Advertising in India is a very different ballgame. Time and again, people have come here and discovered that. Stories are different, the communication and solutions are different. It may not appeal to a lot of people. How would you explain to an international jury that ‘Thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ or ‘Hamaara Bajaj’ are great ideas? Left to me, I will not enter a single award – national or international – and right now I cannot afford awards in any case. I am against the system where I have to pay someone to judge my work.
Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re’ campaign has got people excited about voting on an on-ground level, while Idea’s ‘Janta Ne Kahaa’ has got Rahul Gandhi thinking out of the box for connecting with the janta… The past year has seen Indian advertising set some interesting trends, and credit for at least these two campaigns goes to Lowe Lintas India’s CCO and Chairman, R Balki.
Even as this advertising guru has already got busy planning on his next movie, Balki takes time out to speak to Noor Fathima Warsia on what the new role means to him, what his views on the slowdown are and what can be expected from Balki and Lowe in the year ahead. Q. On a different note, you had earlier said that surveys don’t bother you, but with the hype that they tend to create, don’t you think it impacts work?
If it is a perception survey, it is not applicable to an agency like ours – we don’t do a lot of those kinds of things – we don’t enter awards because awards are oblivious to the problems that any brand is trying to solve. The purpose of advertising has to provide a solution to a problem on hand. As long as we are better than the other agencies for clients that have more than one agency on their business, we are fine. I do not care what a Vodafone thinks about us… But with a Bajaj, Maruti, Levers, Hindustan Times or other such clients, we need to be better than the other agencies. Unlike others, we are not a traditional out-of-the-box creative agency. We believe we have to be the most interesting communication developers for people who are seeing the ads. Creativity is the essence of our business; for me how interesting you are defines how creative you are. Awards don’t take cognizance of that at all.
While judging people don’t look at how difficult the problem was and how interesting the solution to that problem was. You cannot go to an agency with “I have got an ad, you do not have a problem, but here is the ad”.
Q. Any big names you have hired for your verticals? As a principle, we hire very few senior people from outside unless there is an emergency. I also believe that there are only that many positions available in the agency, so as people grow in the agency, I, in fact, in a strange way encourage them to look out if they have a great opportunity for a particular position. For example, Rahul Sengupta, an incredibly talented person who I really admire and had hated to lose, but he got an offer for a better position from outside and I thought when would he get the same here, and then I told him to go ahead with it; same with Priti (Nair). If better positions are available outside that I cannot provide, I encourage people to move – I’d rather be friends with them outside Lowe than enemies inside.
Q. Does Anna also have an extra role in any of the verticals? Anna has her head bursting with Knorr coming in, and J&J, the Future Group and ICICI. Her head is bursting with all of that already.
Q. Didn't Lowe enter at Cannes? I do not look at Cannes entry. As an agency, we do not focus on awards, but the team has the freedom to enter anything. In fact, last year I came back to the agency for whether or not we should enter Abby Awards, and the guys here threw stones at me. This year also we would not enter any of the Indian awards.
Q. How has the journey been from being an ECD to being the Chairman of the company now? Nothing has changed, except the fact that I sign a few more papers now. Earlier, the buck would stop unofficially, now it stops officially.
Q. Any impact of slowdown on the Lowe business? Advertising agency fees and commission was corrected in boom time, so people cannot cut us down further. We cannot be cheaper than this, and clients realise that. On an overall scale, we are in the right space and there is nothing to panic about. Clients realise that if they pay for good talent, they will get good work, so there are no problems on that. But yes, they are also saying that don’t have so many people if you don’t have to; shoot here instead of South Africa; cut down on the number of films and so on. We would surely feel this impact for the first six months, and some inflated spending figures we see in the market would come down. But this time we are fighting this depression mood much earlier (there has been distraction in the environment around us too) and consequently, there is a lot of positivism that is offsetting the depressed moods around – there is more energy coming into the whole system.
Q. But the whole world does that... And that is why advertising is in the mess that it is. There is so much of nonsense floating around in the garb of masterpieces. Great advertising has great thoughts behind it; it is not one clever ad, and that is my problem. We need to up the ante on the core of the ideas in the world. Advertising in India is a very different ballgame. Time and again, people have come here and discovered that. Stories are different, the communication and solutions are different. It may not appeal to a lot of people. How would you explain to an international jury that ‘Thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ or ‘Hamaara Bajaj’ are great ideas? Left to me, I will not enter a single award – national or international – and right now I cannot afford awards in any case. I am against the system where I have to pay someone to judge my work.
Q. So, awards don’t worry you, but in one year, if another agency wins more business than you, is that a concern? Only if we were pitching for those businesses too. I would be worried if the clients feel their solutions are better than us, but not if they get more business than us. At a pitch, if a client would think someone else’s solutions are better than ours, then I would be worried. But I doubt any of the agencies would win a pitch when we are pitching, unless we want them to win.
Q. Any job cuts and pay cuts at Lowe? People would not have the kind of exorbitant incomes and hikes, but I do not think a lot of people would be losing their jobs. We may not recruit in a tearing hurry. We would recruit people as and when it is necessary, but not otherwise.
Q. We hear you have drastically cut down on smoking... A lot of people here have, and one big reason is just going down 13 floors to smoke outside – the elevators take so much time you just don’t want to do it. I smoke once in a way, but not the 50-60 cigarettes I used to once upon a time. After I cut down, I asked others also to do the same, and since just about everyone wants to quit smoking, it was easy. It is possibly the only decision I have taken that everyone has accepted without hurling back abuses!
Q. Fitch is there in India now - does that make any difference? Design is less of an opportunity and more of a delivery thing. Our design cell can be 20 per cent bigger if we decided that way. There are so much opportunities and clients for design. It’s a question of being able to handle the volumes. We have been quite conservative in forecasting the design cell estimates. We have gone 50 per cent the way in design, and this year there would be a lot more. But for that matter, overall we would be focussing on marketing services in a big way this year.
Q. There has been a change in the structuring of marketing services at the agency, where people such as Tarun Singh Chauhan, Joseph George and Mohit Beotra are heading different divisions in addition to their roles in the mainline advertising function... You cannot cut off marketing services, which is what was happening, and that is not really a smart thing. These divisions are here not just because we want to say that we also have these divisions, but for our clients, and to be able to execute the high value ideas that we have. The purpose of creating a division is to create a response as far as the client is concerned. The present structure, where our divisions are a part of the mainline advertising function, is in the interest of the business and improve the quality of solutions for the clients.
Q. But clients do like to see their agency’s name written about... When it comes to their brands, but not otherwise or just like that. I think we have done a lot of salient work for our brands this year – like for Tata Tea, Idea, Fair & Lovely, Surf Excel and Tanishq. Some of our brands, like Idea, have been very hyperactive this year. Brands like Idea are very challenging because they spend much lesser than their competitors, so you have to do hard hitting stuff because you cannot just blow up money wherever you want. Tata Tea, too, is also such a visible brand, but not a high expenditure brand. So, you have to take a position where you can drive a lot of things around one idea.
Last year, we also worked on restructuring our verticals, on bringing an idea and working around it, and also on marketing services across the board. We are telling our clients that as an agency, we are experts in telling the idea by whichever medium the idea needs to be expressed in – be it design, rural or digital medium. We need to be cutting edge in digital communication, and better than the specialists in any of the mediums. As an agency, if you have an idea, the client should be with you not just because you have the idea, but also because you are the best in that domain. We are working at making marketing services as good as the main line agency with perfect expertise. Earlier, we couldn’t say that we are trying very hard this year to do it.
Q. What has been the role of Charles Cadel as the CEO? Charles at present focuses on internal departments, overall organisational planning like marketing services and does not interface with clients as of now. Tarun, Joe and Mohit are running the business completely together with Anna. One of our biggest additions in these tough times is Naganand Kumar in organisational planning and HR development as our management consultant. He was instrumental in Mudra’s early success and also an inspiration in the setting up MICA. He went to LA after that and he is now coming back to India. As an agency, our people are our biggest asset and investment, and I am glad we are making this investment in these tough times since it is in times like these when you have to do more for your people – if we cannot pay them more, money we need to motivate them and put something in their heads.
Q. There was recently a report about Lintas being back in Lowe’s brand name. What was that about? I do not know, because I do not know when it was dropped in the first place! It was always called Lowe Lintas. Lintas’ name was on the right hand side, now it has moved to under the Lowe brand name. Lintas was a group company, so we always said Lintas Lowe. Now, we have officially put Lintas under the Lowe and it has become Lowe Lintas. But it was never dropped.
Q. Even as we have seen some very good work coming from Lowe, the agency has been very quiet throughout 2008... was that deliberate? I find it very redundant using media as a strategy to keep the agency in the picture for anything. I don’t think media should be reporting on silly things going on in an agency… I’d rather spend my time doing what the client is paying me to do, which is doing good work. When I have something to say, I would say it, when I don’t, I find it very pointless. Also, this is a personality thing – the person you are at heart, and despite how objective you are, your personality does get rubbed off on the agency.
Q. Any particular verticals that are seeing extra focus right now? Digital is seeing a lot of focus, and so would rural and design too.
Q. Life is going to be hectic again with your next film on the floors? It would be the same shuttling between advertising and Film City. February 20, I am beginning work, and then for the next three months I would be alternating between Film City and Lowe every 15 days. I would be available for Lowe, but from the sets.
