Each consumer is a mini-television tower: Rohit Ohri

Digital has opened up the world, says Rohit Ohri

A large percentage of TV ads today is product information. And digital has opened up the world, Rohit Ohri tells Ritwik Sharma.

Since you took over at FCB India, have you introduced any changes to the structure or organisational culture? If yes, in what ways?

I have brought in a lot of change within the organisation, fundamentally in terms of how the agency looks at work going forward. To give you a larger perspective of this, the global company is also reorienting itself. They have come up with a new mission. The vision of the agency is “never finished”. The whole concept of “never finished” is that in today’s day and age a brand-consumer conversation is never finished, because technology enables this. It’s possible for brands to engage with consumers constantly at not such a high cost anymore. And we are saying, how do you create never finished ideas, because most importantly conversation can be carried on but it must be based on a point of view or brand idea, so that there is consistency and coherence. If you look at Nike, “Just do it” is a never finished idea. There are new dimensions added to it every time, but the idea is the same.

As an offshoot of that in India, one of the big changes is that we dissolved a separate digital agency, FCB Interactive, and took its digital capabilities to the mainline agency. If you truly want to create never finished ideas and conversations they must be enabled digitally as well.

Over the last one and a half years, I have been sharing with all our people what our mission is, what we want to achieve in the next five years. That enables and empowers the entire organisation. FCB does an employee engagement survey. India is the best performing office from a change perspective if you look at the FCB global scores. Also, I have looked at streamlining the organisation and simplifying the structure so that every level is accountable and empowered.

Does it also involve significant change in terms of how you approach clients?

Yeah. The engagement scores have client references as well, how we engage with the clients, how deeply we understand their business.

What are the challenges for advertisers today in terms of catering to client preferences?

One big thing is that there is a degree of speed required, so organisational agility is a very important requirement. I don’t mean you just turn around artworks very fast. It’s a question of mindset. You have a lot of marketing needs and challenges posed in the real world in real time. What defines FCB in India is a strong entrepreneurial mindset. That is manifest in the engagement scores, because you are the most engaged when it’s your own business. That engagement and entrepreneurial spirit is what I really mean with organisational agility.

With increasing importance being given to digital channels, what are the skills being demanded of advertising agencies?

This is the best time to be in advertising, and a lot of people say that because this is the digital era ad agencies will die. I think it is the reverse. The opportunity to connect and be a part of consumers’ lives is manifold now. You can talk to consumers at any point in the purchase cycle because they are always on. While that is the big opportunity the big threat is that always on doesn’t mean they are always wanting to listen to brands. The important piece is how do you connect through stories consumers are interested in. That’s the big challenge, how well you can tell your brand story, almost in a way that it makes the consumer want to like, share, forward. Each consumer is now a mini-television tower. Because of the digital environment we can create communication longer than the 30-second format. If the story is engaging enough people will watch it. If brands have the creativity, they can tell the stories in a way that is engaging. What is happening to television is that because brands have a lot to say in 30 seconds there’s little to say about life or insights. A large percentage of television ads is now edge-to-edge product information. But the digital medium has opened the world for brands.

Do you need to segregate audiences and diversify your content accordingly?

Of course, because you can do that. For different target audiences you can do different messaging, and that is easily done. The fact is, today the penetration of smartphones in India has gone up dramatically, and with Jio everyone has a smartphone. Once they have smartphones with the bandwidth you can talk to anyone. There is no electricity, but there’s smartphones.

You have talked about how trust is built more by consumers today than by advertisers? How can the advertiser and marketer win consumer trust and make communication more engaging?

Technology has changed trust completely and where it comes from, because trust was top-down. So a brand could say “I am the world’s largest” and you would trust the brand. Today it has become a network of trust. If you want to see a movie, you will go on social media, see what your friends have said about the movie and then they decide whether they want to see it or not. Forget movies, social media can kill brands. Look at what happened to Maggi, the most loved and trusted brand in India.

The point is this trust network has to treated very carefully with a lot of respect by brands. It’s very important for brands to recognise this and be authentic and genuine in their responses. A lot of people want to be a part of this network of trust. The new-age brands like Facebook, TripAdvisor and Uber treat their consumers as a community. Older brands treat consumers as consumers, and then there is a small community. For instance, everyone drinks Pepsi, but they will create a small community of music lovers that sits outside the consumer base. One of the things we keep talking about is that today consumers need to be moved from “we buy this product” to “we believe in this product”. An example of this is Patanjali. Its success is that what Baba Ramdev is not selling a product, but a belief system about ayurvedic, natural, swadeshi, etc. Good, bad, ugly I don’t know, but this is what a lot of people are buying. The fact is today Patanjali is one of the most successful FMCG companies in India.

What is the secret of its success?

A bunch of people are buying and believing in the same product. That’s the new format of trust and confidence.