Remuneration for ad agencies is going down: Amer Jaleel

The advertising world is talking a lot about getting diverse talent on board. What explains the industry’s renewed focus on a diverse talent pool?

When one talks about getting in diverse talent in the advertising world, there are two things at work. One is the need for the advertising professionals to include different points of views. Advertising is an intuitive profession that talks to many kinds of people. More the diverse talent, more it would help us talk to different people. Second is the need for fresh knowledge and new skills in the industry. In order to handle new emerging media, the advertising world needs coders, technologists, and gamers. Mullen Lintas, as an agency, is not only looking for diverse talent but also experimenting with different roles at the agency. The objective is to employ people judiciously to cross-pollinate ideas and thoughts. 

For example, two of our female professionals handle the planning and creative duties for Bajaj Avenger, which is a cruise motorcycle. The tagline for the brand is “Feel like God”. Motorcycle is a male bastion and through such experiments, the aim is to change the narrative and creative pitch for brands by bringing in fresh ideas. Second, diverse talent is needed at the workplace today because digital and technology is influencing the minds of the consumers. We need new skills and expertise to understand how consumers across different age groups including millennial and elderly are responding to technology. It is crucial to understand how technology is impacting decision-making capability of consumers.

The focus is on bringing in change in the thinking of the team by promoting diverse talent pool at work. The advertising industry is all about ideas and technology helps plan an important role in implementing these ideas.

What has been the biggest change in the advertising world in the past few years?

At the outset, it is very fashionable to talk about how the advertising world has to change to embrace technology and digital. However, for me the biggest change that the industry has seen is the increasing pressure on money. Essentially, what this means is that even as agencies are evolving, acquiring fresh skills and building new capabilities as their engagement levels with the brands are going up, the compensation is going down. Surprisingly, nobody is talking about this. With technology coming in, agencies’ engagement level with clients is more intense and high as compared to say 10 years ago. 

Unlike in the past, when one ad would have sufficed, at present an agency has to do a digital campaign, handle social media and also be quick to prepare a regional response for the brand in respect to worldwide developments. Even with more involvement, remuneration for the agencies is going down. The premium that the art of advertising commanded earlier is going away. In parts a growing number of practitioners (advertising agencies) and brand owners’ impulse to move around for ideas and agencies with an eye on minimising marketing costs is contributing to this trend.

However, marketers need to remember that brands continue to be the most important assets. At a time when parity is on the rise, differentiation is more in the hands of advertisers and marketing custodians. And therefore, the industry deserves to receive the premium that it once commanded.

The advertising world continues to debate the need to have integrated or specialised agencies. What’s the way forward?

It is a day and age of collaboration. There are big players setting up digital media agencies and creative talent. Again, there are smaller creative and digital media buying agencies as well. At the same time, we see that the smaller technology companies are also coming in. So, a true start-up culture is showing up in the advertising industry as well. 

It is time that the advertising agencies embrace collaboration. Increasingly, agencies need to develop strong in-house talent to meet their core creative, media requirements. And at the same time they need to reach out to specialists for initiatives like events and filmmaking.

Except the top big five advertising companies, players at large are outsourcing a lot of work to smaller firms.

Mullen Lowe Lintas is a relatively young agency. With two and a half years of brand building experience behind you what is the type of work that the agency is looking to do?

Our strategy is concentrated in keeping the agency size lean. We have 120 people across three offices. Having worked with brands like Tata Tetley, Bajaj etc., we have proved that we have the capability to offer this model (lean agency) to companies that have one or two brands. And now we are confident to make this model work for marketers with multiple brands. The focus now is on tapping into bigger marketers like Unilever which have a larger portfolio of 15 to 20 brands.

We are looking for ambitious clients, who are seeking disproportionate results and just not happy with incremental sales. As an agency, we want to work with people who are looking to build brands for the future.