Charles Berley Jenarius, Group CEO, Carat India

Charles Berley Jenarius has come on board the Carat Group, as the Group CEO of Carat India from July 2004. Prior to his joining the Carat family, Charles was Director, Communications, for a large Nigerian conglomerate with business interests in petroleum, banking and telecommunications. In India, earlier on, he has worked with companies like MRF, O&M, McCann-Erickson and Rediffusion DY&R. Charles brings to the table over 20 years of experience in sales, marketing and communications, with advertising, direct response, public relations and promotions being the key areas. In an interview to Kalyan Kar and Ashish Singh of exchange4media, Jenarius shares his experience, dwells on the industry scenario and discusses how effective strategy helped Carat gain an edge over others. Excerpts:

Q. What would be your honest reaction if asked whether agencies have got over their obsession with rates?

As long as clients focus on rates primarily, agencies will continue to do so. But given the clutter and audience fragmentation, a 360-degree approach is becoming relevant, and that in the long run will reduce the dependence on rates. At Carat, we are well geared to deliver a 360-degree approach for our clients.

The best way to answer this would be to give you some client testimonials which endorse our global position. Let me read out what Sanjay Sharma of Dabur Foods (GM, Marketing) has said: ‘Carat has really helped us in getting value for our money. We have worked over a period of six years…as we have grown as an organisation, so have they. They have really helped us think differently and spend money wisely and judiciously.’

Similarly, D Shivkumar, who is Executive Director for Consumer Electronics in Philips, had this to say: ‘Philips has been in India for 73 years. The challenge before us, including Carat and Philips, was to revitalise the brand and bring it to life in the shortest possible time. Money is limited...The industry was very focused on press and kept doing press. Carat convinced my Brand Team to spend more wisely on TV, spend more wisely on outdoor, a medium which had never been used by the consumer electronic industry. As a result the Philips brand is surging back strongly.’

I think these two comments amplify what we mean by the claim on our website.

Media audits do not benefit us directly because we do our own benchmarking. Normally, clients who make huge media investments utilise these services to get a second opinion and to validate their ROIs.

Having worked on both sides of the fence, the difference I see is that a media independently can be very objective and focused about its recommendations. There are no extraneous pressures that influence our recommendations.

Carat has a unique process called the ‘Carat Sphere’ that we use in communication planning. This process transcends the entire planning and buying process and actually delivers a communication idea and strategy. Rigorous application of this process makes a difference to what our clients achieve and helps us differentiate ourselves.

We are the only agency which has what we call Strategic Resource Directors (SRD) across the world in addition to media planners. The SRD’s role is to ensure that the communication planning process is followed religiously across all the brands we handle. This process deploys tools at various stages and the SRD ensures that we take full advantage of it. SRDs are also actively involved in new tool development on an ongoing basis.

As an opportunity for breakthrough in thoughts and innovation. The challenge today is not just to have good creative but breakthrough media as well for the consumer to take notice.

India is a media-opaque market and, therefore, some clients have reasons to believe that agencies do not pass on the full rate negotiation benefit to them. Also, in a highly competitive market like ours, there is a tendency among various players to play each one against the other to gain unfair advantage. And finally, some industry professionals do line up their bottom lines for short-term pecuniary advantages like personal bonuses or to meet their target commitments. In Carat, we encourage our clients to be a part of the negotiation process. We are also open to a client audit of our book of accounts.

Very important. Carat has processes and tools where documentation and knowledge management is the key. We have moved to normative databases for greater learning across product categories and consumers.

I believe there is a market big enough for everybody, because the market is segmented. It is up to each of the media players to decide which segment they wish to pursue and consequently how big or profitable, or both, they wish to be.

Carat has played a major role in building Bacardi in India. At the time of launch, Carat implemented a 360-degree approach and built many media partnerships for the client that involved on-ground and on-air initiatives.

Carat pioneered the concept of media agency in India. However, somewhere down the line we lost momentum and the first mover’s advantage because of some management changes. My objective is to regain what we lost. Achieving this in a highly competitive market, dominated by Goliaths, calls for some significant out-of-the-box thinking.

A good media planner should be able to help his/her client derive the best ROI by keeping track of the changing environment and the consumption and growth of media across target audiences. He or she should also be innovative in thinking about touch points and opportunities with consumers.

Given the rapid changes happening in the media environment, it is critical for us to ensure that our clients are equipped to reduce uncertainties and risks and to make the best investment decisions. This calls for constant upgrading of our processes and tools as well as the skills of our people.

Carat invests over £20 million every year in the development of proprietary tools. It also spends an enormous amount training people on a national, regional and global basis every year. As Sanjay of Dabur says, we are truly a learning organisation.

Very enriching and in most cases, quite fulfilling. Every assignment added new dimensions to my personality – both personally and professionally. I also have this uncanny feeling that each assignment was preparing me for the next set of challenges that were coming my way. And this feeling has often given me the courage to take on complex problems and daunting challenges.