Praveen Kenneth, Managing Director, St Luke’s

“I think the world has woken up to the fact that India is a big market. We have seen every possible global brand available in India. With respect to the advertising industry, it is maximising this new opportunity. And an opportunity to work on global brands is helping the local talents think and stay ahead with the rest of the world."

There are few people in the industry who are as passionate about what they do. When Praveen Kenneth started out with St Luke’s operations in India, there was no fancy office to work from, no clients, no manpower. It was indeed a start from scratch. Yet in an industry characterised by muscle power, St Luke’s continues to live on with a crystal clear conscience and continues to produce good work for reputed clients such as ITC, Bombay Dyeing and BPCL.

Over a conversation with Anushree Madan Mohan of exchange4media, Kenneth takes a look at the Indian advertising scenario and shares the story of the making of St Luke’s. Excerpts:

Q. How do you coordinate with London in order to ensure that the best practices are shared within the system?

Our DNA -- to be a complete creative solutions company – remains unaltered. It's our clients’ business that we focus on and it's our responsibility to put in the best practices both from global and local learnings to make our client brands successful. Our London office is in constant interaction with the team here to ensure that the best practices in the system are shared so as to energise our learning curve on each of our client brands. Every change adopted is to ensure betterment of output to the clients, and that way we go on.

We have been lucky enough to get clients that welcome the opportunity of working with us as brand consultants and partnering them on issues related to marketing. We make it as our true daily responsibility in owning our clients' interests and working alongside them to build strong brand franchises and, in the long run, build enduring brands and consumer relationships, which will only ensure our success.

The work for promoting individual programmes of NDTV 24×7 saw some wonderful work. Our recent work on Bombay Dyeing was highly visible and much talked about.

I think the world has woken up to the fact that India is a big market. We have seen every possible global brand available in India. With respect to the advertising industry, it is maximising this new opportunity. And an opportunity to work on global brands is helping the local talent think and stay ahead with the rest of the world. We have become a part of the global buzz, but I believe our work attitude is taking a long time to adapt to the demands that come with it.

Definitely. Fifteen years back all the meetings that I was a part of, were a servicing-driven exercise. Today the client insists that a creative person be part of every activity and interact with them. The changing market dynamics needs changing attitudes. Today clients have realised that and are demanding the same from the agency.

I am surprised with that question. I have been told time and time again that our profile is very high. Keeping that aside, we have been actively involved with a whole lot of pitches. We wouldn’t have been a Rs 60-crore agency in just two years without pushing ourselves into clients’ marketing teams.

Yes, the last couple of months we have stayed away from pitches for a reason. There was higher pressure with the existing client workload and there was also a need to restructure the organisation to sustain our growth.

We are headquartered in Mumbai; that is our focus of operation. But it does not mean our clients are restricted to Mumbai; we have clients also in Delhi and Kolkata on our roster.

We are a 58-member team and structured in a manner wherein the agency is managed by our Chief Operating Officer Anil Nair. We have a brilliant planning cell, which has been a champion in our new business acquisitions, and four excellent creative groups.

As an organisation, globally we focus on big budget, blue chip clients. We have always focused on 10-15 clients in each market. We are intent on maximising our resources by delivering quality. We have a similar model in India. Our blue chip clients include ITC, Godrej, BPCL and Bombay Dyeing to name a few. Our recent win is the new Wadia Group venture to launch a domestic airline.

This is subjective. There are agency brands in India without any international affiliation and doing pretty well. Take, for example, Capital in Delhi or Triton in Mumbai. It is not that they are closing shops. Yes, I would like to add that international affiliation does bring with it the added assurance of clients. But that is where it stops. The local affiliation agency will still have to prove to be worthy of the MNC business.

Regarding the second question, I believe every market is an opportunity despite the presence of bigger agencies if you can bring in an excellent team with the right solutions to solve the clients’ marketing requirements. That’s our endeavour.

Andy Law, the founder-chairman of St Luke’s, has been a great friend for a long time. Andy always wanted to get into the Asian market and wanted a hub. We discussed and explored a lot between China, Singapore and India. Both of us felt that it made better sense to start out from India. This was almost two and a half years ago. We launched our operations in October 2002 and we have just completed our second year of existence. When we began, we had signed a JV document with St Luke’s London – no office, no client, no people, just the mission that we had to build a company in India, inspired by a global cult brand. Today, we have succeeded in creating a niche for ourselves and we have received plenty of warmth and support from our clients.

We need to work harder to constantly create the best. Our focus is on our people and our clients. This we believe is the backbone for growth.