Unlike many of his wrestlers, Vince McMahon is yet to write a book but here are some of his best lessons

INSIDEBE

+

On 2

Are We Losing

Respect For Creativity?

Raj Kamble weighs in

On 4

LIFE AFTER #LIKEAGIRLInterview with Judy John of Leo Burnett Canada

TAURUS UPS ITS GAME

“I NEED TO UNLEARN THINGS I’VE LEARNT OVER THE LAST 27 YEARS”Praveen Kennethon his exit

Towards the end of David Fincher’s Fight Club, the protagonist con-stantly runs into people sporting bruises and, giving him a know-ing (if gap-toothed) grin, and is suddenly struck by how large

his little group has become. Something sim-ilar is happening in India when it comes to wrestling, particularly, the WWE. No, people have not formed clandestine clubs where they don fanciful costumes, and throw each other off ladders — at least we hope that isn’t happening.

But start looking for fans of the WWE and you’ll find them everywhere. Cab drivers who spend their downtime going over ‘stunning steel chair attacks’ on YouTube, and speak about “Khali”, “Undertaker” and “Cena” with the affection you’d previously thought was reserved only for Sachin, Salman and Virat. On Facebook walls, fans of all ages and occupations, discuss the latest developments in Raw and Smackdown with at least as much passion as the fans of premier league football. Except, the football crowd don’t have to deal with some well-meaning idiot from their friend circle asking “You DO know that this is all fake, right?”

The WWE is a cultural force to reckon with — long before he became POTUS, Donald Trump was a WWE Hall of Famer and the clip of him launching a savage physi-cal attack on WWE owner and CEO Vince McMahon is among the most viewed and meme-fied on the Internet. India has a long his-tory with the sport — from grainy videotapes of Wrestlemania events smuggled in and passed around in the 1980s, to the official launch on ESPN Star Sports that made The Undertaker, Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart and The Macho Man Randy Savage household names to perhaps the

ultimate symbol of acceptance — cameos in Bollywood. The camp classic Akshay Kumar starrer Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi featured ‘fake’ Undertaker Brian Lee and Crush aka Brian Adams.

Today, both the WWE and its television partner Sony, believe it’s the second most

watched sport after cricket in the country. George Barrios, WWE’s chief strategy and finance officer says, “Last year, cricket did 4 billion hours of consumption: how much do you think WWE did? We are around 3 billion. India is a jewel for us.”

>Continued on Page4

The (Unwritten) Book of Vince McMahon

HOOP SPRINGS ETERNAL

George Barrios, WWE’s chief strategy and finance officer claims to have been urging his boss Vince McMahon to write a book. But then, he’s also practi-cally “lived the book” working at the WWE. Here are a few of the key lessons according to Barrio and chief marketing and revenue officer, Michelle D Wilson. Always be a fan. Always be a user: Through its early existence, WWE was just one of the many wrestling promotions in America. According to Wilson, among the things that set it apart and allowed it to surge ahead was Vince McMahon’s daily reminders to his staff to remain focused on the fan experience. For instance: what is it like to buy a ticket? How does it feel to go to a live event? To watch one of the TV shows? Being concerned about each of these aspects means the fans are never taken for granted by the WWE — probably the only business where people pay to see the family who owns the show, be beaten up and humili-ated night after night during the McMahon family’s long ‘feuds’ with various wrestlers. Wilson says, “He’s been so respectful of fans across the world, their feedback and importance to the

business. That always pushes us ahead. Not just against other promotions but other forms of entertainment.” Treat every day like it’s your first day on the job: According to Wilson, it took her a while wrapping her head around the concept. The crux, she explains, is “When you come to work, don’t think the way you did things yesterday is the way you have to do them today. We should always stop and ask ‘does this still make sense?’ It helps WWE refresh every-

thing from the way the compa-ny is run, to the roster of talent, to the marketing and the way content is delivered, and has helped it reinvent itself. Wilson recalls, “A lot of people said we’d be crazy to launch our OTT platform, since we were directly cannibalising our business. But Vince said “Say we were launch-

ing WWE today: how would we do it?” The best model is direct to consumer with no middlemen.” The WWE had to shut down a very profitable busi-ness but instead got firsthand data about its viewers and their watch-ing patterns. Take risks and don’t get hung up on failures: The WWE has seen its share

of disasters. Among them, the XFL — which marked Wilson’s first stint with the company — an attempt to fuse the drama of sports entertainment with American football. It didn’t survive longer than its debut season. But the WWE manage-ment didn’t spend time brood-ing. According to Wilson, “A lot of marketers put pressure on themselves to hit home runs. I don’t think that’s how we operate. We do a lot of testing experimenting and figuring out what works.”

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Can WWE Sneak Up On Cricket?The sports entertainment franchise has a rabid and growing fanbase across India. But is that enough? By Ravi Balakrishnan

WWE’S OTT PLATFORM EXISTS DUE TO THE VINCE MC-MAHON MAN-TRA: TREAT EVERY DAY LIKE ITS YOUR FIRST DAY ON THE JOB

BY DELSHAD IRANI

MUMBAI

In July this year, Kevin Durant’s maiden visit to India as a repre-sentative of NBA ended with a Guinness World Record: the world’s largest basketball lesson in multiple venues. Over 3,459 Indian kids got to learn from the 2017 NBA finals MVP who plays for the Golden State Warriors. A pumped Durant returned to the US and in an interview with The Athletic said: “It’s a country that’s 20 years behind in terms of knowledge and experience. You see cows in the street, monkeys running around ev-erywhere, hundreds of people on the side of the road, a million cars and no traffic violations. Just a bunch of underprivileged people there and they want to learn how to play basketball. That was really, really dope to me.”

Once India’s well-oiled outrage machine went into overdrive, Durant said his comments were taken out of con-text (which they were). Eventually he apologised: “I spoke about the differ-ence between my imagination and reality there in Delhi and about where the game is compared to the rest of the world. No offense from this side. I’m coming back out there for more camps and cool s***. Sorry....”

However, there are several grains of truth in what Durant said at least about basketball.

The hoop-laGlance through brochures of upcom-ing apartment complexes in Indian cities, and you’d be hard-pressed to find one not touting a sports fa-cility. Buildings that promise neighbou rs like a Bachchan bahu or a Khan or Zidane, offer squash courts and indoor pools. But even if it’s not a Trump Tower-esque clus-ter of glass facade build-ings, one of the sport op-tions in the pitch is usually ‘basket-ball court’. Works with any number of players, in tight spaces, at ground level or on the roof, and needs mini-

mal equipment. Many city schools and colleges have such courts too, some-times a single hoop missing a net.

Blame it on Bollywood for mak-ing basketball shorthand for “cool”. In the 1998 Bollywood hit, Kuch

Kuch Hota Hai, Rahul Khanna’s (Shah Rukh Khan) cool credentials are firmly established when he dribbles his way into the hearts of his female college mates. In the film adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s Half

Girlfriend, a country boy and a city girl bond over their shared passion for basketball. Never mind Rahul Khanna’s wholly inappropriate kit

or the fact that city girl Shraddha Kapoor does not break a sweat after a full game — when it comes to cool, authenticity is optional. But a lot of millennial and post millennial inter-est in the game can be traced back to global basketball stars like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, and, some might add, the 1996 Warner Bros hit Space Jam featuring Looney Tunes cartoon characters.

According to those watching the sun-rise sector of sport in India, basketball has become the fastest growing sport. That’s despite the crushing ubiquity of cricket and growing popularity of foot-ball (international and local), kabaddi and wrestling, among others.

>Continued on Page4

NBA and basketball have a tough game ahead if they want to usurp football’s place in India’s sports line-up India is a top two priority

market for NBA.Yannick Colaco VP & MD, NBA India

BLAME IT ON BOLLYWOOD FOR MAKING BASKET-BALL SHORTHAND FOR “COOL”

JAB VADA THOUGHT BADA…

JUMBOKING’S NEW GAMBIT

the twitter index

On 3

AN

IRB

AN

BO

RA

THE ECONOMIC TIMES OCTOBER 25-31, 2017

CCI NG 3.7 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 25-10-2017 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEFP User: sachin.kapoor Time: 10-20-201720:58 Color: CMYK

Can Spanish company Taurus step up its Tiki Taka with kitchen appliance brand Inalsa? By Rajiv Singh

The thumb rule of Tiki Taka, a Spanish style of playing football marked by short passes, swift movement and keeping the ball under posses-sion as much as possi-

ble, is to wear out the opponent. Nobody knows it better than Joan Basagana, vice president of Spain’s biggest small kitchen appliance brand Taurus that bought Indian brand Inalsa way back in 2004. Ironically, Basagana is the one who ended up being exasperated.

While at the time of acquisition, the revenue of the Indian brand was `22 crore and loss was `3.77 crore, after 13 years, the sales have crawled to `89 crore, and the company posted a mea-gre profit of `7 crore in 2016. The rev-enue for this calendar year is projected to creep by just ̀ 5 crore!

Tiki Taka, clearly, has done little good to the Spanish company that has been in possession of Inalsa for over a de-cade, but has failed to score in terms of aggressively scaling up revenues and profits. The game, concedes Basagana, needs to change.

“Now it’s time to be more aggressive,” he asserts. Inalsa, reckons Basagana, wou ld h ave d i s - ap -peared 13 years ago. The mis-sion now is to make it a big player.

Basagana lists out reasons for the se-date pace of growth. “Inalsa was in a bad shape in 2004. It was a loss-making company,” he recounts. Apart from fi-nancial woes, the brand was grappling with two serious problems: it was per-ceived as a food processor company and not a kitchen appliance brand, and was geographically confined to North India. Another issue to grapple with was acute working capital constraints. “The immediate task for us was to get the brand back on track,” he says.

While focusing on top line without compromising on the bottom line was the top priority, the strategy gelled well with the business philosophy of family-owned Taurus: not taking risks and go-ing slow. “We didn’t want to be too aggressive in our approach. It could have backfired,” avers Basagana, adding that one of the learn-ings of the company rather than a regret is being less ag-gressive in terms of visibility on TV and newspapers. “The top line could have been different had we been more vis-ible,” he rues.

Another mistake was not launching premium brands from the global stable of Taurus. “Today 98% of the sales in India comes from brands under Inalsa rather than Taurus,” he says. The anomaly, he points out, will soon be a thing of the

past as the brand is gearing up to step up its game

in India. The c o m p a n y h a s b e e n

scouting for acquisitions in South and West India to expand by taking the in-organic route. It’s looking to enter into segments such as vacuum cleaners and air purifiers.

“Taurus is very strong in this cat-egory (vacuum cleaner) and we’d like to replicate that success here,” he says.

It’s time for Inalsa, reckon marketing experts, to catch the bull by the horns. “The brand has to bend it like Beckham and stop playing Tiki Taka,” says Ashita Aggarwal, head of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. Indians have started gradu-ating to branded items when it comes to small kitchen appliances. So any more laxity on the part of the Spanish brand can cost it dear, she points out. “Taurus has to invest more in building brand awareness which has lost sig-nificant ground to the Bajajs, Maharaja Whitelines and Philips of the world,” she reckons.

The kitchen appliances market in India, avers Aggarwal, is more or less commoditised where there is little product differentiation and price re-

mains the prime consideration of pur-chase. When there is no new techno-logical advancement and innovation, marketers have to differentiate using other attributes, and that’s where sensory branding can come into play. Inalsa, she believes, will have to im-prove product portfolio, innovate and work on aesthetics to make the brand more visible and stand out from clut-ter. “Coming from behind is not easy but Inalsa has the potential to play the catch-up game,” she adds.

Basagana, for his part, reckons that the brand will be able to achieve 100% growth in three years. “We plan to launch more products, expand market reach and share, and focus more on ecommerce,” he says. Taurus philoso-phy, he lets on, is to be among the top three players in every market it oper-ates in. Inalsa is among the Top 10 in India today. “The first target for us now is to bring it among Top 5,” he says, sig-nalling his aggressive intent. Can the Spanish armada conquer India? Well, it’s already set sail.

rajiv.singh@timesgroup.com

SIDETAKEThe Nielsen company says it has a way to collect and widely spread de-tails about how many people watch programming produced by streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. Nielsen said that eight television net-works and studios, including ABC and NBC, have subscribed to it.

Even with Amazon’s The Handmaid’s Tale winning an Emmy for best drama last month, the number of people who actually watch the pro-gram has remained a mystery. Since 2014, Nielsen has been able to count viewership of streamed programs but reported it only to the companies that stream them. The companies, led by industry behemoth Netflix, have largely kept that information a secret.

Now, Nielsen will be able to measure viewership of streamed programs through an audio signature that does not require any action by the pro-grammers to activate it, said Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s senior vice president of product leadership.Clients like ABC and NBC will be able to know how many people are watching “House of Cards,” for example, and have no reason to keep that infor-mation private.

“When people start ana-lyzing this, they’re going to be quite surprised at the size of the audience these programs are command-

ing,” Fuhrer said.The research company will be able

to measure the impact of binge-watching, too. When a company like Netflix releases a season’s worth of

episodes on a single day, that show’s fans watch an average of four and a half episodes in a day, Nielsen said. When Netflix made eight episodes of its series “Marvel’s The Defenders”

available on the same day in August, all of them landed among the 20 most-watched television programs for the week among viewers in the prized 18-to-49-year-old demographic, Nielsen said. The remake “Fuller House” has also had strong numbers. People will also learn demographic infor-mation on a show’s audience, like which programs are more appeal-ing to young people.

Source: Business Insider

Just Bend It Like Beckham

MARKETING EXPERTS RECKON IT IS TIME FOR BRAND INALSA TO STOP PLAYING TIKI TAKA AND BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM INSTEAD

Inalsa would have disappeared

13 years ago. The mission now is to make it a big player

Joan Basagana, Taurus

PRESENTING THE BRAND ENGAGEMENT INDEX

AS ON OCTOBER 18, 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.

the twitterindex

1) @oppomobileindiaOPPO Mobile India strengthened its proposition of being the best Diwali gift by running a special #YourBestDiwaliGift campaign during the India vs Australia T20 match. It kept users engaged with several questions throughout the match for a chance to win a Team India jersey.

2) @HeroMotoCorpHero MotoCorp and FIFA joined forces for the in-stream video sponsorship deal with the #FIFAU17 World Cup to give its followers the opportunity to watch the best moments from #FIFAU17 on their Twitter timelines. The brand had the opportunity to associate with premium video content from FIFA U-17 and distribute it to fans and audiences across the platform which resulted in high engagement.

3) @TheOfficialSBIWith its #SBIFestiveFun campaign, SBI encouraged users to be part of a mini mythology and festive quiz. The bank encouraged followers to test their knowledge by asking questions related to several festivals. The contest ran for a period of 10 days.

4) @MahindraKUV100Mahindra took to Twitter to announce the launch of New Mahindra KUV100 NXT. The brand kept users engaged by first announcing the live webcast for the launch, followed by several pictures and a video to get a closer look.

5) @amazonIN To create awareness for the #AmazonGreatIndianFestival, Amazon ran the #KaroMilkeTayyari campaign where it en-couraged users to get set for a huge discount on electronics, clothes, watches and more with short videos. In addition, the brand ran a Guess The Phone contest for its followers giv-ing them a chance to win an iPhone 7.

BY RAJIV SINGH

DELHI

Tongue-in-cheek advertising, reckon mar-keting gurus, serves dual purpose. It helps a brand take a dig at a much bigger rival, and secondly, it helps in connecting with the tar-get audience. For Jumboking, the quintes-sential vada pav brand largely confined to Mumbai and Pune, its witty hoarding in August this year fired on both the cylinders.

The cheeky tagline “always loved it’ not only replaced ‘W’ in always with an inverted M which resembled the logo of McDonald’s, it also played on the ‘lovin it’ catchline of the American burger biggie. The bullet hit the target: people saw a girl with a burger in her hand, taking a pot shot at McDonald’s. The point that a vada pav brand was hard-sell-ing burger was also not missed. The compa-ny quickly pulled down the ad though, after objections raised by McDonald’s.

“We are an Indian burger with a desi taste and feel,” avers Dheeraj Gupta, the manag-ing director who co-founded the vada pav brand Jumboking with his wife in 2001. The idea then was to sell vada pav which was not only branded but also bigger than the ones sold by roadside vendors.

After sixteen years, as Jumboking seeks to mor ph vada pavinto a burger, the idea still remains. To sell a burger which is not only bigger but also better than others in terms of appealing to regional palate. Sample these seven burgers chris-tened as JK of the day: Corn palak, chole,schezwan, nachos, crispy veg, achari and cheese. “Indians love variety, and a local brand knows the pulse of the consumers better than MNCs,” he says, adding that burgers now account for 40% of the sales of Jumboking.

Gupta is betting big on his local innova-tions to complete the transformation. Reason: when the biggies like McDonald’s and Dominos can adapt to Indian conditions by selling aloo tikka and pizzas inspired by Chandni Chowk ka parathas, then why can’t an Indian company do it? While there is enough room for multiple players, lets on Gupta, the sweet spot for Jumboking would be in positioning itself as an Indian burger.

The foray into burgers was driven by some practical considerations. Firstly, vadapavsrestricted the geographical reach of the brand as the product is a staple for people in Western India only. Second, heat from other branded vada pav players such as

Goli vada and increasing resistance from local vada pav players who harped on the regional connect of the product and its own-ers. Jumboking was faced with little choice but to diversify. Burgers, as it turned out, seemed like a natural extension, both in looks and taste. The vada is now replaced by a patty and the pav with a bun.

In a nation that has an involved vegetarian population, reckon marketing experts, rein-venting the great Indian vegetarian burger appears to be a smart call. “The Indian burger with the green dot is a differentia-tion that can work, provided the taste is as Indian and local as it comes,” avers brand expert Harish Bijoor. A chole tikki burger, a paneer pasanda burger, and a whole host of options are exciting things to try, he says, adding that a desi burger is a QSR possibil-ity for sure. It is a fusion of the QSR format and the burger that is Western, with a taste that is desi. Bijoor recommends customisa-

tion, continuous change of offering and an excit-ing price point.

In spite of the auda-cious gambit by the Gupta, the makeover of the vadapavs might not be an easy bite. Reason: just like a tongue-in-cheek ad, a product makeover is a double-edged sword. “Vada pavsgave Jumboking a dif ferentiator. Burgers might kill

that,” says Ashita Aggarwal, head of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. There is a certain set of expectation of people when it comes to vada

pav, which might not be the same in case of burgers. Moreover, with the presence of deeply-entrenched MNC and Indian players like Burger Singh, can Jumboking carve out its niche? While Jumboking might have a price advantage, can it match the high quality fare served by its famed rivals, she asks. Bijoor too sounds a word of caution. The moment you launch an aloo-tikki burg-er, there will be five others who can do a bet-ter offering at a lower price. “This is there-fore going to be a forever battle,” he says.

Gupta, however, is not bothered by com-petition. When Jumboking started sell-ing branded vada pavs, recounts Gupta, few gave the brand a chance. ‘Vada pavsare vada pavs, nobody can build a brand around them’ was the familiar jibe. “Jumboking proved them wrong,” he as-serts. The Indian burger too will find its place, he claims, as he tries to prove that elephants too can dance.

rajiv.singh@timesgroup.com

Jab Vada Thought Bada…

Nielsen says it can fi nally tell us how many people are watching Netfl ix shows

PH

OTO

S: A

SHW

AN

I N

AG

PAL

BH

AR

AT

CHA

ND

A

Jumboking is morphing from a vada pav into a desi burger. Will the gambit pay off?

“INDIANS LOVE VARIETY, AND A LOCAL BRAND KNOWS THE PULSE OF THE CONSUMERS BETTER THAN MNCS”

Dheeraj Gupta, MD, Jumboking

“There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there.” - Colonel Sanders, founder, KFC

Inalsa is still an

urban brand but ecommerce has made us send products to ev-ery corner of India

Jitendra Chauhan, CEO of Inalsa

2THE ECONOMIC TIMES OCTOBER 25-31, 2017

CCI NG 3.7 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 25-10-2017 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEPER1 User: sachin.kapoor Time: 10-20-201720:59 Color: CMYK

GLOCAL BUZZ 3

Life After #LikeAGirlIn an exclusive chat with Brand Equity, Judy John of Leo Burnett Canada, talks about #LikeAGirl, the road ahead with Marcel, and more.

By Shephali Bhatt

Around two years ago, Judy John, CEO of Canada and CCO of North America at Leo Burnett, was travelling to New York for work when she got a call from her daughter. John

immediately answered the phone thinking something had to be really wrong for her child to reach out during school hours. The reason was nothing she could have imag-ined. “They had called an assembly at her school just to show the #LikeAGirl cam-paign (for P&G’s Always, by Leo Burnett). She was so excited,” John recalls. Her daugh-ter made sure all the teachers knew her mother was a pivotal part of the campaign. “For a child to think her parent is cool is the most incredible feeling,” she says.

#LikeAGirl was an idea that came out of a brainstorming meeting across three Leo Burnett offices: London, Hong Kong, and Chicago. “We all had wonderful ideas on the table - ideas in the form of paragraphs and pictures. Amidst that, I saw a lonely piece of paper with just a hashtag - Like a girl. It was from the London team,” she recalls. It instantly struck a chord with John who realised how the phrase is so often used in a derogatory manner when it should actu-

ally inspire positivity. “We all had personal stories of the phrase being used on us - like when we played any sport. I found that I was guilty of it too: telling my daughter to “stop crying like a girl”. I was so embarrassed be-cause we are a part of our own problem.”

Ever since, she has stopped using the phrase negatively. The campaign fetched several international awards. It’s something that has given John a bigger voice at the ta-ble. “When I was younger, I could feel that I’d be in a room and no one would make eye con-tact with me. I found that really odd because growing up, I never thought we had any bar-riers to climb. I thought we got hired for our talent.” Instead of succumbing to the situ-ation, though, John asked herself what she ought to do to earn her seat at the table. After #LikeAGirl, many clients have approached her with the request of doing “something as great as that” - proof that great work is in-deed the answer to her question.

Everyone in advertising thinks about quit-ting advertising, she says; because there are really hard days. But then, there’s the opportunity of having a giant microphone and using it to make a great impact. It helps justify the decision to stay back, especially when the ecosystem is changing so rapidly.

Speaking of change, Leo Burnett is going through one too what with no awards par-ticipation for a year, choosing to focus on Marcel, an AI-driven collaboration plat-

form between Publicis Groupe companies. Is Marcel really worth the sacrifice? “It is hard to understand from the creative stand-point,” she admits. It was harder consider-ing the announcement came during the Cannes Lions this year. New clients shared their apprehensions: they’d gone with Leo Burnett so their work would be recognised across creative award shows. “So, now we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to make sure good work is recognised.” Leo Burnett is currently working with Marcel on some projects, she tells us. “When it comes to fi-nancial decisions such as these, creatives will always see if we could have found a dif-ferent way. But if we can unlock creativity without borders with Marcel, it would be

incredibly powerful,” she adds. Let’s not forget John wears both the cre-

ative as well as the financial hat - a rarity. “I never thought I’d be a CEO. My then CEO put me in a training course a year before he retired (2010). I felt so disadvantaged among those CFOs back then, trying to understand balance sheets while cursing him for doing this to me. But when the three-day course ended, I knew how an agency is run,” she re-calls. John feels it is empowering to under-stand the monetary aspect. “Often there’s a naivety to our creative-only side: we think everything is possible.” The financially responsible side thinks about how to make it happen and often knows not all creative ideas are worth financing.

It is this #NotAll-ideas debate that keeps her awake at night. “It’s the fear of being re-ally crappy at your job that motivates me.” An essential for every creative, doubly so for a creative CEO.

shephali.bhatt@timesgroup.com

Please read the full story online at etbrandequity.com

MY FINANCIALLY RESPONSIBLE SIDE THINKS ABOUT HOW TO MAKE THINGS HAPPEN AND OFTEN KNOWS NOT ALL CREATIVE IDEAS ARE WORTH FINANCINGJudy John Leo Burnett Canada

One of the things that gets my goat about how the advertising indus-try is treated is this whole notion around conflict of interest.

If a client’s agency goes even within sniffing distance of anoth-er brand in the same or adjacent category, the said agency is imme-diately put under threat of being fired or of a pitch being called. And as fellow agencies, we don’t help our own cause and tend to feed off each other’s fear and insecurity.

It’s almost like, according to cli-ents, the default mode is that we’re untrustworthy and will definitely leak confidential information and share one brand’s strategy with an-other. Of course, alongside all this they want the agency to have copi-ous amounts of relevant and recent category experience.

The two solutions the ad industry has come up with to work around this hurdle are to set up second and third agencies, or to quietly do it without calling too much attention to themselves.

The other parallel – that I myself have drawn sometimes and heard others do too – as a wishful alterna-tive that is offered is with the con-sulting industry. There, having multiple clients within the same industry category is seen as desir-able. It’s called a Practice. And cli-ents flock to consultants precisely

for that reason.And yet, when it comes to apply-

ing the same logic to ad agencies, we seem to get the short end of the stick.

So, instead of whipping out the “What about the con-sultancy business?” argument again, I’d like to draw clients’ attention to another part of their business / marketing ecosys-tem — the retailers.

This crucial last mile is, regardless of category for the most part, populated by re-tailers who are almost always multi-brand outlets (MBOs). From the neighborhood ki-rana store to more urban modern trade outlets, department stores, and more contemporarily, online marketplaces, they are all MBOs.

They not only stock multiple brands in the same category, but it’s the main reason consumers shop with them. They offer choice and a one-stop-shop solution that consum-ers are seeking.

But go back to the first part of the previous paragraph.

They stock multiple brands in the same category.

To paraphrase it back to the con-text of clients and ad agencies, that

ought to be textbook conflict of in-terest. But nobody sees it like that.

Instead, it’s just accepted as a real-ity of how the market operates.

Currently, the common aspects to the consumer-retailer and client-ad agency relationship is this: in both cases, the consumer/client has the power of choice at their disposal. The client can choose whichever agency they want to go with from the mul-tiple choices at hand.

But here’s the crucial difference. The retailer also has the option of profiting from offering multiple choices within the same category.

Or, to put it another way, in the last mile, a retailer’s salesmanship is available for Brand A, B, C or Z equally. In fact, the onus is on the brand to enlist the retailer’s energy and effort best towards their cause over another brand’s. But they can’t insist on exclusivity—because the market norm is one of multiplicity. The retailer simultaneously “works on” multiple brands at all times.

The only exception is when brands go down the route of exclusive or sin-gle brand outlets (EBO / SBO)—in which case their associated costs are

higher. But that’s a conscious choice they make and the premium associat-ed with that is also an accepted norm.

Let’s come back now to ad agencies—creators of brand pull in the first mile, if you will. Why can’t the same rules apply to us?

T h e p o w e r o f choice — to choose from a myriad of ad

agencies (think of us as “communi-cation retailers”)—still rests with clients. But ad agencies should also lay claim to the power of choice — to offer their “salesmanship” to multiple brands simultaneously. And if a client wishes to exercise exclusivity over an agency’s ser-vices, then paying a premium for it should be as much of an accepted norm as it is in the case of the re-tailers. No?

The author is Group Executive & Strategy Officer, Dentsu

Brand Agencies, India. Views expressed are personal.

BY INVITATIONDentsu’s Narayan Devanathan on why clients ought to think of ad agencies as “communication retailers”

In The Interest of Confl ict

FOR CLIENTS THE DEFAULT MODE IS AGENCIES ARE UNTRUST-WORTHY & WILL LEAK CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION

THIN

KST

OCK

Praveen Kenneth retired from L&K Saatchi & Saatchi earlier this month, selling his stake in the agency for ̀ 380 crores according to industry sources. Brand Equity quizzed him on how the agency began, grew and what’s next.

You were the youngest CEO at Publicis at 29. Why did you leave and start your own agency?It was a lot of adrenaline and arrogance. When you are 30 or 31, you are fearless and think you can do anything. I always hated authority: even in Publicis. They were supposed to do a back-end merger between, strangely enough, Publicis and Saatchi, both of whom were very small at the time. It would be a two door agency structure and I was not happy with how it was going to be implemented. That disagreement made me think I can start on my own. And so I started St Lukes for Asia Pacific.

Anita Roddick of The Body Shop was among the initial investors in Law & Kenneth. How did that come about?It happened one drunken night with Andy Law after he was done with boymeetsgirl. We thought we should set up an agency. The only person he knew who had money at the time was Anita Roddick who had just sold The Body

Shop to L’Oréal. We called her in that drunken state and said “We want to start an agency and need you to fund it.” She said “Boys, get sober, and let’s have breakfast tomorrow.” The next morning, we thought, “What have we done to ourselves?” But in the middle of breakfast, she said she’d give us the money. The only con-dition was that we put our names on the door. She said, “That’s the only way to bring respect to what you are doing.” We started with a glob-al network of 16 offices. We even came close to buying a network agency. We realised we could raise the money but we were not mak-ing enough to pay the interest. Anita passed away in 2007. And then in 2008, when the world imploded, Andy and I decided to take differ-ent roads. I figured the world does not need a brown skin to teach them advertising. It took me a while to get that!

Why did you sell Law & Kenneth?It was the realisation that the organisation has to go beyond me. I’d be telling lies if I didn’t add it was also to make sure that as an investor and businessman, the value was encashed. I don’t believe at least in India, you can actually be a very big indie, thriving and making huge margins. The market is too small.

Post-merger, we’ve heard that many founders take their foot off the gas. How was it for you?I worked the hardest in the last three years. I had to ensure the leadership was strength-ened to look beyond me. I couldn’t sit at home…I had to be in office, redirecting people to the two Anil Nairs. I moved from a centralised resource to a decentralised model.

What do you have to say to the people in the in-dustry who say your team who’s been with you from day one were perhaps not rewarded as well as you were, considering you were the owner of the agency?(Laughs) They must go see a couple of people smiling today and I should not pass any judg-ment on that smile. I’ve always shared every-thing I got in my life and that’s only given me more. I’ve put the people who’ve really mat-tered in the system first and that’s ensured they’d do the same with me.

How did your clients react to the merger?We didn’t lose clients over the last five years. Our top clients are still ITC, Hero, P&G, Dabur, Kent, Pepperfy, Renault…Post ac-quisition, we got HSBC, the P&G folio with Pampers, Ariel and Head & Shoulders.

On Ariel, the Share The Load case study films talked about the impact it had on the brand. But it didn’t mention that there was also a more worka-day campaign on Ariel created by your agency, running in parallel. How did that make you feel?(Laughs) Clients have the right to decide who they want to work with on any given task. I respect the work BBDO did. Every activity the client engages in, eventually needs to sup-port the brand. If it made the client happy, I’m happy to live with it.

What plans for the future?I need to decompress myself. I’m still run-ning on old conditioning that’s helped me get this far. If I don’t pick newer patterns, I won’t make any progress. I need to unlearn things I’ve learnt in the last 27 years. I’m honestly not sure what I want to do: life has given me a lot and I’m blessed with more than I thought I deserve. If there’s anything I would do, it will come from a place of creating some value and impact to the world in general while earlier, it was about fame, money and recognition.

Will you start another agency after your non-compete ends?I think I’m done and dusted with advertis-ing as I know it for now. But the business is evolving drastically and who knows how the world will be two years from now? At the end of my non compete, I will decide if that’s what I want to dive into. I will, if I still under-stand the business.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Please read the full story online at etbrandequity.com

“I need to unlearn things I’ve learnt over the last 27 years”

AT 30 OR 31, YOU ARE FEARLESS AND THINK YOU CAN DO

ANYTHING. I ALWAYS HATED AUTHORITY:

EVEN IN PUBLICIS

Praveen Kenneth on growing one of India’s biggest indies and a tentative ride into the sunset. By Ravi Balakrishnan

“Until the ratio of men to women in the executive department is 1:1, we shouldn’t stop at anything.” - Tamara Ingram, CEO, J walter Thompson

3THE ECONOMIC TIMES OCTOBER 25-31, 2017

CCI NG 3.7 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 25-10-2017 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEPER2 User: sachin.kapoor Time: 10-20-201721:00 Color: CMYK

Famous Innovations Founder and CCO, Raj Kamble, on why creativity is getting the short shrift

What is happening to our business? I’ve tried to keep my chin up and play along, but I can’t anymore. I have to say

what we all are thinking and probably too scared to admit. Creativity is losing respect. We use words like ‘partners,’ ‘custodians,’ ‘stakeholders’. But in truth, agencies are increasingly being treated like ‘vendors’. ‘I give you money, you give me what I ask for’ seems to be the law of the land. In the five years since I re-turned to India, I have seen the average retainer fall - not rise. From what I hear, this is the case across the world.

How can creativity lose its value in the creative business? Isn’t it like saying the chef does not matter in a restaurant or a doctor in a hospital? The answer is far from simple. But, here are the three big contributing factors:

1. Believing creative work is a low-skill jobOur creative industry is among the more liberal ones when it comes to hiring. And while many a creative people do go through rigorous specialisation, at the end of the day, the work matters more than a degree. Which means that un-like medicine, law, etc. qualification in advertising can be subjective. But then, people mistake this liberal attitude and

start seeing creative work as a low-skill job. It’s when we start calling anyone with Photoshop and Illustrator skills an art or studio person or anyone who can string two sentences together a content special-ist/copywriter. As the global phenomena of outsourcing has taught us low-skill labour gets replaced with a lower-cost op-tion who can ‘do the same thing.’

Consider a junior servicing person from the industry who joins a client and hires a friend from the art department as ‘in-house studio.’ They probably save anything between a few thousands and a couple of lakhs. But, in the process, they forget that a solitary art person does not equal an advertising agency. Back there, he was part of a system, with people who have been at the job for years, who can spot an alignment error from a mile away and smell the lack of aesthetic sense or comprehension, even when an ad is technically correct. Unfortunately, the pinch of this poor judgement is usu-ally felt only when the in-house studio releases incorrect artworks that go up on crores worth of media. In most cases when the error is not obvious, the only one hurt is the art director who origi-nally conceptualised the ad.

2. Cheap media = cheap productionIf you were to believe marketing cir-cles, Facebook and Google are the best things to happen to mankind since fire or the wheel. There is no denying the whirlwind of change these megaliths have caused. But in everyday reality, it boils down to one thing - cheap media.

Not only is this reductive reasoning un-dermining the potential of what these platforms can do, it is also lowering re-spect for creativity. Suddenly equipped with cheap media, marketers and agen-cies find themselves under pressure to fill the space with something. And that something is usually cheap content. The new mantra seems to be - let’s create an

incessant flow of cheap content, rather than the old way of producing 1-2 big hero pieces a year. Content can be more topi-cal, relevant and versatile. We don’t need Autumn-Winter and Spring-Summer; we can have a new collection every month, every week - whenever we want.

It sounds great! Except cheap content looks, smells, sounds and feels cheap. Worse, it takes a brand with tremendous potential and makes it cheap too. No agency is against prudent use of mar-keting budgets, but just because a cheap resource is available, it doesn’t mean we deploy it. Data backs this argument. In spite of a sea of content, the most con-sumed brand content remains the one with high production value. Think about

the last piece of branded content or ad you found memorable or deeply impact-ful. Do you think it was cheap?

3. Agencies are putting too much pressure on themselvesIt would be unfair to say that market-ers alone are to blame. Agencies carry equal, if not more, responsibility. All the detrimental changes in the ecosystem are because we allowed them to become possible. We didn’t take a stand when the client moved artworks to in-house stu-dios. We found newbie directors when the client wanted a film cheap. We relin-quished our position on everything from our pitch fee to retainer.

Agencies have put too much pressure

on themselves. We throw ideas at clients as if they are little insects biting us. The activation/digital part of a presentation is usually just there to tick the “360” box. We don’t pause to realise that hid-den in each one of those ‘extra’ slides could be a million dollar idea. Imagine if 15 years ago, while working on Nokia’s Connecting People, an agency came up with an idea for a site where people came come online to connect. It’s likely the cli-ent would approve the idea, but in a rush to create a TVC and meet deadlines, the agency would forget about the site. But in a dorm room, one kid took the idea seri-ously and today we call it Facebook.

Some of this pressure comes from com-mitment to meet targets from global offices. A lot of it is from the fear that a team of recent graduates from a ‘new age’ design school might replace us any day. So we keep pandering to the ever-fickle demands from across the table and trying to appear ‘new age’. Creating an industry-wide identity crisis. There are no advertising agencies any more. We are all trying to be digital, move-ment, content, or innovation agencies. It’s like we have forgotten what we’re made of. We’ve forgotten ad agencies have been ‘new age’ since the 1950’s. Our job was always to stay ahead of the curve. Sometimes we’d reflect society, other times we’d lead it - but each time we think, we think like only creators can. And true creators can never not be ‘new age.’ You can put a multitude of fancy tags - but that’s what advertising is and has always been about: creating some-thing from nothing. It’s unfortunate we no longer see it.

The author is founder and CCO of Famous Innovations.

Views expressed are personal.

Are We Losing Respect For Creativity?

THIN

KST

OCK

BY INVITATION

In truth, agencies are increasingly being treated like ‘vendors’.Raj Kamble

Continued from Page 1 >>

Hoop Springs EternalBasketball has a long way to go.

Lack of a robust local competitive structure (which adversely affects the talent pool), international tele-vised games and thus viewership, that pulls in advertisers, are its biggest shortcomings. Basketball in India is, in Bhagat-speak, a half sport. However, its potential hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Not gonna be a slam-dunk

The US’s National Basketball Association has stepped in to help the game gain popularity. The NBA operates in dozens of coun-tries across the world and India is one of its two top priority mar-kets, says its managing director for India, Yannick Colaco. Over 50 lakh kids and 6000 coaches have been trained under its programs and at the NBA Academy in Delhi. Kolkata, a traditional bastion of football, has suddenly become a big hub. This year 900 schools participated in NBA’s program. Far more live games are being aired on Indian TV. Last year, 8.9 million tuned in to watch 14 NBA matches with Hindi commentary aired by the association’s official broadcast partner Sony Pictures Network.

NBA India will also bring more stars like Durant to India (perhaps insisting they stick to the script this time.) Fashion portal Jabong now sells official merchandise. Also helping it is influencer marketing: Ranveer Singh, Abhishekh Bachchan and Rannvijay Singh apart from com-edy collective AIB’s Gursimran Khamba and Tanmay Bhatt have all been roped in. Colaco assures us these celebs are true fans and he’d never sign a personality just for his or her brand value.

I n nu m b e r t e r m s , t h e Professional Kabaddi League clocks in second after cricket in TV ratings according to media agency folk, but unlike kabaddi, the WWE is a year-round phenomenon. Sony runs 42+ hours of programming weekly on an average accord-ing to Rajesh Kaul, president – distribution and sports busi-ness, Sony Pictures Network. Its strongest region, the South, accounts for 40% of viewer-ship. The recently concluded WrestleMania 33 was, accord-ing to a WWE spokesperson, “the most-viewed in the history of WrestleMania in India. Total reach for primetime repeat across all channels was 67.3 million unique viewers.”

On digital and social, India is the No 1 market for the WWE on Facebook. YouTube views lag only the United States. Says Michelle Wilson, chief revenue and marketing officer, WWE, “We looked at those numbers and said our business, from a revenue standpoint, should be so much bigger from India. What are we missing?”

To find out, the team arrived in India, meeting broadcast partners, brands and so-cial media behemoths. Part of the entourage was Paul Levesque, ex-ecutive vice president - talent, live events & creative, better known as Triple H. Both Williams and B a r rios ex-p e r i e n c e d the WWE’s popularity firsthand a s w h a t they as -s u m e d

would be strictly business meetings were interrupted by lengthy selfie sessions with the WWE superstar.

Through the last year and a half, the WWE has pulled out all the stops in making India a focus. It hired an official mer-chandise partner, started a special Hindi program called WWE Sunday Dhamaal to buf-fer viewership in the Hindi speaking markets, is looking to foray into other languages and planning a two-night marquee event in Delhi later this year. In early 2018, it intends rebooting its action figure business.

But perhaps its biggest step to woo India is Indo-Canadian wrestler Jinder Mahal, the cur-rent champion for Smackdown. While a heel (WWE-speak for villain) to the rest of the world, in WWE’s Hindi language feed, ‘The Modern Day Maharaja’ is a babyface (WWE-speak for hero) — Wilson claims it’s one of the company’s many experi-

ments. Of the 100 wrestling superstars in training at the company’s centre in Orlando, Florida, 11 are Indian.

Helping WWE along is the in-creasing importance it’s plac-ing on data driven marketing. Says Wilson, “You can’t get away saying ‘I’m doing some TV’ and when the CEO asks you if it works, you say ‘I think it does.’ The amount of data and analytics is really chang-ing the marketing role.” WWE intends improving its market-ing with more than just the “educated guesses” it relied on in the past, with a clear view of who is watching from where and what appeals to them.

However media industry vet-erans believe any sport want-ing to dethrone cricket is quix-otic. Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO – South Asia, Dentsu Aegis network says, “Some 15 years ago in Lintas, we did a study on spends and found cricket was getting 78%. We figured things would have changed now, with all the leagues, and so did a fairly de-tailed study recently only to find it now accounts for 82%!” He concedes though that the WWE has an additional at-traction since it’s more than a sport, but believes everything other than cricket is niche.

However, if any sport has the required training to pull off a surprise it’s the WWE: where heroes become villains, vil-lains turn heroic and under-dogs pull of shocking victories, on a regular basis. It claims to have the views — will the spends follow?

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Please read the full story online at etbrandequity.com

An IPL-like makeoverBasketball is also counting on

not being too late to catch the league bus. While the UBA Pro Basketball League organised by the United Basketball Alliance is just two-years old, plans for anoth-er league are already afoot. Says Colaco, “From a sports perspec-tive leagues get a lot of visibility. But a sports success is not going to be determined by a league. An ecosystem needs to be developed,” pointing to the thousands of local tournaments , semi-pro and pro-fessional academies that cricket has in place. Jitendra Joshi, co-founder of sports management firm, SportzConsult agrees: “First build participation levels, skills and technique. Ultimately the league is the pinnacle of a com-petition structure.” He believes the IPL’s success has tempted many to take a shortcut. “But right now deep pockets are pump-ing in money to keep the leagues going. They aren’t profitable.”

No Ming, no moneyBasketball in India is also miss-

ing a few things. Factors that helped it achieve new heights in international markets like China. In short (though there’s nothing short about an almost 8-footer) we’re missing a Yao Ming.

Colaco maintains that like in any sport, the Gods are universal.

Kids everywhere idolise Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Basketball is no different. But we still need our own Sachins and Virats, insists Joshi, to make the dream relatable. For instance, many young people in the coun-try were inspired by PV Sindhu and Saina Nehwal to start play-ing badminton. Chinese player Yao Ming’s successful run in the NBA gave basketball the boost it needed to become one of China’s most popular and lucrative sports.

Indian basketball stars like Satnam Singh Bhamara and Amjyot Singh Gill are certainly giving it their best shot. Singh however returned to India after two years in the NBA. In 2015, he made history when he became the

first Indian player to be drafted into a team, the Dallas Mavericks. But the dream soon turned sour when he ended up in NBA’s minor league, G- League, playing very little basketball for Maverick’s af-filiate team Texas Legends.

Meanwhile, 25-year-old Gill, who has been invited to try out for the G-League (he made the draft last year) in a desperate move sent this tweet on September 29th: “Have been representing India at the global stage for many years. Please help me with my USA visa 4 the @nbagleague @SushmaSwaraj @Ra_THORe”.

The bottom line: It’s not just the ball that has to jump through hoops.

delshad.irani@timesgroup.com

The World’s Most Dangerous GameBasketball fandom can also have some un-foreseen national benefits. Mercurial bas-ketball star Dennis Rodman is among the few people who can claim Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un among his friends. In a recent interview, he offered to “straighten things out for ev-eryone to get along together.” So if nuclear catastrophe is averted, maybe we have basketball and Rodman to thank?

SIDETAKESnapchat parent Snap Inc. is officially in the costume business. Last week, the company started selling an $80 dancing hot dog costume on Amazon.

The costume is based on Snapchat’s new celeb-rity character: the app’s dancing hot dog filter that quickly became an inter-

net meme sensation over the summer. CEO Evan Spiegel called the filter the “world’s first augmented reality superstar” during Snap’s last earnings call and said that it had been viewed 1.5 billion times.

The physical costume is made of polyester and comes as an “easy 2 piece

fit” with a “Hot Dog Tunic” and pants, according to the product description. Snap is only selling the costume in one size designed for people under 6’4”.

Despite it being the cos-tume’s first day available for sale, several enthusi-astic users reviews have

already been posted on Amazon.

This isn’t the first time Snap has made physical goods beyond its Spectacles camera glass-es. The company has also sold themed beach towels, ice cube trays, backpacks, and playing cards.

Source: Business Insider

Snapchat is selling an $80 dancing hot dog costume on Amazon

Can WWE Sneak Up On Cricket?

Last year, cricket did 4 billion hours of

consumption: how much do you think WWE did? We are around

3 billion. India is a jewel

for usGeorge Barrios CSO & CFO, WWE

“Conflict is an emotional issue rather than a business issue.” - Sam Balsara, chairman, Madison World

AN

IRB

AN

BO

RA

Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 16 Issue No. 43Published 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 of India 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 No. 1, IDA Nacharam Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad-500076. Editor: Ravi Balakrishnan(Responsible for selection of news under PRB Act). © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the Publisher is prohibited.

4THE ECONOMIC TIMES OCTOBER 25-31, 2017

CCI NG 3.7 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 25-10-2017 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEPER3 User: sachin.kapoor Time: 10-20-201721:00 Color: CMYK