The Hindu Business Line : `Agencies need to be obsessive about creating compelling content'

ON a whirlwind trip to Mumbai to deliver the inaugural address at the Advertising Agencies Association of India's Diamond Jubilee seminar, Andrew Robertson, President and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, is impressed with the strides made by Indian advertising. The 43-year-old first came to BBDO in the UK in 1995, joining Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO where he ultimately served as Chief Executive. In 2001, he moved to BBDO North America to serve as President and CEO. Robertson began his advertising career at Ogilvy & Mather as a media planner. He switched to account management and was appointed to the Board of Ogilvy & Mather in 1986. In 1989, he joined J. Walter Thompson as a member of the management group and began to head the largest of its five business groups.

Robertson, who has a degree in economics from London University, currently serves on the Boards of the Advertising Council, the American Association of Advertising agencies and the Centre on Media and Child Health.

Describing the current scenario in the industry, Robertson believes that today we are living in an `attention economy.' The only way to deal with it is to be obsessive about creating compelling content. He spends about 60 per cent of his time with clients while the rest is spent on his agency and in the pursuit of new businesses. On a rainy afternoon in Mumbai last week, Robertson shared with Catalyst his views on the Indian and international advertising scenario. Excerpts:

What is your perception of Indian advertising today?

It is obviously a very important market for so many clients. You do not hear major MNCs talking about their growth plans without mentioning India, which has emerged as terribly important. It is also a market which has massive growth potential since the percentage of GDP spent on advertising is about half of that of what is spent by other countries. Not only do we have a lot of growth in GDP to look forward to but within that, you can expect advertising to grow as a percentage of GDP. So you have a double bubble in the business, which is going to get bigger and hugely important.

At the same time it is obviously a very complicated market since India is a huge country, broken up into different languages, cities ... even its media is complicated. Doing advertising is tricky but the scale and opportunity means that everything is going to get better and better. I think India punches below its weight in advertising. By that I mean it is a hugely creative country as it has an incredible history of storytelling, music, dance, movies, architecture and creative communities of software development. Yet India has not fulfilled its full potential as a creative powerhouse in the world.

How would you rate your joint venture partner R. K. Swamy's performance in India?

I am one who is never satisfied with anything. In R. K. Swamy we have an agency which is very strong strategically and cares for its clients a great deal. It is that care and passion, which brings results, which is so important. I think creatively the agency has definitely improved in its quality of work. It works in a number of different sectors and lots of communication disciplines. One of things that I am pursuing is its proximity to the DM business, which is growing well.

What about the Indian agency not being perceived as being creative enough, as it barely manages to win any Abby awards which are considered to be the benchmark in creativity? What, would you say, is the USP of R. K. Swamy?

I think any good agency will end up having the same USP. Any agency that comes up and says it wants anything other than being creative is crazy. The issue is not what is the proposition. I would say it is the work. The work in the agency's case has improved significantly. But it can always get better and that applies to all our agencies across the world.

What exactly is BBDO's contribution to the Indian agency apart from making monetary investment in it?

Let me give you my general perspective. I believe we are living in an attention economy. I have studied economics — it is the science of allocating scarce resources. There is nothing scarce about media, knowledge or IT. What is scarce is attention and the only way to deal with it is through creativity. To define creativity — it is that magical ability to secure and hold the attention of an audience while you give it the experience. In BBDO's case, it is all about telling commercial content and creating and delivering it. In order to deliver it the first thing to do is to secure an unfair share of the limited pool of exceptional talent. Then we must find ways to leverage that talent as widely as possible across brands, cities, cultures and countries and even communication disciplines. You have to be able to leverage it because there isn't enough of it. It is partly attitudinal and cultural and partly a question of creating tools and processes that can be easily used. It's like having an operating system on a computer where you spend your time concentrating on the solution and not on how you are going to get the solution. So we create insight work, which is a strategic planning process, and there is also global work for managing the international business. These are simple operational processes which will increase our ability to come up with solutions.

As a network if you think of it as a group of offices and people, we have the experience, knowledge and content that can be leveraged and shared and not just with international but local businesses as well. For instance, we have a telecommunications hub which is a team which specialises in what we have learnt all over the world. It's all about making the network work and using the using the network is part of the value chain.

Being part of the Omnicom Group, what kind of synergies do you have with the rest of the agencies in the country such as Mudra and TBWA? Are there any plans to draw up a uniform media-buying outfit across the Omnicom agencies?

Such an arrangement has made sense in a lot of markets. Yes, there are possibilities here as it has worked extremely well in most parts of the world. But is not something which is absolutely essential, and we do not intend doing something like this immediately.

Is international alignment of clients happening in India?

There are some such as Mars, Visa, Mercedes Benz but Pepsi is still with JWT. But then JWT has had Pepsi for a long time and are happy with it. There are other client opportunities that we are working on.

How challenging are the US and UK markets?

The biggest challenge is the consumers and how you deal with them in the `attention' economy. The challenge is: how do you create content that consumer actively seeks out? But I have never really been worried about the market. Our business depends on our ability to grow our share and not the market. The ability to beat other agencies is what matters and not just the market. BBDO is doing well in the US and in Europe.

What is the strategy for BBDO worldwide in terms of holding minority stake across its agencies?

The BBDO strategy is all about having an unfair share in the market and the execution of that varies by market. There are a lot of businesses which are 100 per cent owned by BBDO but there are also countries such as Dubai, Australia and New Zealand where we have meagre stakes, between 20 and 30 per cent. The issue is that of getting talent and that is what matters. Ownership is just ownership.

So what are your intentions in India — do you intend having multiple agencies from BBDO?

We have been together for a long time with R. K. Swamy. At the end of the day it is about delivering the most compelling content. Yes, we do have multiple agencies in several markets because it is the way to get talent and also a way to solve client conflict issues. But in India I would neither rule it in nor out.

Picture by Paul Noronha

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Punish to reward?

`Agencies need to be obsessive about creating compelling content'

How many you have?

AAAI news

Titan gets on the FasTrack

Strong brands give purpose to innovation