’s not a black or a white face, but a silhouette, it be-comes human. For medical marijuana, we could have chosen an image of a joint or people smoking. But we chose the plant in its purest state. That work helped birth the idea that Twitter shows sides but doesn’t take sides, and give a different emotional context to how hashtags works. If a pic-ture is a thousand words, a hashtag helps at least point that conversation towards which words to use or not use.
The flipside is people often blame the platform for the opinions users have. There are issues like bullying etc... As someone who is tasked with curating the brand’s reputation, what im-pact does this have on what you do?As a person of African descent living in America, I understand what it means to be marginalised. I have parents and grandparents who are the descendants of slaves. I approach this job, as with everything I’ve done, with empathy, compassion
and a high degree of understanding on how to connect people. My stance as a global group CD is to look at the world and see similarities and not differences. I can’t control the opinions of other people but we can inform a user base and em-power them. “When people go low, you go high”.
Of course I am quoting Michelle Obama, but it’s a principle that I bring with me as I think about the work, as I’m crafting imagery that allows people to see themselves in positive ways and promote healthy conversations.
At Twitter and Facebook you have powerful creative people as leaders and its making a lot of ad agency folk nervous. Should they be nervous?My best work was when I had great relationships with clients at Nike and Gatorade. That trust cre-ated the ability to do fantastic work. Great work is about partnership but the agency mindset tradi-tionally is ‘mine mine mine’, ‘ours ours ours’, ‘let’s go get some awards.’ I’ve become a very business minded, strategically enabled creative person that can talk to the agency and bring them into the process. I can also listen from the brand side as well. They should be nervous if they are unwill-ing to collaborate in the way brands have to in the 21st century.
Finally, what was your take on the Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad?That goes back to the discussion on diversity at the workplace. I’ve worked on Gatorade and I know there are some wonderful people there, but I don’t know the inner-inner workings of PepsiCo. I’d say the Kendall Jenner thing had the best in-tentions. I could see and feel that. But obviously, there were some missteps that went beyond the intent of the message and became the wrong thing to say at the wrong time. It seemed to lack sensi-tivity, but I know going into it, they had the right idea. They wanted to bring people together. You can’t fault a brand for wanting to take a risk and be vulnerable. I hope it doesn’t stop them from try-ing to do things that are culturally relevant again. But then, look around who is in the room when presenting the ideas and taking a rough cut.
GLOCAL BUZZ 3At the end of the day, just because Yahoo, for example, has a search box, it doesn’t mean they are Google
– Evan Spiegel, founder, Snapchat
SIDETAKESoundCloud only has enough funding to continue its operations for another 50 days, according to a TechCrunch report . The mu-sic streaming service recently laid off 173 employees - roughly 40 percent of its workforce - in an ef-fort to cut costs and remain independent. But according to TechCrunch’s sources, the company’s found-ers Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss admitted the massive layoffs have only saved enough money to last the company “until Q4,” which is 50 days away.SoundCloud responded to TechCrunch’s story by refuting the leaked statistic and insist-ing that the service is “fully funded into Q4.” The spokesperson did admit, however, that the company is now in talks with potential
investors to buy the service. In a statement following the company’s layoffs, CEO Alex Ljung painted a much more optimistic picture of the streaming service’s future, stating that
the cuts would put the company on a “path to profitability” and allow it to remain “in control of [its] independent future.” SoundCloud executives stated early this year that the ser-vice would be at risk of running out of money in 2017. The company lost around $52 million in 2015 (the last official numbers reported) and has suffered from the
financial struggles of its subscription service, SoundCloud Go+ . In addition to the layoffs, SoundCloud also closed two of its offices in San Francisco and London.
Source: Business Insider
SoundCloud is barely audible
“I’ve gone from being a construction worker on brands to an architect” Twitter’s global group creative director, Jayanta Jenkins
on moving from advertising to Twitter, and reclaiming the hashtag. Excerpts from an interview. By Ravi Balakrishnan
{ thisweekthatyear }
When you just can’t remeber where you put the monocle, use Monaco.
Biscuits as a source of foreign ex-change. Is this the unsung predecessor to Patanjali’s ag-gressive brand of Swadeshi?
A throwback to a time when movie snacks didn’t cost as much as the production budget of a ‘found-footage’ movie.
While beer brands had buxom babes, a trend that lives on, the dealer calendars of biscuit brands were more PG13
Jayanta Jenkins Read the full interview online at etbrandequity.com
CLASSIC ADS FROM PARLE, ONE OF INDIA’S FAVOURITE BISCUIT BRANDS Special Edition
3THE ECONOMIC TIMES JULY 19-25, 2017
Don’t talk to the head. Heads are stubborn. Talk to the heart. The heart sure knows how to talk to the head!
- Sonal Drabral, CCO, Ogilvy & Mather India
Following the uproar on social media, the Mahindra group’s chairman issued a personal apology. Anand Mahindra tweeted: “I want to add my personal apol-ogy. Our core value is to preserve the dignity of the individual & we’ll ensure this does not happen in future.”
But apologies are not a solution to what’s quickly becoming a major threat to all those years of meticulous brand building: employees who aren’t ‘brand compliant’.
There are a few reasons why employ-ees today exercise far more power on company brands. For starters, the employee-employer equation has changed from one of obedience, gratitude, respect and unwaver-ing loyalty to non-de-pendent, entitled and conditional loyalty. People are also armed with sophisticat-ed tools to instant-ly broadcast their feelings, and are more at ease with the consequences t hei r persona l decisions might have on their pro-fessional life. Dr Santrupt Misra, CEO, Carbon Black Business and global director, group hu-man resources at the Aditya Birla Group, highlights the essential differ-ence. Thirty years ago, an employee would have thrown something in the confines of his room or cried in private. “You didn’t have access or avenues to express these feel-ings in public. At most you’d write a let-ter to the chairman or, in some strange cases, a letter to a newspaper editor.”
Misra prescribes a measured and nuanced approach in cases when em-ployees fly off the handle, jeopardising both person and company brand. “We are not living in a perfect world. There will be many such occasions of intend-ed or unintended failure showing up in public platforms. All organisations can do is to continue to make sure their people are skilled and trained to com-municate and do as many things, as right as possible. It’s humanly impos-sible to do anything more in large and diverse organisations.”
Despite mission impossible, compa-nies like the one in the eye of the cur-
rent storm have programs designed to regulate employee expression so they become brand advocates and not poten-tial WBDs. TechM has a Facebook-like social intranet called MyBeat Plus, a blog platform that sees an average of 10 posts a day, Freevoice, an online listening platform, and an initiative called M-Advocates Programme, an integrated social media architecture, which enables employees to amplify the brand on their personal networks. 232 employees from across the group, which has interests in sectors from
auto to software, have been identified to act as social media brand am-bassadors. 106 are from TechM. “Our diversity in talent pool by itself offers rich and varied brand advocacy opportunities” says Rajeev Dubey, group
president - HR and corporate servic-es, CEO – After-Market Sector at M a h i nd r a a nd M a h i n d r a . H e adds, “We recently started a conver-sation/commu-n ic at ion /c a m-paign of positiv-ity within TechM c a l l e d ‘ R i s e f r om Wit h i n’ that’s aligned to the Story Book P r oj e c t . T h e idea is to identi-fy and highlight
stories of positivity. We believe these will fuel folks to share on social, too.”
However, none of this mattered when the sound clip of a lay-off went viral. (At the time of going to press, Hyderabad High Court issued a notice to TechM to respond to the alleged “illegal lay-offs” at the firm.)
What it all comes down to is culture, says Nirmala Menon, founder of HR consultancy, Interweave Consulting. “Leadership has to set the tone. Define upfront what the company stands for and what is acceptable behavior. Call out bad behavior. Train people on how to have conversations. These are things you need to do like the polio drops drive of the Government. Administer two to six drops every few months to eradicate the problem.”
Misra perhaps sums it up best; “Just train your people well enough so they don’t make stupid mistakes.”
In the last part of a special series on the Real Lions of Cannes, we meet the runners-up of Young Lions competition - HUL’s Sachit Handa and Vikram Shashimohan. By Delshad irani
One of the most essential func-tions of Cannes Lions is to help talent, young and old, push their boundaries of creativity. Go beyond what you know and ex-plore the unknown. As clichéd as that might sound, that is per-
haps Cannes Lions noblest purpose. Which is why competitions like the eight-year-old Young Lions are a critical piece of the festival. The competition calls for participants to work on a brief for which teams have just a little over a day to submit their entries. 24 teams from places from Brazil to Belarus participated in the Young Lions Marketers Competition this year. Spain got Gold, Portugal won Bronze and a team of two under-30s got India its second Silver in the competition. Hindustan Unilever’s Vikram Shashimohan, brand manager – Wheel, and Sachit Handa, rural marketing manager, won second place for their unique take on chai time, an indispensable part of daily routine, particu-larly in the UK. Now Handa and Shashimohan walk us through their experience of being Young Lions at Cannes.
The client: International Rescue CommitteeThe brief: Create a product or service and a com-munication plan that would raise awareness among anxious, older and wealthy citizens in Europe and the UK and convince them to accept more refugees in their countries. The work: A popular Unilever brand in the UK, PG Tips tea bags embedded with profiles of refu-gees. A QR code gives users access to more in-formation and an opportunity to speak with the refugee. The tea bags are also infused with spices from the countries the refugees had to flee.
Keep calm and drink tea: The origins While we had been exposed to a lot of news around the refugee crisis, we were surprised by some of the real facts that emerged as we dug deeper, on drivers of public opinion on the mat-ter. Once we hit the underlying insight – that people are hostile towards refugees because they
think they’re just too different to integrate and because they don’t really understand them as people, the rest of the idea just flowed naturally. The fact that Cannes has a glorious beach also helped – our most productive 3km walk for sure! We simply married a fundamental similarity be-tween Syrian refugees and UK citizens – the tea drinking habit – with one of our heritage brands in the UK. Its simplicity made the idea a winner. The fact that we had a working prototype of our idea was the clincher.
Not a cup of tea: The competition, the prep, the challengesOur biggest challenge was the target audience – wealthy, middle-aged people living in the UK and Europe. We didn’t have any native under-standing of them! To effectively paint a clear picture of this TG in an inspiring way (but in a single slide!) took us a good bit of research and a big chunk of time. And in general, time is the big-gest challenge in this competition – teams have just 36 hours to understand the problem and give an inspiring solution.It’s hard to prepare for a competition like this – the topic comes a day before the contest. What we did do before heading to Cannes was speak to a few marketers at HUL about what they think is a good, inspiring brief. The best advice came from our Category VP, “Have fun and learn. The rest is bonus!” We tried to live by that. HUL also sets a very sound foundation for every marketer, and that went a long way in helping us
approach the competition in the right way. The frameworks we apply here at HUL to understandour consumers effectively helped us understandthe completely alien TG in the competition aswell, and quickly, at that. We could also deliverour idea with a lot of conviction because it wassomething we would do ourselves for real inHUL/Unilever, which is aligning well with our sustainable living purpose.
A Marketer at Cannes: First and lastingimpressions It was our first time at Cannes. The scale ofthe festival was surprising. We had our wishlists in terms of sessions we wanted to attendbefore we landed (there was a very usefulapp). They ranged from using data analytics to profile consumers to AR and VR to purpose in creativity. Some of the sessions were reallyquirky and interesting, but some of the big-name sessions were clichéd First World views on inclusion and diversity, which was quitedisappointing. Cannes also needs more representation fromthe client side, to start with. We thought the Burger King session hit the nail right on the head – stories of real partnerships, makingmagic happen as against traditional client-agency relationships need to be celebrated at the festival. Also, the marketers bring in the ef-fectiveness angle best – everybody likes to lookat a White Elephant, but someone has got to pay!
LEADER BOARDThe YouTube Ads Leader Board represents the Top 10 ads on YouTube in India that resonated most with audiences over the past month and recognises the brands that performed best through a combination of popularity and promotion.
The Real Lions-III BECANNES LI NS
@
1 Myntra End Of Reason Sale: The fashion portal packed in two Bollywood heavyweights, Deepika Padukone and Hrithik Roshan.
2 The Intelligent Phone | Panasonic Smart Phones: A woman fulfils her little brother’s wish to see their mother, who’s been hospitalized far from home. Of course, the trip would have been im-possible without her smartphone
3 OnePlus 5 Unboxing Feat. Biswa Kalyan Rath: Comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath unboxes the OnePlus 5, reviews it, plays a game, takes some photos, uses the charging cable as an exercise device and considers calling his mum.
4 Firestone: After some vintage shots of cars and roads juxtaposed with the present, we learn that America’s favou-rite tyre is now on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link.
5 Partnerships For Life – Let’s Play!:Dhoni fetches the ball for a toddler. That’s it.
6 Shahrukh for foodpanda: King Khan in a panda suit, delivering food. Well, if Bollywood isn’t working any more…
7 #YogaForEveryone by JCB: A yel-low tractor that mimics the asanas of a human practitioner.
8 Sapno Ki #ApniDukaan by Amazon: A wife is astonished when she wakes up to her new balcony garden, set up over-night by her husband of the year. Then she steals his chai.
9 Datsun redi-GO defeats Becaar:Redi-Go Swami definitively answers the question the nation most wants to know. Datsun redi-Go is No1. Everything else is bakwas.
10 ICC Champions Trophy 2017 Final: IND & PAK face off in #CupKaMoh: A montage of shots of Indian and Pakistani cricketers and pa-triotic spectators set to a folksy song. Still raw? Skip this ad next time.
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Is your employee...
So how did Sonal come on board?He was doing a big job and a good job. It was not easy. It took time to have discussions and take it forward, step by step. These were not easy decisions for him or me. I wanted him to be back since I knew one of these days, I will have to give Rajiv Rao the license to go (to become a filmmaker). I’d held him back too long and that’s not fair to any individual with a dream. I needed someone who understands our culture, who is respected by the rockstars I have today. And there was no better bet than Sonal. He was an obvious choice.
Considering Ogilvy India has always had a pretty strong bench, did you consider an internal hire?I’ve got so many of them and they are so talented and such equals, I had no choice that I could make without losing some of them. They are all performers as of today – they need a lead who helps them. They are the greatest of trapeze artists. The leader is the net that says if you fall I’ll hold you. And if that net fails there’s me below that, as the second net. (Laughs)
Any favourites among the work he’s created of late?If you consider work that makes an impact, No 1 yaari (for McDowell’s) has impacted business in a huge way. There’s work that will not win Cannes awards but will affect the business of a client. Awards are a side benefit and can’t be your existence. Sonal has definitely impacted DDB.
But why Sonal in particular? Some have suggested his recent track record does not match that of the team you’ve got here. The role of a captain is very different from that of a player. Performance depends on the nature of the wicket. Have I always be-lieved he’d be fantastic at Ogilvy? I have. He had his compulsions, choices and priorities for which he worked elsewhere. I am 100% sure he will make my people blossom, and
blossom himself.
Someone senior in the system told us around the time Sonal left Bates, that he’d become “a helicopter creative head.” The implication was Sonal wasn’t too enthusiastic about working hand’s on. What do you make of that assessment?I refute it completely. Bates
didn’t have a helipad, so it can’t call anyone a helicopter. It was the need of Bates that time to have someone of stature, but I don’t think it was equipped to have a heavyweight and have enough work for him to demonstrate. Maybe that person has changed his POV now. In hindsight, it was a bit of a mismatch. You can’t have a very good player, come and play in a match which does’t have a team. Even Brian Lara couldn’t do that! You put me tomorrow into a disorganised agency and expect me to be Piyush Pandey… it won’t happen in a hurry. Maybe it will happen, but it will take a while. And you will question me about ‘what have you done in a year?’ I will
say ‘wait a bit…’ I don’t think we should pass judgments on people like this.
You’ve always advocated being a playing captain. Does that philosophy still stand?Yes, that theory will not change, ever. The day it changes, I will retire. The day I’m not a contributor, I will go. And I expect the same from Sonal – to be a playing captain. The same applies to him as well. His excitement is that he will come here and get the op-portunity to do so. There’s no such thing as a non-playing captain.
What’s the road ahead for Ogilvy?What Ogilvy is seeking is a creative leader and an inspiration. A guy who believes in clients and brands and gives them confi-dence that we have a young team that will deliver more than what you expect. That’s his job and, in a way, my job too. Ogilvy has to first of all keep up with the times. We can’t live on past glories. We have to set benchmarks, the way we have in the past, for others to follow. And that’s what we are trying to prepare the new Ogilvy for: to be superior on digital and ecom-merce. I’m a firm believer that traditional advertising is here for at least 10 years, so we continue to be superior there. No flanks are left open. Also, we are aiming for substantial growth, so we can look after our people better, and retain more of them who have a desire to last in this agency for 35 years, which I will complete at the end of this month.
Asked about Ajay Gahlaut’s additional mandate as deputy CCO, Pandey says, “He will work with Sonal on the creative vision of Ogilvy and many other things we need to do for the entire organisation. The CCOs report to Sonal with no direct re-porting to Ajay. But Ajay is Sonal’s sound-ing board along with me.” He believes, “Once Sonal comes in, I have readied the team for him to start hitting sixes.”
However to the industry at large, these moves are more like a googly. Many of the people we spoke to saw in it shades of J Walter Thompson’s much-derided three national creative director under one chief creative officer structure from a few years ago. An edifice of designations created to keep staffers happy, and a reluctance to declare a clear first among equals, a task Ogilvy India was willing to take on back in 2009 when Rajiv Rao and Abhijit Avasthi were designated national creative direc-tors. As one former staffer put it, “Back in the day, you had to struggle to even be called executive creative director.”
Also sharply in focus is Sonal Dabral, who, going by the comments of his peers both for this story and in general, is un-doubtedly one of the best-liked people in advertising. According to Raghu Bhat, founder, Scarecrow who worked with Dabral previously, “He’s respected by cli-ents and has an aura of creat-ing Ogilvy’s iconic campaigns, always helpful while leading creative teams. He is highly approachable. You can talk to him on anything! Also he has a mastery over mediums like print, TV and radio.” Adds KV Sridhar, founder, Hyper Collective, “Hiring Sonal is seemingly reverse of the ongoing trend of agencies hiring younger people. Stature has played a big role in the selection.”
However dig a little deeper and its clear Dabral the person has more fans than Dabral the ad man. None of his peers with misgivings about the hire were willing to speak on the record. But many of them were hard pressed to remember memora-ble campaigns from Dabral in the recent past. A rival agency CEO says, “What they needed at this stage was someone
with real hunger. I doubt Sonal has that hunger in him.”
While talking to us Pandey spoke wryly about the ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation he found himself in, with people complaining if there were no changes and jumping to conclusions
about his departure as soon as some announcements were made. He assured us he wasn’t going anywhere. However the consensus in the industry is if it looks like a succession plan and quacks like a succession plan, it is a succession plan.
Which makes Dabral’s task all the more onerous: possible second act to one of the great first acts in Indian ad-vertising history. Following a creative leader so well respected, clients appar-ently are willing to listen if he says “trust me on this.” And as a CEO put it, a leader whose work, for better or worse, it’s al-most impossible to say no to. At this point, Dabral and Ogilvy are probably hoping Thomas Wolfe was wrong and that you can go home again.
DABRAL THE PERSON HAS MORE FANS THAN DABRAL THE AD MAN
OGILVY CAN’T LIVE ON PAST GLORIES. IT HAS TO KEEP UP WITH THE TIMES
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Piyush Pandey
Vikram Shashimohan
Sachit Handa
Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 16 Issue No. 29Published for the Proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400 001Tel. No. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax- (022)-2273 1144 and printed by him at (1) The Times ofIndia Suburban Press, Akurli Road, Western Express Highway, Kandivili (E), Mumbai 400 101. Tel. No. (022) 28872324, 28872930, Fax- (022) 28874230 (2) The Times of India Print City, Plot No. 4, T.T.C. Industrial Area, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli, Navi Mumbai-400708 and (3) TIMES PRESS, Plot No. 5A, Road
