Also, I believe that most agencies stop short of generating consumer awareness and consideration for the brand, that is, build brand image and focus on attitudinal change. They are about getting consumers to think different. We, on the other hand, are uniquely poised and align ourselves to the business objectives rather than the marketing objectives of our clients. We are an agency that squarely concentrates on driving brand conversion, that is, usage, share and loyalty. Our focus is more on behavioural change. We are about getting consumers to act different.
Alok Lall joined independent global marketing agency iris in February 2007 as Managing Director of iris India. He joined iris after spending 18 years with global ATL agency networks. He was responsible for launching iris in India with their first office in Delhi, and plans for expanding the iris footprint across various markets in India like Mumbai and Bangalore in the immediate future so as to give iris a pan-Indian presence.
Prior to joining iris, Lall was MD of Saatchi & Saatchi in Delhi. He spent a year in Saatchi & Saatchi and during his time there, he took the agency from just having a presence to occuping the slot of being one of the top 10 agencies in the market. Before joining Saatchi & Saatchi, Lall was the Client Servicing Head of the PepsiCo business at JWT, where he spent over 15 years leading and servicing global clients like Reckitt Benckiser, Yum! Restaurants (Pizza Hut / KFC), Nestle Chocolates (Kit Kat), Parker Pens, MasterCard, Nike, Bausch & Lomb, and Citibank among others.
Lall is an active member of the Advertising Agencies Association of India, Delhi Ad Club and other marketing and advertising bodies in the region. He actively propagates and speaks in seminars where he advocates the need to find and nurture young talent.
In a freewheeling conversation with exchange4media's Pallavi Goorha, Lall speaks extensively about iris's growth in India and the work the agency has been doing for its clients in India as well as globally, especially Sony Ericsson.
Q. Where does iris India office stand in the global iris, both in terms of revenue and geographic expansion?
It's a key hub – no market is growing as fast as India is. Where London took eight years to hit 200 people, iris in this region is expected to take a fraction of that time. In line with that growth, iris is planning long-term investment and we plan to roll out more offices in the region. The past few years have seen tremendous growth and expansion for iris as a micro-network. We now have offices across the globe, including London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Singapore and the recently launched Sydney chapter, which has further broadened our Asia-Pacific footprint.
We are now truly set up to service our global brands like Shell and Adidas, and the next few years will see further investment in the region with more offices opening as part of our expansion plans.
The more established offices are growing at a rate of 50 per cent year-on-year and iris India is on track to match this. In fact, 2008 should see us opening offices in Mumbai and Bangalore, thereby making our presence felt pan-India.
Q. What is the scope of a marketing agency in India?
The scope of a marketing agency in India is huge. Marketing in India is at a point of change and it is a massively entrepreneurial time. Indians are spending more time and money out of home, partly due to the boom in retail as well as online, and marketers must, therefore, develop a greater understanding of how to use the increasing array of media options available in combination, to win the hearts and minds of the new Indian consumer.
Also, I believe that most agencies stop short of generating consumer awareness and consideration for the brand, that is, build brand image and focus on attitudinal change. They are about getting consumers to think different.
We, on the other hand, are uniquely poised and align ourselves to the business objectives rather than the marketing objectives of our clients. We are an agency that squarely concentrates on driving brand conversion, that is, usage, share and loyalty. And we do this through retail, experiential, partner marketing, promotions, sponsorships, etc. In other words, our focus is more on behavioural change. We are about getting consumers to act different.
Q. What were the challenges that you faced while setting up shop in India?
The challenges were the same as most new agencies who start up or enter this market, such as a defined positioning and attracting talent. It's been great to find some senior folk looking for a new challenge and discovering some of India's emerging talent who are young, marketing savvy individuals. I think, finding the best talent is the key because the most important driver for growth is people. We are looking to grow the next generation of marketers by bringing the best of Indian culture and experience and blending it with the iris culture and approach, which is informal, cheeky, playful and confident.
We are a company that has grown globally at 50 per cent year-on-year. There's a real pioneering spirit among us in the office and this ambition and will to win is what's bonding us as we go through our growing phase. We have the attitude that anything is possible and there are no barriers to us reaching our aim of being the best agency that clients want to work with and the only agency that truly talented people want to work for.
Q. How do you view the growing retail market in India, especially at a time when malls are springing up everywhere?
India has a unique blend of international and domestic brands that are now accessible to every consumer. Malls have also become not just a shopping destination but a venue to hit for the experience of it. The challenge is reaching the right consumer at the right time with the right message. We cannot be complacent and assume that the message communicated at ATL would persuade a consumer to make a purchase decision at the point of sale. We do recognise that the factors that include your brand or don't in the consumer's consideration set vary according to the context people find themselves in. There is an important balance between impulse and reason, and we have to appeal to both these sides of the consumer's mindset to change their behaviour in our favour.
The way we shop will change and India can drive this next generation. iris has been investing in IP since 1999, bringing proprietary insight programmes to our clients. Our most recent one, soon to be published, looks at the future of retail globally – it offers insight and a deep understanding of what's happening in the world for clients to use quickly and effectively.
Q. Which have been your best creative works in India?
The Sony Ericsson account has given us an opportunity to be really innovative in our approach and demonstrate what we preach. We have over the past year run a number of very effective and successful activities for Sony Ericsson. They are across the spectrum of large scale brand promotion, for example, Festival of Gold, which saw their volumes jump by 50 per cent across a broad range of handsets to experiential activities that drive people in store - 'Spiderman 3' and Live like Hrithik for a day to sourcing exclusive content and generating communication around it like the Asha Bhonsle and Robbie Williams album that was preloaded on to Walkman handsets.
Q. What are the opportunities you see in India compared to the global network?
Currently, marketing is characterised predominantly by TV/press and billboard, supported by an agency marketplace that is proliferated by advertising driven offerings and dominated by the large global agency networks. Marketing in India is 'on the change' and it should be, because the demands of Indians from the brands they consume are leapfrogging at a pace never seen before. The retail boom and the sheer rate of growth in India at the moment present us with great opportunities because it really taps into our skill set of brand and retail activation. Just like India, iris is experiencing great growth and a new speed of approach is required. The old approach is slow and expensive, and the current speed of change needs to be reflected in business and cultural change.
In addition, I believe that iris is well placed to be at the forefront of this 'brand activation revolution' for a couple of reasons. We are a large independent, we are not owned by inactive shareholders and, therefore, the money we make all goes back into the company - either to reward the people that have earned it or to invest in augmenting our marketing understanding - through the continuation of our global proprietary research programme into audiences and categories as well as making sure that we evaluate the effectiveness of everything we do. iris, intends to continually invest in attracting the hottest talent in the Indian market place.
iris does not have a flagship advertising agency brand that always takes precedence over its poorer group cousins. This allows us to practice 'Media anything, Idea everything' without prejudice. Of course, iris will do traditional advertising if the idea demands it. In India though, iris seeks to be specialists in the retail and brand activation space in the immediate future. We are experts in 'partner marketing', which means we will be able to successfully deliver marketing partnerships between complimentary brands as well as advising brand managers on the selection, procurement and usage of licensed properties in order to optimise the seeding of privileged access to content to their trade and consumer stakeholder audiences.
Q. How has the journey been so far since iris commenced its India operations?
We launched iris in India in April 2007, so it hasn't even been 12 months yet, but already we have experienced phenomenal growth since we opened our doors with Sony Ericsson as our founding client. We've grown from eight people to 23 and we are now working with a broad range of new clients like DishTV, Yum Restaurants, 9.9 Media, and have some really visible brands on the anvil in the immediate future. We have also emerged as the fastest growing agency micro-network in the region. As you would already know, iris is an independent, integrated marketing agency working across all media and all disciplines.
We work with an enviable roster of blue chip clients globally, including Shell, Sony Ericsson, Adidas and Coca-Cola. We are committed to 'Media anything, Idea everything' - a creative vision that encompasses our interpretation of integrated marketing. This mantra is fuelled by our passion to bring something fresh to the agency and client scene, so it's an exciting time to be part of the Indian market and offer a real and tangible alternative to the big, traditional agency shops. In a nutshell, things are only just getting started and there are great opportunities presenting themselves to us.
Q. What are the major areas of focus for iris in 2008 – in India and globally?
The major focus of iris in 2008 in India and globally is retail, digital, sponsorships, experiential and promotions. It will be about creating cultures, communities and conversations. On a global scale, we will continue to expand and grow into developing markets oversees to keep up with our clients needs and regionally, too, which will help provide more depth of support to our diversification by discipline.
This recent period of phenomenal growth for iris in the region is a real testament to our desire to bring something different to the industry. There is a huge opportunity for us to shake things up at both a global and local level by offering clients a real alternative to the old-school networks. A few key players for far too long have dominated the market and it's time to challenge that. We have been able to position ourselves as a unique integrated proposition that can offer clients solutions that not only transcend disciplines, but also transcend geographies.
Q. When you entered India, Sony Ericsson was your first client. What kind of integrated retail, promotional and event marketing initiatives you have taken for the company?
TopShot was a programme that we conceived and developed for Sony Ericsson's Cyber Shot range of phones. It was a campaign that went truly 360 from TV to press to online to experiential. Our objective was to get the phone in the hands of consumers because a press ad or a billboard can never do the job that a positive experience with the product can. We wanted to do a campaign that made people think differently about taking pictures, and emphasise that quality photography is for everyone and that Cyber Shot cameras allow you to be spontaneous, capturing great moments with amazing clarity anytime. We worked on the insight that people love being in the news and so we introduced TopShot, which was an online imaging contest based on the proposition of 'I love making news'.
We invited entries from consumers and tied up with CNN-IBN to feature the winner of the week who became a newsmaker. The editorial panel of CNN-IBN judged the entries, and although we recognised the growing trend towards user-generated content, the sheer volume of entries overwhelmed us. These were then collated to put together the TopShot newspaper, which we distributed at high traffic areas to reach our TG in a direct manner. At the ground level, we created an experiential zone in prominent locations such as popular malls in key cities. These zones were a great way for consumers to interact with the phones and familiarise themselves with the user interface and navigation. We created a gallery of the news-making shots we received from consumers all over the country, and constructed dedicated areas for product features to come alive.
People could take pictures in various such zones and we printed these out for them as a take-away. What was amazing was the number of people who did not even have to take the picture home and mull over the pros and cons of buying the product; crowds of consumers ended up going to the nearest store and picking up a phone there and then. Even Sony Ericsson had not anticipated that this activity would be so successful, and they would like to further develop TopShot as a property so we can run this programme again in the future.
Q. DTH service provider DishTV has appointed iris as its direct marketing partner. What kind of work will you be doing for DishTV?
Although our primary remit on DishTV is about using best practice database marketing for subscriber relationship management, we will be working on the whole gamut of activities alongside them. This will include partner marketing, subscriber retention, churn management and increasing average revenue per customer.
Q. In your experience in this space, can you point out some clutter breaking communication that has stood out among the lot?
Sony Ericsson is associated with the WTA (Women's Tennis Association) and iris wanted to find a fresh innovative way to get away from traditional tennis language to connect with the audience that coincides with our key consumer segmentation. We wanted to engage the 16-25 pioneer youth segment. The solution is a mix of music, action and fashion in the dark. iris developed 'Night Tennis', which is basically an after-dark party with great music and short, fast tennis games – a fast-paced thrilling and engaging experience with an appeal so strong, it was hard for consumers to turn away from it. It makes tennis relevant to an audience whose primary consideration is a hip and trendy lifestyle. With top DJs, compelling communication and an event that made history - we were able to refresh Sony Ericsson's association with the WTA starting with the launch in Madrid, moving on to Miami and we plan to bring it to India this year as well.