Advertising—all about STORYTELLING!!!

Glimpses from fascinating session of Alumni of MICA at MICA for MICA...(23-25 January 2015)




Panel:

Dennis Koshy (Vice President, Draftfcb), Ganga Ganapathi (Vice President, Ogilvy & Mather), Shweta Bhatnagar (Vice President, Lowe Lintas and Partners), Prapti Banerjee (Mobility & Digital marketing Consultant), Ajinkya Pawar (Strategist, Junxion) and Ajay Gupta (Brand Partner, Rediffusion-Wunderman) and moderated by Madhukar Sabnavis (Vice Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather).

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Advertising is a dynamic industry and requires certain temperament. It is in a way full with equal amount of chaos and need to have order—whether it may be marketing, brand, sales. Even though this industry is all about sales number, data, RoI; fundamentally it is about crafting brands. In a way, advertisers have a responsibility in shaping society and culture along with television, newspapers and recently online-digital media. (ex. Johnson`s baby advertisement always showed baby girl than baby boy.)

In a way, if we reflect upon evolution of advertising media business; “nothing has changed” and you know as they say, “more things change, they remain same…”. Eventually, you are in a business of ideas. We have to reflect upon the fact that how it continues to be a business industry even after 2000 dot com crisis and 2008 financial crisis. Even though social media is hitting charts and is competing like anything, advertising is the name of the game. In the meanwhile, industry has moved from being an service agency to specialization service; but this change has come with lot of negatives.  And once we internalize the “inevitable reality” that we are in a business of ideas; we have to understand how we can nurture idea throughout every vertical, every media platform and every application we develop. And then further we have to see how this idea is taken forward and touches consumer. Increasingly, in recent times; ideas based on needs are passing away in history. Today the technology is defining idea and this redefined idea is further shaping our need.

Stress, tension of deadline and performance stretches across all domains of media industry. This is the era of mobiles and thus mobile marketing. Technology is shaping everything we have in front of us. Essentially we have to understand that, “way we communicate has become very exciting since arrival of verities of technologies in recent times.” How mobility, social media and technology is shaping our lives—is phenomenal. This is the change many big companies and big advertisers did not heed to. They were reluctant to diversify until emergence of social media.

Now the biggest problem this industry is facing is that too many agencies are working on single brand. (For example—offline, online-digital, creative, outdoor, direct marketing, PR, social media, Google). At the meeting everyone tries to push their agenda and it is becoming difficult and difficult for agency to do justice with every stakeholder because there is so much overlapping in each other`s work. So, it is necessary and it is a friendly advice to future professionals that it is needed to break these silos. All this specialization is a great thing, but sometimes advertising professionals are busy in doing ordinary things. 

Many times, we don’t get creative stuff to work on. That adds to the stress factor even more. But there comes a time when after a ordinary routine of 100 days, one day erupts with some kind of unique blend of idea, creativity which kills the frustration of last 100 ordinary performance. Even in ordinary schedule if we are ready to handle whatever opportunity comes to us, we can do marvels. Therefore be ready to welcome and embrace every change, every new opportunity coming your own way.

Our industry is catered to principle “stick to the brief…”. Whenever we try to do something new, or whenever we make mistakes—there are people who can stand behind you. Your ideas may be accepted or rejected. Doesn`t matter. But don’t shy away from expressing and working on those ideas. And if you are lucky to get working on big ideas—mostly it is because of you and your idea are shaped by some mentor. So, always be ready to jump into learning opportunity and try to get insights so as to enable you for bridging gaps between strategy and execution. Being ahead of the curve by experimentation is so exciting and new technologies, nature of new technologies is enabling.

One can be skeptical about how much creativity there can be in digital? Do planners have role in campaigns? Answer to these questions lies in again—focus is on ideas. What many times happen in this industry (or for that matter in any industry) that idea is pushed to back seat and business is promoted in front of it. In short, agreed—that is pragmatic compulsion to follow. But in the long run—this will fail like anything. Always, we run behind headlines. But remember, first crack the idea and then wait for the headline to flash. Currently there is lot of hodgepodge about our understanding about how digital works especially in Indian context but we have to see how things really move in next five years.

Is digital becoming new analog, we have to ask this question again and again. Are we stuck in a self-defeating game of idolizing digital too much. Historically after a long run of print-press, television has been flavor of our lives for a long time. Every medium has some complexity and we have to understand that how we navigate our strategy through the channels of interpretation of this complexity. Amidst all these complexities this business is all about communicating ideas—however long we have travelled—from print to electronic (Radio-TV), internet and recently social media.  

Role of client service and accounts management is still valid—no doubts. Still, we have to understand as a committed professional the need to erase divides in diverse media platforms. Clients don’t wish to spend money on ten different types of agencies and different types of services. They don’t wish to get confused. They wish to spend minimum aspiring maximum returns. Amidst in all these changes and dynamic reality of media business—one thing has remained bottom-line for forever—this business is all about storytelling. Earlier it was one to one communication and today amidst the emergence of social media, big data—it is still one to one communication that rewards opportunity for business expansion.

On one side, it is great to be specialist because it gives you unique incentives and rewards to work upon unlike generalists; but as we have already embarked upon age of IMC and our ultimate aim is to satisfy consumers through client service, we have to learn to become generalist. Doing everything, knowing everything is a gem of a life and specialist can’t beat this inclusiveness’ generalist. In a way, the point of reinforce is that era of specialist is ending and era of generalist is coming back. It is not always possible for specialist to go up in a ladder of value chain and generalist has great capability and potential to do that.

Our aim remains to sell idea to customers/clients. But before that we have to understand that where from ideas come and travel and how they propagate. We have to always be curious and conscious about who can come up with great idea and takes ownership of those ideas to shape the future. Therefore we have to constantly check the way we define an idea. Idea is always AGNOSTIC, it has universal appeal. It has no linear/stereotypical approach. But harnessing ideas and creating possibilities takes courage of fostering collective ownership to that idea. How that idea renovates the brand and how it resonates with customer.

Many times, change is driven by people outside industry. They can be people in our society, consumers, kids, young generation. Yes, change happens from outside. We have to enhance our abilities to know and track changes coming from outside world. As each and every medium is finding its niche after need gap analysis, measurability is still big problem. Every medium has its uniqueness and we should make sure that how we measure the unique potential, incentives and rewards this niche area offers.

In the age of data-big data, we are in search of engagement, interaction with consumers because engagement-attention quotient is the name of the game. It is paradox that, “so early after its inception, age of like has passed.” Next level may be—can follower/user/consumer become champion/ambassador of that idea. Can followers comment on it, can they disagree about it? Can they express their opinions about it? Can these types of conversation opens up new ways, new possibilities? And can these interactions create further roadmap for not only business development but solving some kind of problem consumers are facing?

So in these times, there is heated up debate of whether data helps or patterns? Obviously, numbers cannot fake but in the complex society like ours we have to have tools to apply sociology, psychology and cultural studies for better understanding about not only changes in our society but also how to apply that understanding of society for better client service and better customer satisfaction. So in a way this is not conflict between creatives and analytics, data and patterns, statistics vs. understanding; but it is about how to interpret those numbers, stories and insights for better engagement, better lead and better results. Even though language of data makes it easier to sell pitch, it is the number behind cost per contact, cost per lead, cost per acquisition and cost per engagement that determines the perception of client for collaboration and creativity. Client is in the business of selling products and services but we as advertisers are in the business of selling ideas. Everyone in this industry lives on monthly and quarterly reports. Everything has been planned and geared for greater benefits.  

We are struggling with online-offline nature of industry and life at large. Is it a blessing or a curse, we have to live with it. But coming generation, five years down the line will be borne into it. What is novelty today will become common-sense/everyday life tomorrow. 

 

In essence, we never ever should be disconnected from three things; culture, technology and our shared life. It defines the prescription for anything—understanding client`s brief, consumer`s requirement and further our capabilities in dealing with challenges of communicating with the world—through advertising—through storytelling. Therefore refresh ourselves and get fresh minds to crack it. We have to learn how to tap, nurture and receive ideas from huge crowd out there. We have to learn to swim in relational contexts to enlighten ourselves about this world. Throwing open the challenges open to public and engaging with them and further recognize those, harness those and capitalize on those is really the way ahead. It is World 4.0 and Web 4.0; it is Communication 4.0.

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