Madison is perhaps the only media agency in the country that can boast of being completely home-grown, without any international alliance. If you are meeting Sam Balsara for the first time, it would take a while to believe that his is one of the most powerful voices in the Indian advertising horizon. In an industry where speed is the essence, Balsara talks in a soft and unhurried way and gives an impression of a man far removed from the pomp and grandeur of the ad world. But make no mistake. The man, who has made Madison Communications a Rs 1,000-crore powerhouse in a span of 18 years, says he learnt his "killer instincts" from the Ambanis while working for Mudra. "The Mudra culture was that the job had to be done at any cost. There was no excuse. I think a lot of my current attributes and thinking was due to the grounding I got while working for the Ambanis," Balsara tells Sonali Krishna.
We are at the ITC Grand Central Sheraton at Lower Parel and Balsara prefers the hotel's Chinese restaurant "" Shanghai Club "" over Kebabs & Curries, as a lighter meal will keep him prepared for the long day ahead. Time is clearly at a premium for the man who doesn't remember when he took his last long vacation ("it must have been a 14-day work-cum-holiday in the US many years back," he says), and thinks working is the best way of relaxing. Not surprisingly, Sam skips the starters, orders steamed rice and baked prawns curry and asks me to "shoot".
Though he gives credit to the Ambanis for his killer instincts, it must have been an early trait in his character. For instance, he took his role as a mentally retarded person in a college play so seriously that his parents, who were watching the play, had a tough time in convincing the audience that their son was a normal child and not mentally retarded in actual life.
Obviously, the killer instinct has been honed well through hard work. It's almost a routine 12-hour daily work schedule for him, with a couple of hours extra for clearing the 200-plus emails he receives every day. And the only "luxury" he allows himself is to spend time on Sundays with his two daughters in his eight-room ancestral bungalow at Jogeswari in the Mumbai suburbs. His elder daughter is visually impaired and his only hope is to see that her life is full of laughter. His younger daughter is working for Madison looking after diversifications and HR.
The food tastes like the routine five-star fare and Balsara doesn't seem to be a particularly big eater. He is immensely proud of Madison, which he founded in 1988, after working for Sarabhais, Cadbury's, Bournvita, and then Contract. The shift to Contract as head of client servicing was a conscious decision but he admits it was a "very traumatic phase" in his life as it took quite a while to get used to the transition from being a coveted client to being on the other side of the table where you are constantly at the beck and call of clients. But the experience exposed him to the sweat and dust of an adman's life.
The main course is over and Balsara declines to have dessert but seems eager enough to talk more about his "third child" "" the Madison Group. Balsara acquired Madison, an existing but dormant agency, in 1988 with three blue chip accounts "" Godrej, Tata (Nelco) and Mafaltlal. He makes it a point to drive home the point that Madison is the only media agency in the country that can boast of being completely home grown without any international alliances. Though he says the reason for his refusal to tie up with an international partner is basically to retain the "Indianness" of his agency, the buzz is that he is unwilling to give up majority stake, which the international majors insist on.
He did flirt with an international partner for a while but the experience wasn't too happy. His "most vulnerable point", he says, was when Madison had to sever ties with DMBMB in 1999 and lost a series of accounts, the biggest one being Godrej Soaps. He doesn't want to go into the reasons for the break-up in ties with DMBMB as there is no point in "washing dirty linen in public," but says the crisis helped him in taking a few momentous decisions.
One of these decisions was to make Madison a full service agency and to create alternative revenue streams by creating seven independent units under its umbrella catering to various segments of the industry. "I wanted Madison to be a one-stop shop for its clients," Balsara says. Today, Madison gets close to 50 per cent of its revenue from these independent units.
His company, Balsara says, has more headcount per client than its peers in the industry. But that was a conscious decision, as it helps giving clients the luxury of having dedicated professionals. "We are not chasing only billings, growth or profits. But if clients are happy, everything falls into place," he says. Today, Madison boasts of over 300 clients (with a headcount of 400) including several bluechip ones like P&G, Coke, Cadbury, Asian paints and so on.
Not a bad show for a man who tried to get into IIM Ahmedabad but failed to clear the entrance test. But his perseverance paid as he managed to clear the rather tough test for the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute. There has been no looking back since then.
Despite his huge success, Sam says his next big challenge is to rise above the clutter in advertising. He talks passionately about the rather slow growth of the advertising industry even though the economy is booming. Television advertising growth has been near stagnant in the last two years and the print media advertising is growing only at an annual rate of 15 per cent "" which is far too low. He believes fragmentation of media is killing advertising. "India has witnessed a burst in media too soon and too fast. Mass media owners today are caught up in the immediate competitive pressures and are not looking at the bigger picture of delivering more return on investment."
That, for him, is a huge challenge, and something that still keeps him burning the midnight oil. "One has to take risks in this kind of volatile environment. In any case, the biggest risk is not to take any risk," Balsara says, as we walk towards the foyer. The killer instinct is still very much intact, indeed.
