 "Barry Jones")
So where is the marketing person? They are missing from the scene because they are looking after a relatively constant strand of business, Barry Jones tells Sangeeta Tanwar
Hogarth Worldwide is a latecomer to India. What took the marketing agency so long to set up shop in the country?
We see India as a major missing link in our global network. It's a funny situation because we have expanded into about 25 markets but we did not have a head office in India. It has taken us long to come to India due to the fact that some of the clients usually grow so big in the country that they treat it as a world of their own. And then there are small clients who never have the need to look beyond their immediate surroundings.
For these very reasons India becomes a world in itself even more than China because China gets managed into the global implementation with the big multinational companies expanding their footprint. For example, if Brazil gets rolled in to a corporation's roll out plan then China too becomes a part of the roll out. Having said that, things have changed very fast in the last few years. I still find that India stands apart and we need to be here on the ground doing things our way. Look at the scale that the country offers. The country (India) is a mega market.
In a 24x7 connected world, how important is it for a business to focus on online reputation to build a sustainable brand? What are the global best practices in using social media to grow a business?
I think social media needs two things. Organisations need to understand the strategic approach to social media since it's a fast-moving area. Often big organisations seem confused about how to move beyond the old role of the cost-led model of marketing to the new world of marketing where engagement on a personal level is the cornerstone of all activities.
The other thing that ties in with this issue and affects us a lot is to do with the broadcast of the communication. Earlier, broadcasting the development of one perfect execution reaching a million people was the goal of our activities. In the future it's going to take million pieces of good work to reach a single person. Now the requirement is to produce a lot more creative work because the communication needs to be personalised.
We need to work out how we can maintain creativity and production standards in an environment when a lot more dialogue is going to be one to one rather than one to many. And that's the thing people need to understand.
Hogarth uses proprietary technology to deliver savings for the brands it handles. What are the top three areas where such tools can be deployed to save cost for brands in India?
Globally as well as in India cloud can offer a lot of savings for marketers. In a joint venture with Microsoft we have developed a cloud-based product which helps organisations in hosting and managing a website. It's cost efficient and faster because the product costs one tenth of the industry solutions available and is 10 times faster. The product is on the point of rolling out and has a lot of relevance to Indian companies.
Apart from cloud the other two areas where corporations are moving fast at the moment is asset management and the control of the assets. The asset management has gained importance particularly with the multiplication in the number of assets because of social media, with communication moving from one to many to many to one. Asset management is going to become a huge issue for multi- national corporations because efficient use of their assets is crucial in a complex world. We have an asset management tool, Zonza, which we will bring to India.
Alongside that we are finding that corporations are getting much more interested in disciplining the workflow with a platform that manages the marketing workflow and supports interaction with different agencies. We will be offering the workflow module within Zonza to clients in India.
Increasingly, technology is disrupting the marketing function. How is the relation between the chief technology officer (CTO) and the chief marketing officer (CMO) changing because of these disruptions? Is the CMO losing his grip on the marketing budget and is the balance of power tilting in favour of the CTO?
We just hired the global CTO of Unilever. And the move in itself is a strong comment as to what we think of technology in our organisation. It's a fantastic hire for us. I come from an advertising background. I used to be on the global management committee of Leo Burnett. And in those days my primary point of contact with my clients such as Procter and Gamble, Philips or Coca-Cola was the CMO. In the new business our principle point of contact is the CPO, the chief procurement officer. And I think the person to affect our capability second to that is CTO or CIO who has a say in whether our technology can satisfy their security requirements and how our technology fits in with the organisation's technical environment etc. From a business perspective all of that becomes important.
Today, the CMO increasingly looks after the creative stuff and after that the implementation and the technical environment. The areas changing fastest are the areas that are the responsibility of other people. If potential clients ask me for references I give them references of CPR. So where is the marketing person? They are missing from the scene because they are not the change agent within a company any longer. This is so because CMOs are the people who are looking after a relatively constant strand of business including creative messaging. We are responding to this change by reaching out to the people who are now driving the change and those are procuring and technology people.
