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At Leo Burnett, the young don't waste their youth

Playwright G B Shaw may have been right, but at this ad agency, a young top management is lining up crack teams and new-age managers to stay in shape

Rajdeepak Das
Viveat Susan Pinto Mumbai
Last Updated : Jul 28 2014 | 2:42 AM IST
"CCO? What is CCO?," asks Rajdeepak Das, 35. It's not ignorance that makes Das question the acronym of the very position (chief creative officer) he holds at one of the top creative agencies, Leo Burnett. He may be one of the youngest creative heads in the ad industry but the rhetorical question stems from the fact that Das simply does not take himself too seriously.

Leo Burnett, which handles account such as Coca-Cola's Thums Up, McDonald's and Kaun Banega Crorepati (for Sony), was in a state of flux last year. Trouble with withdrawn entries at Goafest last year was followed by the exit of the senior leadership at the firm. After 30 years at the agency in client servicing, chairman and CEO Arvind Sharma moved on, and was eventually followed by K V Sridhar who moved to Sapient Nitro with the same designation of CCO. Das, along with the current CEO, Saurabh Varma, are now tasked with putting the creative calibre at the agency back on track.

Das says, "I have never believed in designations. It is the work that counts." He has worked on brands such as Gilette, Pepsi, Visa, Pizza Hut and Tesco in his 13-year advertising career. Nearly 10 of these years were spent in BBDO. The last assignment of being the executive creative director in Mumbai saw him produce internationally-acclaimed work such as Women Against Lazy Stubble campaign, based on the insight that women prefer clean-shaven men rather than those who sport a stubble.

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Das plans to infuse such simple insights in his work at Leo Burnett too: "Great creative work is about how you tap into good consumer insights and present it in a refreshing manner. That's what touches a chord with the target group".

Crack-team mantra
Das is shaking up insight-gathering at the agency. While strategic planners in client servicing have always worked as the think-tank for the creative talent create ads, Das is putting together additional crack teams of young people in Mumbai and Delhi to hunt for interesting consumer insights on a brief that the creative team shares with them.

Das calls these young guns his research teams, comprising tech-savvy graduates who are active on social media and are willing to spend time studying consumer behaviour. This could be anywhere - in a mall, shop, youth hangout or online interactions. Das stays constantly in touch with them to get updates on the briefs his creative teams share with them. "I am not expected to know everything. When you have people as young as these around, you realise how little you know," he says.

Needs know-it-alls
Reminiscent of how youth-focused advertisers had gone themselves (Airtel had youth mentors for senior executives), Das says the move is not a waste of time, even though regular collaboration with client-servicing continues. "The communication business is rapidly evolving and what is in today, is passe tomorrow. Our solutions have to be tailor-made to catch the target group wherever it is."

This philosopy is in line with what Varma has in mind. In an earlier conversation, Varma said, "The more I talk to clients, I realise that India is prime for receiving an integrated experience. Clients are tired of dealing with multiple agencies. They are looking for solutions that are integrated in design."

Varma has proposed having integration managers rather than conventional account managers found in traditional ad agencies. He said, "Integration managers not only understand digital, but the disciplines within it: e-commerce, social, mobile, retail and shopper marketing. They can understand how the same consumer behaves across these verticals and create an integrated narrative that can tell a brand story."

Besides managers and teams with sharper skills, both Varma and Das are turning to Leo Burnett's proprietary tools and processes such as the agency's global philosophy called HumanKind. "Stories happen across channels and are media-agnostic. We, therefore, need to have people who can create these stories," says Varma, who was chief strategy officer of Leo Burnett in APAC earlier.

While Leo Burnett was conspicous by its absence this year at Goafest, it sent a large contingent to Cannes (estimated to be over 25 people) to let people understand how creativity is being executed globally.

The agency rolled out its new marketing campaign for Sony Entertainment Television's Kaun Banega Crorepati recently. Playing on the 'unity in diversity' theme, one of the ads has a young girl from the Northeast take an audience poll on a straight-forward question from quiz-master Amitabh Bachchan: Which country does Kohima belong to? When everyone answers 'India', she asks, "We all know it, but how many of us acknowledge it." The fictional audience gets the drift, as does the real one. And, at Leo Burnett, Das and his team of young guns have only just begun.

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First Published: Jul 27 2014 | 10:40 PM IST

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