Room 16

Have been away in 43deg heat of Delhi and then the much cooler environs of Bangalore over the past two weeks...Away from the keyboard and therefore Room 16 has had to wait!

Essentially, it was a chance comment from a young friend of mine at BBH India that has led to this post. Apparently, BBH internationally has a day when John(Hegarty) and Simon (Sherwood) meet the youngsters in the agency and discuss the business, the future, trends, technology, life and more...

It's the day when grey hair learns from young grey matter. In fact at RMG(David) Josy, Kumar and I regularly used to interact with young students(mostly from Xaviers) and used to discuss new business pitches, difficult campaigns and other stuff...

All of 'us' learnt a lot from 'them'. I remember using our David play-school to crack the Flying Machine and Excalibur campaigns and even a couple of new business pitches.

At the rate at which technology is changing and stuff is happening around us, it now pays even more to learn from the 21 and the 16 year olds. And therefore Room 16 or 21 is a must for the Rooms 36, 46 and 56...

So what are the thumb rules for interacting with Room 16/21.

1. Experience needs to learn a lot from curiosity and play. Today the flow of knowledge between experience and the inexperienced can almost be the same. Agencies can learn a lot from a formal Room 16 day! Unfortunately the sr. management at many agencies at most times is insulated from the Room 16/21 guys!

2. It's okay for Room 36/46/56 to admit "I don't know!" Can you teach me? At work I continue to learn a lot from junior planners and young students. Young bloggers and designers. Often they are more connected. They come across more 'cool stuff'. They are invariably closer to the 'edge', the stuff at the periphery!!

3. Access to Room 16 is not restricted to a room. Even if one is running a very small agency, today one can connect with Room 16 virtually. Room 16 is available on gmail, fb, linkedin...It just needs an honest ear and some patience...

4. Room 16 Yellow pages. The folks in HR must have a sort of yellow pages for the diverse and invaluable talent of the Room 16 to 21 guys. Imagine the gains that the company can make if it taps into this for client projects and more. And believe me it is not a very costly affair to manage this! But of course it costs a lot of time and precious attention.

5. Room 16 are digital natives. This fact alone makes interacting with them a big plus for Room 36 and beyond. In fact recently I got sound advice from Room 6( my son Neo) who proudly stated that - "Papa ko toh computer game khelne ke liye kitaab padhna padta hai, lekin humko toh khelne se hi pata chal jaata hai!!"

While I was putting this post, read this article by Rishad Tobacowala in Brand Equity today. Do read it here if you haven't already!

Rishad makes a couple of very important points.(Putting him almost at the top of my growing interview list)
(a) (the Room 16/21 guys)are highly energetic, motivated, and driven individuals who are creative, accountable and hungry to learn and they have very high standards they hold themselves to.

They want the answer to three questions on any assignment.
Q1. What are we hoping to achieve?

Q2. Is there a better or cheaper way to get the same outcome?

And Q3. How can results, outcomes and they themselves get better? Answering these with a) because we have always done it this way, or b) we cannot do it that way because that is too much work and will change our business or c) the boss says so, are not considered answers worth considering.

(b) Provide access to information and tools.The Room 16/21 guys can access information and opinion with one click on their web browser or phone in their personal lives and they expect this open access to information and empowering tools at work. Anything that slows down or anyone that hoards is resented while those that provide access are celebrated.

(c) Run the workplace in some ways as a model University. There is a reason that more and more companies call their physical locations “campuses”.

This is because in many ways an ideal workplace for the Room 16 generation represents a continuation of their University days. It is a place for them to continue to learn, to contribute and to grow. And like any great University they want access to superb facilities, good mentors and teachers and strong fellow students.

In school the end result may have been grades, passing examinations, dissertations and learning. While at work it is revenue, profits, new products, patents and more. They want an environment that is challenging but also one where they can challenge the status quo.

The Room 16 generation thinks differently, behaves differently and has already started to demand big changes in the way society, business and individuals interact. Is your company/ agency prepared for the Room 16 generation? Is mine:-)

How many 16 year olds do you know/ understand? How many do I know/ understand!!!

Good Tea & the Future The Way We Want It To Be

Just finished my second cup of well-made Darjeeling tea in my favourite white cup! Ah the small pleasures of life...Getting ready for a long day of book research and writing after a two week hiatus...

Had read this post by Scott Goodson, the Strawberry Frog CEO on the different agency models and the need for extreme agility and adaptability among agencies in times of recession/ slowdown. You can read it here...

It also got me thinking about the need to adapt as a worker-ant/ employee/ networked knowledge worker/ creative portfolio worker...Thots not exactly in order...

1. The department must die. I feel the rate of our contribution dramatically increases with our ability to collaborate across the blurring boundaries of department. I am talking strategy, creative, servicing, digital media, OOH, research, brand identity...Though there are no visible signs of 'the department' dying in an Indian agency any time in the near future. Long live the fiefdoms!!

2. Employee NetworksThe agile companies must respect, use and reward employee networks. At 437 LinkedIn connections, I am perhaps a little more useful than I was a year back:-)This is a social network. But it's also a knowledge and personal network that can do great stuff together, solve issues, share experiences. Suddenly, the sum of all these employee networks can become a potent force for the small agile company!

3. Portfolio Working. I had been wanting to do it ever since I first read about the concept in Charles Handys' book - the empty raincoat! As we increasingly get hurtled into the ever closely knit creative-knowledge economy, opportunities to do portfolio work(not just for pure creatives) but everyone has risen through the roof...

4. Make New ConnectionsWhile the economy has slowed down dramatically, the potential to make new business connections has never been greater.

Take 1 jar of open mindedness and enthusiasm + add a full saucer of environment scanning + heat it a little + shake it with new thinking + add 1 table spoon of new ideas and approaches and hey you have a new business idea or model or new portfolio friends...

eg. A specialised Bollywood/ A/V content Marketing Agency*, Youth Marketing Company, Personal Branding Consultancy, Low cost SOHO brand building packages(this one came as of yesterday as I was approached by a London based company for a guest blog post)

Gmail, LinkedIn, Skype ensure that this souffle comes for FREE!!

5. Re-skillingMost of us(all of us) sit on a few kilos of unused talent. A minor re-skilling can polish up those and can be gainfully employed in a portfolio way. In the past 3 months or so, at a personal level, I have discovered that I could be a trainer, executive coach, youth/ culture/ Bollywood film marketer...It's just that we sit on our asses waiting for things to happen(at least that was my case) Whereas the environment is right for re-skilling and creating new revenue models(both for the company and personal)...

6. The Un-Company ManWhen I was looking for a job two years back, a very senior media person(ality) said that I wasn't much of a company man(the spirit of the remark was a wee bit pejorative)...However, if we look at the debris of corporate America and the loss of jobs closer home, the company as the sole provider of financial security and stability no longer exists. It's both a scary and a liberating thought. In fact now may be the best time to finally come out of the life long shackles of the COMPANY.

The company will definitely exist; but that will no longer be the sole/ desired work model. Like I said, (a) portfolio working, (b) greater degree of employee entrepreneurship, (c) company as a employee collective, (d) virtual creative/knowledge worker networks and more are/ will emerge stronger...

I feel the time, the tools and the environment is just right to create the future the way we want it to be!!

The Madness Starts at 9

My friend, Vinay(Kanchan) has written this hilarious book - The Madness Starts at 9!!

The book is a satire on the corporate world. It is set in an agency, and is a humorous take on many events that happen in the life of the agency!

1. Vision Impossible - elaborates on the mind numbing nature of vision meetings

2. True Lies- looks at how in a interview process, both parties celebrate the 'creative distortion of the truth'

3. Wait Until Dark - is about how office parties can be used for furthering your career graph:-)

4. A myth called performance appraisals - is well, the name kinda says it all :)

5. Stumped - shows what happens in an organisation on the day when India plays a cricket match

6. I know what you did last summer - demystifies what really happens during summer internship

7. Murder by Numbers -dwells on how we inherently are intimidated by numbers, even though they have a critical role to play

and so on...You can get the Hindu review of the book here...

All the best Vinay! Hope you have a best-seller!!

Sunday, Taglines and Virtual Worlds

Yet again I am in Delhi on a Sunday! Got an early morning client presentation tomorrow...Missed taking Neo to the Juhu beach and bandstand!! Waiting for breakfast...

A while back had written a post on the 'diminishing return on taglines'. I had largely meant those of the 'xyz de variety - hila de, pila de, ghumaa de!

Here's an article on adage.com in support of the enduring power of tag-lines. Have a read here...

A good article by Reuben Steiger of Second Life on 'Merging the Real and Virtual Worlds' again on adage.com here...

Reubens insights peppered with my own...

- Virtual worlds are a significant and fast growing market.
Okay in India, it might take a longer time because of bandwidth issues but we need to be mentally prepared for the virtual world to export our brand thinking when bandwidth sorts out...

- Virtual worlds are a subset of social media, which accounts for 30% of consumer internet activity in the US according to Comscore.
As I mentioned in my last post, in India the media participants are largely fence-sitters around social media. A layer of virtual world is perhaps too much change, too fast:-)

I think it's time to start a digital media adoption and first steps consultancy under Tribal...Must speak to my colleague Leroy on this!!

- Virtual worlds turn the web into a "place," allowing users to connect face-to-face in real time.

- Early data suggest that levels of brand engagement in virtual worlds are extremely high. Millions of Us has conducted some 60 engagements in virtual worlds for clients with engagement per user ranging from 2 to 24 hours.

- There are 550 million users of social networks and as users begin to put virtual "rooms" on their pages, the game will change significantly.
Agree, as I flipped through the A G Lafley and Ram Charan book, Game Changer on the flight to Dilli yesterday, was wondering on similar lines. Though, nobody has the idea of how exactly the real and virtual worlds will collide, mash up in the next 18-24 months, what is undeniably true is that the game will have further changed for brands, marketers, analog and digital agencies alike!!

Four toast, some tea and a badly made omelette has arrived:-)...Enjoy!

Goafest - Day Zero

For me and a bunch of 'newly acquired' colleagues, day zero(from late afternoon)was largely about beer, singing SD Burman songs and a not-so-bad Dainik Bhaskar party at Blueberrys...

The coming together of Abbys and the Goafest is a great beginning. Now if we have managed to lower the scam quotient of the awards, it wud be sone pe suhaga! But maybe I said it too early and maybe I am too naive in believing a change will happen soon.

Check out the conclave speaker notes if you haven't- 1. Agencies need to be active partners in brand building!

and 2. Agencies Not Bringing Value to the Table Why do we(ad agencies) berate ourselves so much!!!

Looking forward to an early morning splash in the pool:-)

A Legend Hangs His Boots

Friday was the official farewell of Mohammed Khan - our out-going Chairman and creative honcho. Pity, I never got to know him well/actually at all. Last couple of months, he had mostly been on leave or on baton-passing-role...

Mohammed has been involved in setting-up of some of India’s best-known creative agencies today. He was one of the co-founders of Rediffusion in 1973, came on board to start Contract in 1978 and finally in 1983, started Enterprise.

He has been involved with/ built iconic brands like Raymond, Charms, Lakme and most brands that had their origins in the 70s and 80s.

Mohammed modestly says: “Half the credit should go the clients, we had excellent relationships.” “In fact, that’s one thing that’s missing today –– agency relationships with suppliers, photographers, directors etc, which made them give that little extra. That was what made the difference between good and great.” (ET)

Most of the advertising honchos were there - Ranjan Kapur, Piyush, Prasoon, Balki, ...along with the Bates team with Sonal and Subhash!

The high-point of the evening was Tom Alter(a close friend of Mohammed) reciting Ghalib with lot of passion & feeling to a youngish crowd, who listened impatiently with little understanding of the Urdu language or the nuances of Ghalib...

Though I was a bit inebriated on Sula red wine, managed to take some pix and catch snippets of eulogising speech and random spice:-)

1. Lets start with Mohammed. A legend. He thanked three people in particular in his warm, avuncular(though have heard stories of his temper) style. Subhash Ghoshal for rehabilitating him at Contract. His client Sunny Pillai of VST industries for writing a cheque of 10 lacs that enabled him and Rajeev Aggrawal(also present at the party) to start 'Enterprise' and Raghu - a soulmate and co-worker of many years!

Mohammed also said that he had two big worries. Both of which seem to have been resolved. The first being what would he do after retirement. But then he recently saw Alyque with a smashing babe and thought that life after advertising might not be so bad after all LOL. And after Sonal taking over the creative leadership at Bates, his second worry has also been taken care of...

And his friendly poke at Ogilvy while introducing Sonal was - "Piyush, watch out your ass!!:-)"

2. Ranjan recalled the famous Khan remarks during the heydays of Enterprise- "Ogilvy is just a middle of the road agency" and "the reason that Ogilvy claps so hard at award shows is that they have little else to cheer about"!

3. The streaky haired Sonal had this to say - "Mohammad saab, aapke itne bade jootey aur hamare itne chhote pair, kam se kam hamare pairon ka size toh dekh liya hota"...

All in all a nice warm party, a sentimental send-off with a good blend of veterans from the past and the present.Tom Alter, Juhi Babbar & Rajeev RajaRanjan & MohammedSonal & Mohammed

You can read a Mohd. Khan interview at Nita's blog here...

Ad Agency Thinking

Disclaimer : This aerial snap-shot is not entirely true for all the ad agencies except the ones that are dying from the inside...LOL

Indiadrant is 1 year old 2day

Hey guys...Indiadrant is a year old today! It's been a journey of 223 posts!! Not a bad statistic at all:-) (Back-slapping) Long, fun-filled, at the expense of a lot of family-time and some work time...

But been good. Much of my learning in web 2.0 has been thru Indiadrant. Many contacts, friends, a hire, few spam, many many useful comments and learning/interactions...

Was planning to write an anniversary post with bells and whistles and multiple thank yous, but feeling drained out. Five days of boot camp and a 6th of the strategy council day-long meet has left me blissfully empty!

Am catching up on all the lost sleep...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

P.S. Here's the Aug 18th post from 2006 on Memes in case you don't believe me:-)

The New Creative

I was having a meeting with a senior colleague of mine from the region. We were sharing notes on what constitutes the new creative!

Here's what I had to say...I guess the mashed up potatoes say it all:-)
But don't think many of the creatives in India get it...They dread the open-source, formless, digital shape of creative age that's upon us! Often they discover they can't solve the communication problem by saying - "the film opens on..."

Thot of the week - In an era of people generated content Are creatives the new suits!!

The Great Idea Myth - Simon Solves It For Me

I have always believed it to be true. At least for the last 10 years. Ideas are easy to produce. A dime a dozen. But I don't think anybody would have agreed with me. Least of all some 'creative types'(in an agency). Who routinely hide behind plumes of smoke, frequent breaks, large egos, being rude to servicing, being undisciplined, etc.

After all these years, I read Simon talking a similar language. What a relief! My hypothesis has been verified by this sample of one:-)

Buy why this myth that ideas are difficult to produce, in the first place?
Great ideas are. But then they are rare anyways! And most of them happen outside of advertising!

1. Our industry has an abundance of mediocre minds/ idiots who just have a creative designation/ swipe card. They are actually young and old farts who wouldn't get a job anywhere else. Their idea productivity is sub-optimal. And I suspect they are present in decent numbers in every agency in India today!

2. If you say ideas are easy to produce, you take away the glamour/ the black-box syndrome!

3. Maintain that ideas come with great difficulty and you can buy a ton of time and even manage to waste most of it.

4. Perpetrate and protect the myth that only the 'creative badge wearers' can get those elusive ideas. And you protect your job and the fat salaries.

And I love what Simon says next in his post - "Ideas might be difficult. But not the coming up with ideas part. The truly tough part is knowing what to sacrifice and what not to when protecting the idea, coming up with more ideas to help 'sell in' the idea, having the tenacity to constantly tweak and shape and develop the idea (crafting). being sure enough to know your idea is strong enough to be done on a smaller budget, being mature enough to be able to see beyond awards, being generous enough to know that the idea isn't yours at all, but is owned by many."

5. By rubbishing every idea that doesn't originate in the 'creative department(gawd, how I hate this department word), the creative types have succeeded in breaking the confidence of young minds(in servicing or planning or traffic, wherever it is applicable).

So guys, lets write, create, paint, draw, post-it, posterize it, art direct it.
Believe that good ideas are simple to get.
That everybody is creative.
And that with practice ideas are even more easy to get.
It's the creative apartheid within an agency that's the difficult part.

But walls are fast crumbling. In the digital era, there may be little room for 'mediocre minds/ idiots' or over-the-hill prima donnas! Neither is there any time to fret on the differences and 'the ideas are difficult to get' story!

Thanks Simon for bringing the topic up! While on the subject, do read Russell's post that sparked Simon's post!

You may want to read a related post...

Being David - A Spirit Rarer than Tanzanite

It's a special day and a sad one...As I write this post, there are packers all around me, wrapping the last remains of a small agency called David.

It's funny how much I have got attached to this agency in just over 12 months!

Are we the creative hot-shop that the world(well, part of it at least) calls us?
Maybe we are not.
Are we radical in the way the edgier agencies in the western hemisphere have adopted new media?
No again...

But, I can say with certainty that Brand David as it stood and shone is/ was culturally the richest agency brand in India!

Before it was decided to merge it with Bates Asia. Because it makes sense to have a stronger mid-sized network in the region...

But in life and in business what makes sense may not always be right!
Cultures are about shared dreams. They need more nurture and less merger!

After my initial anger and resilienece, the planner in me has bought into the merger.
David hasn't.

You may ask, if we aren't edge-ily creative or new media mavericks...what makes us so special...

My list wud include the following.

1. Josy Paul - the maverick guy who along with Madhukar Sabnavis and now Kumar started it all.

2. I don't know about the other 5 years but in the last one year while I have been a David, Josy has helped create a culture of creative strategists...

Creative in the new millennium is not about 'silo thinking'! The best work comes from a seamless integration of creativity and thinking! And we have here in our play-rooms and on the WallOfDavid.

We have done brave thinking...The results may not match to our efforts...But in our thinking and culture, we may be as edgy as W+K, Mother, Naked, et al...

3. David's model of senior guys hands-on everything and lots of energetic young Davids worked for us!

4. We have possibly the best training program in the country...It was called endless converstaions between youthful energy and passionate experience...
No closed doors, just windows of opportunity for everyone...

And our open-source training programme 'SchoolOfDavid' was amongst the most 'fun-and-play' modules possible in our industry.

5. A while ago I read in BusinessWeek that the metal Tanzanite is rarer than even diamond. As it is mined in just one small dusty town of Tanzania...I may sound utterly soppy and nostalgic, but the spirit of David is a rarer metal than even Tanzanite...

I think I was a David before joining David and believe that all of us(Davids) will retain a part of it where we go next...

It's very easy in today's world to buy technology, sometimes even market shares but it's next to impossible to buy or create BELIEF...

I feel David was a network/ agency with a great belief and energy eco-system...

It's unfortunate that it had an abrupt end. But what is important is that we lived the life of Davids...And hopefully will always retain it...

Where's the Glue around here?

I have often ranted at the lack of disruptive systemic level changes in the Indian advertising business...Be it a culture of open-source creativity or the subject of a creative-planner formalised partnership, Agency 2.0 and more...

Between Prasoon, Balki or Piyush - I have rarely heard them speak about the agencies/ creatives/ creative products of the future...In fact of the trinity, only Prasoon appears to be wired into the new world/ new media space. At least that's what I get from his heavily PRed thoughts...

However, a flat world ensures that one at least knows of the disruptive business models emerging in other parts of the globe. The Glue Society is one of the agencies/ creative fraternity that is at the fore-front of systemic changes in the way they approach the advertising business...

Came across this interview of co-founder Jonathan Kneebone at this website.

Capturing the essence of his thots peppered with a few of my own.

1. The Glue Society is a creative collective based in Sydney and New York comprising of writers, designers, art directors and film directors. Founded in Sydney in 1998 by Jonathan Kneebone and Gary Freedman.

2. "Rather than become an agency with permanent clients, we decided to work project by project. That way we would be able to ensure all the projects we worked on were those we were suited to and interested in".

I feel the planning fraternity in India could possibly adopt this project/ free-lance approach. Not all clients are worth the jet-miles:-) or the long hours...I would be happier building a domain expertise in my interest area rather than head a geographically demarcated client base.

3. "Rather than just come up with ideas then outsource them to other people to make, we decided to combine concept and execution into the same four walls".

Advertising is amongst the only industries where the central product(still the 30 cc commercial) is out-sourced to the producers...I guess its high time the concept and execution be combined together. It will be a viable, nimbler, happier model.

4. "Our catalogue of work tends to attract clients who are similarly interested in breaking down walls and being brave to new opportunities".


This piece of glue society creative is actually a sculpture(installation) at a beach. It depicts melting ice-cream!!

5. "Bad advertising agencies have a tendency to copy the latest fads or mimic other popular things. This simply won't wash anymore. Why would someone spend time with a fake piece of entertainment, when they can spend time with the original. The industry is being forced to change by the realisation that everyone is creative (something we've long believed)."

6. Advertising is like art in some respects - in that there's a hell of a lot of crap and some things that resonate. The difference for me between the two is at the conceptual level. Advertising tends to be where we solve other people's problems. Art tends to be where you get to solve your own.

I wish we had more thinkers like Jon Kneebone & Gary Freedman closer home...

This is the famous Chicken Sandwich world championship work conceptualised by CP+B and directed by the Glue Society!

SchoolOfDavid : Open Source Learning

About six months back, at our small agency we started a learning program called SchoolOfDavid. We/I haven't been very regular but yesterday managed the 4th such session.

As always it was fun! This time it was different in two refreshing ways.
(a) It happened outside the agency, at my place and Candies - the quiet little eatery in Bandra! and (b) It had a truly diverse gene/talent pool...

One of the structural changes I have been passionate about in the agency is the formal partnership between the creative and the other guys(planner/ servicing). As against the norm of a department-led-silo-thinking/working! The topic of this session was 'Dinking' and was about the need to do 'boundaryless-thinking-n-action!

After a short gyan session by me, we got down to a role playing exercise loosely based on Edward De Bono's role playing exercises...

We had 3 teams. Each took on the role of a new company - M&M and Google(X2) and then went on creating a new agency...

I wasn't at all surprised at the strategic-n-creative spark of the young turks in my agency. I have tapped into it many-a-time this last one year! What they may lack in experience, they more than make up in sheer 'fresh-n-bold thinking'!

Some other musings:
1. We must tap into the 'talent pool' at the bottom of the pyramid more often...Fresh pairs of eyes is stupid to ignore!

2. Open-source problem solving can work wonders. In the past month, I have used it to create a campaign for a major client of ours! If the people at the top are committed, open-source-working is not very difficult to DO.

3. Informal sessions create culture. Formal ones don't.

4. To quote Yogi Berra - "You can observe a lot, just by watching."

5. I find in the digital age that we live in, 'worldviews'/ 'experience' is not directly proportional to age...

6. A remarkable way forward might be to create a 'shadow board' of young guys to get in the freshest ideas on board.

7. How you do the learning sessions is as important as what you do in them.

In case anybody is interested in conducting informal work-shops to create a 'creative play-ground' in their organisations, please feel free to get in touch with me!

cheers
M\
P.S. A special thanks to Russell(without whom SOD4 would have been highly unlikely)for baby-sitting young Neo!!

Where are the Wow-ers? And how do we hire them?

A mid-sized or small ad agency in India today generally doesn't have an HR department. Even if it does, the HR person is more a recruiter and administrator than a talent spotter and trainer!

As we lose our capacity/ intent to dole out fat salaries, We must think out-of-the- box to spot good talent, hire them, train them and then keep them excited!

And this is the duty of every senior/ mid-level manager in the agency. I often dig into Tom Peters for inspiration in such matters...

Here are some nuggets from his book'The Circle of Innovation'.

1. "Expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing" - Steve Jobs
The original Macintosh team was a marvelous mix of artists and engineers. Their aesthetic interests were as strong as their techie interests! When was the last time, we tried creating/ fostering communities of interest in our agency?

2. "It's the cracked ones that let light into the world."
Are there enough wild guys in our agencies? Are we chatting/ having coffee/ inviting them to our agency? Often enough.

3. "Experience is out. Inexperience is in. It may make a lot of middle-aged businessmen very uncomfortable, but it's a fact of life." - Alan Webber, founding editor, Fast Company
Have you tried giving an important project to the junior most guys in your agency.
I tried recently for a major assignment. The results have been stunningly impressive!!

4. "Good ideas come from differences. Creativity comes from unlikely juxta-positions. The best way to maximise differences is to mix ages, cultures and disciplines." - Nicholas Negroponte, founder and director, MIT Media Lab
Shall we attempt making small diads of copy-writer & planner, servicing and art director, CEO and management trainee, planning director and summer trainee...We may be surprised at the value we might create by this re-mixing!! Let's try creating hot-groups for new business pitches!

5. Hire for attitude. Train for skill.
Hire bright students from design institutes, history students, bio-tech students...Give them creative assignments...Woo them. Woo their colleges. Network with their faculty!
Let's raise the lust quotient of our agency...

As Andy Grove said, we need to create 'waves of lust' for our product - in this case our agency brand!

The wow-ers are unevenly distributed! Are we doing enough to hire them?

Image source : Gettyimages

2007 - Fifty Drifts

Happy New Year guys! Just back from a trip to Mysore, Nagarhole Game Park(a tiger sanctuary 100km from Mysore) and Mangalore(attending a beach wedding of a friend). The trip was exotic, relaxed and refreshing! Though on occasions, I did miss the blogosphere. But not much:-)

I wrote this post(hard copy version)in a restaurant called Machchli Mela(inside the Summer Sands resort) overlooking the Someshwar beach, Mangalore!

Actually was trying to summarise all my thoughts on all the things in 2006. Here's my list of swings, trends, run-of-the-mill observations, comments on agency life, life, world of brands, buyers, marketers, et al!

The list is heavily skewed to my way of thinking, pet obsessions/peeves, observations. No tall claims of trend forecasting here!( and in no particular order either).

Here are the 50 drifts for 2007...Some are happening, some may take a while longer and few are from the attic of my personal wish-list:-)

1. Foresight > Insight
2. Planner + Creative > Art Director + Copy Writer
3. Stories > Slides(power-point)
4. Brand Quirks > Brand Values
5. Many to Many Conversations > Dialogues > Monologue
6. Being Personal > Brand Personality
7. Design > Analysis
8. Brilliant Execution > Correct Strategy
9. Random > Permanence
10. Collaboration > Competition
11. Culture > Core Value
12. UAE(Unique Amiable Experience) > USP
13. Designers > Account Planners
14. Mobisodes > TVCs
15. I > We > I > We
16. Employees > Companies
17. Karan Johar > Prasoon Joshi > Santosh Desai
18. Outdoor > Indoor
19. Experience > Analysis
20. Consumer Psychology > New Technology
21. Pop-up stores > In-store branding
22. SRK > Aamir
23. Future Group > Bharti-Walmart
24. Time > Money
25. Attention > Time
26. Trust > Attention
27. Soft Power > Raw Power
28. Expertise > Experts
29. Pop(Everything) > Everything
30. Bollywood > Cricket
31. Krssh > Superman
32. Hanuman > Krssh
33. WPP(in India) > Omnicom(in India)
34. Air Deccan > Air India
35. Blogs > Flogs
36. RSS feeds > Newspapers > Breaking News
37. News TV > TV Soaps
38. Shaadi.com > Shaadi Points
39. Digital >> Analog
40. Tactics > Strategy
41. Relationship > Reason
42. Being Creative > Being Right
43. Surprise > Consistency
44. Vigour(Energy) > Rigour
In brand thinking
45. Simplexity > Simplicity > Complexity
46. KBC3 > KBC 2 > KBC 1(?)
47. Fashion > Features
48. Blink > Consideration
In brand choice/ selection
49. Beer > Cola
50. 2007 > 2006

I am sure there are umpteen areas I have over-looked...But am working on the next 50!
cheers

Lessons from the Chinese Novel

I find Sacred Space in TOI(the quotable quotes, anecdotes and more section) to be a good idea cyclotron! Day before yesterday, there was a very nice speech on the Chinese novel by the nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck delivered almost 70 years back on December 12, 1938 at the Stockholm Concert Hall...

Google led me to the original speech at Gifts of Speech. Do read the full speech! It's brilliant!

The speech triggered a train of thoughts. So, here's the excerpt from the speech interspersed with some of my thoughts!

In China art and the novel have always been widely separated. There, literature as an art was the exclusive property of the scholars, an art they made and made for each other according to their own rules, and they found no place in it for the novel!

Lets play a substitution game! In the above statement, replace 'China' by 'India', 'Art' by the 'Creative department', 'novel' by 'non-creatives/planning' and 'scholars' by 'creatives' and a few other minor changes!

So the statment now reads - "In India the creative department and the non-creatives have always been widely separated. Here, advertising as an art is the exclusive property of the creatives, an art they make and make for each other according to their own rules, and they find no place in it for the non-creatives!"

And they held a powerful place, those Chinese scholars. Philosophy and religion and letters and literature, by arbitrary classical rules, they possessed them all, for they alone possessed the means of learning, since they alone knew how to read and write.

They were powerful enough to be feared even by emperors, so that emperors devised a way of keeping them enslaved by their own learning, and made the official examinations the only means to political advancement, those incredibly difficult examinations which ate up a man's whole life and thought in preparing for them, and kept him too busy with memorizing and copying the dead and classical past to see the present and its wrongs.

In that past the scholars found their rules of art. But the novel was not there, and they did not see it being created before their eyes, for the people created the novel, and what living people were doing did not interest those who thought of literature as an art. If scholars ignored the people, however, the people, in turn, laughed at the scholars.

And today the creative department holds a powerful place. The prima donnas, their self-indulgence and big egos! Archaic craft rules. And D&AD(of which India hasn't won a single award) and Cannes-n-Abby-focussed-existence, obsessed with narrow definitions of creativity, turf-protection, politics and silly awards.

For they alone possess the Macs,have access to the code to photo-shop,illustrators and corel draw and the right to 'be creative'!

And the creative class is powerful enough to be feared even by the new emperors(the CEO and the Board!) But many of the creatives today are enslaved by their own creativity. The D&AD, Cannes and Clios - the incredibly difficult exams which eat up their whole life and thoughts preparing for them, and keep them busy with doing arcane stuff to be appreciated by a non-appreciative-western-audience.

Copying the styles of the West and too dead to hear the sounds of their own back-alley and hinter-land! If creatives ignore the consumer and reality, the new consumer and ground reality, in turn, ignores the tradional creative! Because the youth and the new consumers are plugged more into Bollywood than advertising, laughter shows than clever body-copy and gaming( albeit on a very niche base) rather than self-indulgent many-a-time non-relevant creative!

In China the scholar was a class. Here he was. A pursed mouth, a nose at once snub and pointed, a high pedantic voice, always announcing rules that do not matter to anyone but himself, a boundless self-conceit, a complete scorn not only of the common people but of all other scholars, a figure in long shabby robes, moving with a swaying haughty walk, when he moved at all.

He was not to be seen except at literary gatherings, for most of the time he spent reading dead literature and trying to write more like it. He hated anything fresh or original, for he could not catalogue it into any of the styles he knew.

If he could not catalogue it, he was sure it was not great, and he was confident that only he was right. If he said, "Here is art", he was convinced it was not to be found anywhere else, for what he did not recognize did not exist. And as he could never catalogue the novel into what he called literature, so for him it did not exist as literature.

The Chinese scholar and the typical average Indian creative( run-of-th-mill, 90% of the creative class) share some common traits - supercilliousness, ignorance of reality, boundless self-conceit, a complete scorn not just of account management but of all other inhabitants of the agency including the planner( although grudingly they do make small concessions and friendly gestures) and a haughty sway as a shield to any new idea, radical thought or counter-intuitive suggestion!

Spotted in huge gatherings at self-congratulatory award shows. Most of his time is spent in studying 'Archives' and trying to copy some of it without revealing the source. Hating any new thought, leave alone copy/story which comes from the non-creatives!

Not recognising anything which is not in 30 seconds or 100cc. Everything else must follow into the deceit of the 360 - expedient extensions of the primary idea with total disregard for the TG, the client's problems/ needs, cultural sensitivity or any logic!

But, happily for the Chinese novel, it was not considered by the scholars as literature. Happily, too, for the novelist! Man and book, they were free from the criticisms of those scholars and their requirements of art.

Their techniques of expression and their talk of literary significances and all that discussion of what is and is not art, as if art were an absolute and not the changing thing it is, fluctuating even within decades!

The Chinese novel was free. It grew as it liked out of its own soil, the common people, nurtured by that heartiest of sunshine, popular approval, and untouched by the cold and frosty winds of the scholar's art.

Replace the 'novel' now by 'non-advertising'. Look at the way in which the internet, search engines, blogs, social networking sites, youtube.com, PR, WOM, design, retail experience, in-film advertising, Bollywood is growing! They are growing out of the wishes and desires of the common people, nurtured by the hearty sun-shine, popular approval and a little less controlled by the cold and frosty winds of the 'creative class'. At one point advertsing led the creative cause. Today, barring a few odd players/ people, I feel the industry is lagging!

No wonder, when in the morning I read Martin Sorrell say at the HSBC summit that 50% of all WPP earnings come from non-advertising and that shortly 2/3rds of it will come from non-advertsing...I knew the novel was thriving...

And yes, if agencies don't gear for the new environment where there is a 'democracy of creativity' we are doomed earlier that we think!

Mother Knows Best

Today's Brand Equity carried(once again) a write-up on Omnicom's India strategy...It almost read like a cheap thriller!

Tucked away on pg 5 was also the entry plans of W+K, Mother, Fallon and BBH. Now Mother is again an agency that I have heard much about but know little of!

So after the John Hegarty Speakpost, here's the second in the series.

This interview I chanced upon at ideasfactory.comIt's a nice site. Check it out! And here's the interview.

Mother Knows Best
'What's the worst that can happen?' This TVC for Dr Pepper was one of Mothers'. So were the ones for Orange, Coca-Cola, Egg, Cup-a-Soup and Super Noodles. If there's one pulse that agency Mother has their finger on its ads.

And they don't just do ads, either. Mother has produced music videos (art director Thomas Hilland has made promos for Röyksopp) and published a book of photography, Places to go people to see.

Brand of Humour. The Cup-a-Soup and Dr Pepper ads are examples of campaigns that take Mother's typically and unusually honest approach in its ads, jettisoning the 'buy this and your life will be perfect' tone that campaigns usually adopt.

So, the Dr Pepper ads acknowledge that 'What's the worst that can happen' might well be many people's motivation for trying it.

Adding a twist of irony, Mother's campaigns show people who buy the product ending up in a variety of nightmare scenarios, like one teenager who picks a bottle from a chiller unit that shatters, burying him under a mountain of supermarket goods.

He has to be cut free (also of his trousers and underwear) by firefighters and is carried to hospital under the gaze of international film crews who broadcast the story of 'Butt Naked Boy' around the world.

Mother created a series of cinema ads for Orange in which legends of the movie industry like Carrie 'Princess Leia' Fisher pitch to a panel of execs who try to make mobiles a key element, no matter how historically inappropriate (Fisher's movie is set at the end of the 19th century).

The final line reads, 'Don't let a mobile phone ruin your movie. Please switch it off'.

Different set-up . The ads aren't exactly standard, but then Mother isn't. Founders Robert Saville(Jt. CD), Mark Waites( Jt. CD) and Stef Calcraft, who set up Mother in 1996 to launch Channel 5, wanted to create a different kind of agency.

Most agencies have a group of people called account executives who are responsible for liaising between the client and the agency staff who work on the account. Mother does not.

"People assume we've stripped out a layer," partner and strategist Andy Bellass says. "We haven't. We just don't have a group of people that are called account handlers."

"Whenever a creative person picks up the phone and talks to a client about the size of an end frame or what director they can use, they're being an account manager."

"The client doesn't just have one relationship with one person called an account man or whatever - they have they have relationships with everybody."

Send us your problems. The agency is not afraid to turn its unconventional thinking on its own industry: "The worst thing in advertising is when clients assume that advertising is the answer to their problems," Bellass comments.

"More often than not, it's not. Holsten Pils assumed for years that advertising was the tool that would get it ahead of its competitors. It's not. The problem lies with the product."

So at Mother, they work out what the problem is and solve that, instead of working to a traditional 'brief' that a client sets and which the agency is required to carry out rather than question.

"We always say, we don't answer briefs we answer problems," Bellass continues. "It works best when clients come in, sit down and say, 'this is what's happening in my business.'"

"That's not to say when they come in with a brief that it's wrong. It's easier for us to work with a problem."

Something old something new...
Many traditional agencies are large companies that employ hundreds of people. So the agency's own staff may not come into contact with each other very often, and less often with its clients.

Mother currently has 90 staff and everyone works in the same open-plan office, a former fire station in east London. (The agency was also an early pioneer of hot-desking.)

But that's not to say that all traditions have been abandoned. Mother approaches every campaign by tried-and-tested methods:

"There are no new ways, there are only old ways," Bellass explains. "And the old ways are the simple ways. You pick the people you want to work with, you sit them around the table and you talk to them."

"The fundamental question to ask is: how are brands understanding their consumers, finding the right way to touch them?"

The science bit... Advertising is not an exact science, though. The much-quoted Lord Leverhulme (his company is now part of Unilever) famously observed that half of the money he spent on advertising was wasted, but he could never be sure which half.

Some advertising and marketing techniques even baffle the professionals: "People like Amazon still amaze me," Bellass says. "I go onto Amazon and buy a book and a CD and it tells me the other books and CDs I should be buying."

"I look at those books and those CDs and think, you know what? I would want to read and buy those - and usually I do. Isn't that the most sophisticated marketing out there? It's a brand you have a relationship with."

"But at McDonalds you buy a Big Mac and they say, would you like a large fries, and you think, if I wanted large fries I would have asked for it."

"But here is Amazon doing exactly the same thing - they're trying to get you to buy more products from their store. But they're doing it by understanding exactly what you want."

Comin' to get you . The next stop for the agency is New York. Mother has opened an office in the US during the new year and four of America's top admen, including a former head of advertising for Nike, have joined the team.

It's difficult to know who is in for the biggest surprise, Mother operating in a new market or the US being on the receiving end of Mother's unique brand of humour.

But Mark Waites knows the New York ad scene from personal experience. And is the market in the US so very different?

"People say it is," Bellass says, "but I'm a huge believer that whatever market you're in, people still drive cars, people buy soap powder, people still watch television." America, watch out.

Whatever the Goliaths might think, I firmly believe that these slightly left-of-centre players will sex up the Indian market and hopefully they will have lots of jobs for Indian planners:-)