<b>Niteen Bhagwat</b>, Executive Director & CEO, Interface Communications

“The focus very clearly is to work with a select group of large brands/companies so there are some 18 or 20 big brands that we handle as opposed to signing up everything that comes our way for a lakh of rupees. We definitely are not interested in small businesses, small billing businesses because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for the client it doesn’t work for us, can’t add enough value in terms of the repertoire of services that we have to offer.”

A chemistry major, Niteen Bhagwat did his MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, but love for advertising drew him to HTA (JWT). This was followed by a stint in sales and marketing with Lakme. The late 80s saw him coming back to his first love – advertising. A ten-year stint with FCB-Ulka followed by Interface Communications saw Bhagwat immerse deep into advertising.

Over the past 18 years, he has been involved with some of the biggest brand successes in the country and has helped Interface grow to an over Rs 100 crore agency. In conversation with Pritie S Jadhav of exchange4media, Bhagwat, Executive Director and CEO of Interface Communications, talks about the growth of the agency, the decision to maintain a low profile and future plans. Excerpts:

Q. Where do you see the agency ten years from now and yourself?

I see the organisation as being much larger at cutting edge of technology very clearly, far more diversified in the kind of solutions we offer. So, we will definitely have a very significant portion of our business coming from non-conventional media. And contra to that, we see the organisation as being specialised in certain domain areas whether it is the automotive sector or foods sector design and décor sector, we very clearly see ourselves as being really best of class in four or five sectors.

So, on the one side we will offer width of our offering and on the other side we will increase the depth of our offering dramatically over the next 10 years. I would see myself more as a mentor, less hands-on, seeing myself as nurturing talent, nurturing businesses, and the organisation.

We are investing heavily in the digital and interactive space. One of the key thrust areas for us is going digital, direct marketing and interactive, where response tends to be instantaneous. Also we would like to double our agency size every three years.

We work with pretty large business like the Birlas, the Mahindras, we work with HP, Henkel, British Airways, Goodlass Nerolac. We work with a roster of large companies.

I think we are totally on our own and I think people who have joined us have done so because we are Interface. Some people have fears because we are a relatively lesser known organisation as compared to a lot of other organisations. Are we seen as FCB Ulka’s shadow – I don’t think so. Are we seen as a part of the group – of course we are, and I think we are proud of being a part of the IPG group and proud of being a part of the FCB Ulka group. Though we started off as a secondary agency for FCB Ulka, we are a totally separate organisation.

It’s almost like Levers having multiple brands. So, IPG as a group has multiple brands offering advertising solutions. So, there are points of commonality, there are points of similarity and wherever it works for us we encourage the similarity. When there are cultural issues, integrity issues, ethic issues, we nurture commonality. We want to build an organisation that is extremely high on integrity, an organisation that is extremely high on ethics.

At the end of the day we deal with crores of rupees on behalf of our clients and it’s very easy to create an organisation that cheats on clients and there are enough of them that do. Our reputation in the market is that we are squeaky clean. So, we try and not get into a revolving door policy in our relationships.

We don’t think we are a shadow of FCB, but I am sure FCB is a frame of reference for a lot of people and there is nothing wrong with it. The reality is that our creative, planning, servicing virtually all our resources are totally independent.

We are definitely strengthening our creative team. We are trying to make sure we have a combination of people who are quick start versus people who like to work at leisurely pace. And both are right and thus we are getting a judicious mix. Creating an idea is not like switching on a switch. Advertising is not a very simple profession to be in.

Though the clients’ problem quite often might remain the same year after year, your advertising solutions need to change. It requires people who can break and think out of the box and they should be given the freedom to try new things where there is no fear of failure and you have to create that kind of a culture that we are trying to do all the time.

Very important. We thought it was not important till last year, but now we feel it is important. And this is not because there is any correlation between awards and advertising that works. The primary objective is to create advertising that is vivid and works in the market place. The role of advertising is to sell and if it doesn’t sell, then it’s a bad ad even if it has got an award.

But from a creative person’s point of view and an organisation’s point of view, awards are more measurable. It is relatable and touchable so to speak and it is a nice benchmark for raising the bar. In the past we ignored awards as a variable, but now we want awards but not at the cost of breaking trust of the client.

There are a couple of reasons. One, obviously keeping a low profile is part of our DNA, it is very clearly a part of our coding. We, as an organisation, are not the kind of people who will go to the press even before the idea is there. We are very, very conservative in virtually everything that we do. Whether it is people, issues or business issues, or our campaigns, we don’t go shouting from the rooftops.

And it is not just about press visibility, this conservatism is there in everything that we do. When we recruit we are conservative, we follow the belief that if we recruit somebody then we are uprooting him or her from the present job, so we owe it to that person to then make the relationship work. It’s not a hire and fire relationship. So the kind of decision making that you have to do tends to be far more conservative because it’s a two-way relationship, which is why our attrition levels are lower.

So this is the kind of attitude that we bring. If we get new business, sure we are happy, we like to talk about it, but we don’t go to the press saying it’s a Rs 30-crore account. Because invariably we all know experientially that when ad agencies get an account it’s a Rs 30-crore account, when it starts billing it is Rs 15 crore, and when you lose it it’s only a Rs 4-crore account.

As an organisation we try to be very sensitive to client requirements. We don’t talk about the client’s plans without checking with the client because at the end of the day we are representing a client’s brand.

Interface is a large, very competent strategy strong advertising agency. Compared to organisations our size, we offer clients a full service solution. We are not a creative boutique. We give our clients everything from direct marketing, strategic planning, media solutions to conventional advertising. As an organisation, we are geared to handle mainstream brands, brands which believe they genuinely require advertising.

If you are asking me that am I happy – well I am not, because if I am happy then I am complacent. Has the growth been decent over the past five or six years – then the answer very clearly is yes. We have built the business which was under Rs 5 crore or Rs 6 crore to well over a Rs 100 crore. We have built an organisation over a six-year span, which was about 10 people to a little over 110 people now.

So, we have been consistently growing. We have been growing when the industry was in recession, to that extent yes we have done well. But then again there is a scope to do much, much better, to grow bigger than what we are today. This because the critical mass required to do well in the industry keeps on increasing and my guess is that today’s critical mass is around Rs 400 crore.

That’s what we are gunning for. We want to grow, we want to be big, we want to be a solid large player. We don’t have the ambition of being the largest agency in the country

The largest agency is dictated by international alignments, and in India the largest company in terms of advertising is Levers. So by some devise I start getting 30 per cent of Lever’s business then I can dream of becoming the largest agency. But if I can’t get Levers, I can’t get P&G, then I can’t be the largest in the country, which is fine. That’s not our goal because size does not assure quality.

I think we have seen flashes of good creativity in the industry. There is also a lot of bad stuff happening, chances are that there will be some more time where we are going to see pretty average stuff coming out because its going to be intense pressure on business to throughput more and more work. I think the industry is going to explore once again, I think it’s going to boom and the shortage of talent is going to take its toll.

There is a fair amount of very good work that is happening. But I think that because of sheer pressure of volumes and shortage of time, the cycle times are compressing and it is a phase where the industry, the clients and the agencies are getting used to shorter cycle times, newer methods of delivering advertising. They are getting used to the Internet, which is instantaneous. There are fundamental changes that are sweeping in today.

The focus very clearly is to work with a select group of large brands/companies so there are some 18 or 20 big brands that we handle as opposed to signing up everything that comes our way for a lakh of rupees. We definitely are not interested in small businesses, small billing businesses because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for the client, it doesn’t work for us, can’t add enough value in terms of the repertoire of services that we have to offer.

Quality and the kind of resourcing that is required, the kind of people required to put on the business – it is impossible to provide a solution that is good if there isn’t adequate throughput. You can’t build a brand by releasing two ads. There are clients who come to us with microscopic budgets, we strongly advise them not to spend the money, we prefer that they go direct or use PR as a tool to build visibility.

We don’t offer PR solutions ourselves, but we advise them to go to professional PR agency. You build word of mouth, you build critical mass. So we try and give them media neutral solutions, we try and give them solutions that work for them.

See, the fact is that people generally are optimists. So, when you get new business or when a client genuinely possibly says that he is going to spend Rs 30 crore, but that Rs 30 crore depends on his business doing well. Then business exigencies come into play, billings don’t happen or spends don’t happen in the quantum that everybody expected. One reason in this gap in numbers is this displaced optimism. I don’t think people are lying it’s just displaced optimism on one side.

Two when you do lose business, the human psychology is to turn around and say I haven’t lost too much, it is a hard thing to go and say I have been wiped out. And a nicer way of handling it is don’t overdo it. In any case, be conservative to begin with and in a way we are also then protecting client confidentiality.