Lynn de Souza, Director, Lintas Media Group

"A media agency can't tell a creative agency what to do! When you work with good creative people, you realise that they bring something to the table that a media agency can never provide... Stable clients are seeing the importance of efficient media work and they are paying. Some of the large clients are on the fee-based structure, where commissions and rates don't arise at all, and that is a much better way to go... People are avoiding advertising more and more and this would increase. It is getting therefore a bit dangerous for advertising to just be conventional."

Being in the media industry for over two decades, Lynn de Souza is known to all and she has seen it all; yet, when you speak to her, you know that she is still learning. Perhaps this is what gives her the unusual ability to play a meaningful role in her life - whether it is in the form of the leaders and professionals that she has created over the years in the media industry or whether it is actually saving lives - of the animals that she looks after.

One reason why the Director of Lintas Media Group is constantly in the limelight in ad industry circles is her differentiated point of view on most issues. In this free-wheeling interview with exchange4media's Noor Fathima Warsia, de Souza voices some of these issues, besides speaking on the future of LMG and what keeps her going amid all this madness. Excerpts:

Q. Do you see this becoming popular in India soon?

I don't think so. There would still be many clients that would continue to work on commission. Definitely the more enlightened clients are already on the fee-based structure and those who aren't may convert soon, but I see many clients still following the commission route.

Nothing really was unexpected - most of the major developments were in the making and so at some level expected. The fact that a GroupM would happen or that agency commissions would start shrinking, the importance that would be laid on new aspects of the media - everything was in the making. One development that I think perhaps was indeed unexpected was the pace at which mobile communication grew. You expect TV to grow, print to grow, but the only thing that has really taken me by surprise and I think the others in the industry, too, was mobile communication. I remember when we used to pay Rs 16 per minute for a call and now it is 30 paise!

Apart from this, blogs, the digital space, the retail space - most of these are trends that we expect.

At work, I slap my team every morning and every evening I kiss them - I can be very temperamental! Seriously speaking, we don't take our lives so seriously. Otherwise, I like to read, I like to write - write on the media or animals, I blog, I have very few but very close friends, people who have been by my side, and I by theirs, for a very long time. I don't party, but I do go out for a movie and travel too much!

I think what really helps is the relation I have with the animals I look after - whether at home or when I am in Goa. Any relationship with animals and children is very real - there is no manipulation or second-guessing involved and that is very refreshing. Sometimes it really can put things in perspective.

I may have a fight in the office and when I go back home, a crow nearby might be suffering from severe feather rot and then it makes you think that you are crying over something that may not even be interesting enough to matter tomorrow, and here is a bird fighting for her life. It can really change the way you look at issues.

...Really!! I don't know. I think this depends on what you define your personal growth to be - maybe if it is a narrow definition purely linked to career and going up a horizontal ladder. But that can be a very one-dimensional insecure way of thinking. I think personal growth has to be how you have developed at all levels, how have you contributed even if you are not associated with that contribution.

Just to give an example, how do you contribute to issues you really believe in? Like what I've done with the television audience measurement system, woken up the industry and the agency out of lethargy ad complacency. I may not be associated with any improvements that will arise out of this, or I may be, but that's incidental. In my own small way, I have contributed and to me, that is growth.

When you are personally ambitious for yourself, you can do all the wrong things. The sabbatical I took was extremely good for me. The whole business of going abroad to a strange place where I knew no one and no one knew me, and learning to take care of animals was very good. I can't imagine my life without that experience. And there is so much that I learnt on that side that helped me on this side.

Sure. I had attended the World Animal Conference in London this summer. There were people from 120 countries there and some of them made presentations on different subjects pertaining to animal welfare. I've sat through presentations and seminar after seminar in advertising, and believe me, the superior quality of these presentations was a learning in itself. The research, the content treatment - the manner of delivery was far better than I have seen in any marketing seminar - it makes you realise that whatever you do, you have to do it with compassion, conviction and passion, that makes all the difference.

I think in 2004, everything happened at the same time - the three or four accounts that left in early 2004, a few senior the people. That was also the period when I was changing the way the agency was functioning. I inherited a function that was very strong on relations, but relationships are dependent on people and when people move on, then what happens? I think a business relationship must be based on the quality of the product and the service, and on the values you work with - you make a commitment, you keep it, you follow certain ethics, you don't over-promise and under-deliver.

This approach was stiff on the team at first but it started working for us in the following years. But the one word responsible for this turnaround is leadership. I have a very strong team at the top and they are great leaders who have shaped each of the LMG agencies they run. And then we have a fantastic set of clients. Some of them are the very reason of our being and they treat us like one of their own. We have also enjoyed tremendous support from senior Lintas managers - Prem, Shahrook and Ashish in particular, who stood by us even through bad times. We are now already growing at 40 per cent this year and we still have a long way to go.

Everyone is chasing the number two position - isn't that right? So could we be! I am not going to tell you where we are headed - as the song says, when we get there you'll know.

When I came back, I was looking after IMAG. It wasn't so hectic at that time and there was the huge learning advantage of a 360-degree exposure, so that was helpful. When I got back on the media side, things were very different - it was far more competitive, the rules of the game had changed, even the relations with the client and the meaning of commitments had changed.

And I'll not forget that at that time people like Meenakshi (Madhvani) really helped me with some excellent advice. I would otherwise tend to stay to myself, not go out, not really say anything to anyone, not fight back, but Meenakshi really changed the way I was looking at things. She told me top open up, and never take any beating lying down. I'll never forget her for that. People misunderstand the friendship, but it was very kind of her, she didn't have to, but she did.

So, while settling in, quite a bit was happening. We took the initial knocks also, but we have bounced back and I think I'm doing reasonably well for myself now.

I think there is a little bit of hype that happens when people like agency network and media heads come here, they say all the right things to motivate their employees and clients. But when you go to any of the international forums, you realise that India still has a long way to go. That is there, but you must appreciate that we have come a long way. As is the case with the other Indian industries, I do see India becoming a major outsourcing destination for advertising as well.

There is already a lot of creative design and art work that we are spearheading for international communications, there is significant backend and analytical work that we do - whether it is GroupM units like ATG, we did some amount of work for the international Initiative offices - so there is a great improvement that has taken place in the last five years.

They don't, which is why they work in isolation sometimes. But in some way or the other, people are working at changing that. In many cases, it is happening at the client end, where the client is giving a joint brief, making them sit together and talk. We aren't waiting for the clients to do that though. We happen to be a full-service agency and at least the cases where we are working with Lowe, we are very closely coordinating with them. In other cases, we ensure a continual dialogue but, yes, there is more that would change on that front and we will see more collaboration when media would be used more innovatively.

I really don't think that commission is shrinking any further. On the contrary, I think media agency commissions are going up and those who have good clients would agree with me. Stable clients are seeing the importance of efficient media work and they are paying. Of course, some of the large clients are on the fee-based structure, where commissions and rates don't arise at all and that is a much better way to go. In a commission system, there is a paradox -you are paid higher when the client spends higher and your job is to ensure that the client's money isn't wasted in any way, implying that you bring them better efficiencies at lower costs. Then there are things like events, where I would have worked very hard, but it is a barter deal - where is my money, then?

In a fee structure, the client invests in you, your people and your systems, and that works better these days. The agency is more committed too.

What do you mean by taking the lead? A media agency can't tell a creative agency what to do! When you work with good creative people, you realise that they bring something to the table that a media agency can never provide. What we provide is basic data and information - how the market is working, where is the consumer and how is he changing. But the insight that would actually make the consumer go and buy the brand and the way to present that insight is something that only a creative agency brings to the table.

On the broader note, Indians are going to international markets now, largely in the Asian region, and doing very well for themselves. The mid-rung that maybe was once looking at international options quite frequently isn't doing that anymore, and people who have gone abroad want to come back. But even so, when people went out of the country, they were looking for a better quality of life and not for a better career. I think the biggest change has come in the exchange of ideas and information. You get to know what has worked in other markets and is, therefore, likely to work here much faster, and so the learning curve is more steep. Globalisation has started this learning process. When you are in your village, you grow the crop in the same way, but now, there are new techniques, tools and, most importantly, knowledge from experience available.

Big disadvantages are when you can lose a business. We lost HSBC through no fault of ours at a time when we really didn't want to lose any business. Some agencies have been very fortunate. I've heard that once a global system comes in, you have to conform to the format and that it can be a problem if you are structured in a more entrepreneurial way.

So it depends. Yes, today, because of the presence of multinational entities - clients and agencies across the world - you cannot avoid being affected by international decisions, but I guess you have to take it in your stride.

But watch out for what can happen going forward, like we have given Indonesia the Bajaj Auto media business. Now with Indian clients like Tata and other brands going out, there would be some contribution of Indian agencies also to the international markets.

It helps bring in fresh talent. On the media side, we have had two batches, we took 17 from the earlier batch and three of them are independently handling clients. The biggest plus of this is because you have trained them yourself, you teach them about a culture, about not taking short cuts, not compromising. More than teaching them tools and techniques, we have to encourage them in loyalty and the only way you can do that is when they sing the same tune as you.

What happens in the process is when this level has come in and is taking care of your work, the chances of the level above them, that is always looking out anyways, becoming more restless increases, and you can expect maximum churn at this next level. If you look at the large agencies, at the seniormost level, the people who are there in the top two rungs are stable. They have been loyal and have grown with the structure. It's been that way with us too.

So we are now focussing on the middle level significantly right now - a lot of training on advertising, creative, through the line, and leadership skills.

Not just yet. The penetration of new media like the Internet is still very low. I remember five years back we had worked on an industry forum to promote the Internet as a medium of advertising. We were all expecting the Internet to grow at 15-16 per cent. But even today usage of the Net is just 3 per cent- in some developed cities it may be 7 per cent. So the growth in these avenues really hasn't been as was expected.

Something like mobile communication that did boom still hasn't been leveraged enough to become a mode of advertising communication, so new media is still not mass media. The kind of digital campaigns that Axe and auto companies do in other countries are replicated in India -however, you cannot have campaigns in which the Internet is the lad or sole medium here, it still acts as a support.

We have to. For one, traditional media themselves haven't reached their full potential. Newspapers are still growing rapidly in rural areas. Last year FM radio reach grew by 50 per cent, and that too being the oldest medium. Readership in rural India is growing...Traditional media themselves have a long way to go, so I think there is still time before we see this medium reach saturation. And I don't think that new media will happen at the expense of traditional media anyway.

They are growing year-on-year. We are seeing a healthy 10-15 per cent growth in communication budgets. I think one more point that one has to note here is that you have to de-link advertising and traditional media. You may not find traditional advertising on traditional media anymore. The kind of advertising done on traditional media is changing and will change - integration will happen, lots more interactivity - we have to continue to use traditional media but in more innovative ways.

This interest in India started happening five-six years back, ever since the policies of liberalisation set in and the economy itself picked up speed. Then India got labelled as one of the BRIC countries and hence, the focus increased, which was then seen in discipline after discipline, including the media industry. So, it wasn't sudden or unexpected - somewhere on the international plans, the country has found a place.

The quality of our media research. Our media has has had explosive growth, the way people buy and read newspapers and magazines has changed substantially, and yet the IRS and NRS are conducted in the same old way using the masthead method! Our tools and people have also metamorphosed, but the quality of media research is old and pathetic.

What we have constantly been saying is that people are avoiding advertising more and more and this would increase. Studies show that the number of spots on TV has shot up, but the percentage of spot viewing has dropped sharply, so there are a lot of spots that people don't watch. And that's only what is measured, what about all the avoidance that is not measured? It is getting therefore a bit dangerous for advertising to just be conventional.

In fact, we have undertaken a study that is set to be released in October 2006, where we have looked at what makes consumers go to the medium, why they stay there, what makes them leave it, why ar they avoiding content or ads or both. Believe me, the consumer has also begun to avoid content that is too messed up with advertising within it. There is much to be careful about.

As for the future, content would definitely be used for advertising communication. It can be generated and driven by media agencies or the clients' side of the business. Some examples are the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, because of the nature of the event suiting perfectly what the brand stands for. Similarly, what we are doing with the Sunfeast Tennis Open - it's not just about sponsoring an event, but using the event in all forms of media and engagement opportunities with the customer to 'spread the smile'.

It can also be done from the consumer side, that is, where consumers create content for you aka blogs. Citizen journalism is an example -- content created by people and consumed by people. In India, of course, we are still scratching the surface, but once these techniques settle in, they will grow really fast.