 "Joseph George")
The clients are the ones desperate for this to happen. Sooner than later, they will be the ones who force agencies to re-orient themselves to becoming omni-channel, Joseph George tells Alokananda Chakraborty
Sir Martin recently said, when people talk about who our competitors are, we think about Omnicom or we think about Publicis, IPG.. But we also think about Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba. Do you subscribe to the view that advertising has been too narrowly cast till now and there is no choice but to define its scope far more broadly in this new world?
It's true, and in 2015, it amounts to stating the obvious. Like any business, you need to look at competition, not just from the lens of who's offering what I offer, but also from the lens of who else is after the same dollars that I am. We see competition for agency in four categories
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The literal: These are the obvious ones that include all offerings from the major holding companies;
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The lateral:These are indirect competitors because their fringe offerings are alternates to your core offerings. This includes major publishers/digital platform;
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The leveragers: These are the media agencies. They manage hundreds of crores of clients' budgets, and so find themselves in a very leveragable position with clients. Many however, continue to be unable to influence thinking on the brands they manage. They will continue to try from the sidelines to convince quality and practicing creative folks and brand strategists from creative agencies;
- The left of flank: In an agency context, this includes consulting firms (including the big 3), start-ups like DIY, crowd-sourcing marketing companies, new products from technology/IT firms and so on. These appear as fringe players today, but are the ones to keep an eye on because the others are the obvious competitors.
Technology is the obvious change; it has birthed literally thousands of new avenues for consumer engagement. The immense pressure to make sense out of this complexity has forced a hyper-fragmentation among the marketing disciplines. Clients have reacted by building roster of 10-12 agencies for a single brand at times.
Talent availability is getting to be more challenging. There are too many as cool and as creative options for agency talent today. From Google to the likes of AIB. The ball is squarely in the court of agencies to still be the profession of choice for current and new talent. I have said this before, and I say it now again, the market is headed back to "full service". And the clients are the ones desperate for this to happen. And just like a decade back they were the ones to engineer specialisation/fragmentation, sooner than later, they will be the ones who force agencies to re-orient themselves to becoming omni-channel.
We are absolutely convinced that our offerings need to be hyper-bundled so as to be a meaningful omni-channel agency.
Will the pressures inside the industry lead to more consolidation? Are the days of creative boutiques over?
There will always be room for creative boutiques. And uniquely to this industry, their survival may depend in their success in resisting to scale up and be like the rest of the industry. The last few years have seen the birth of several boutiques. These challenger brands will chase customisation, while the larger ones will champion consolidation.
I'm a great believer in natural balance and I feel the market forces will ensure that our industry finds its right balance in the next three to five years.
Coming to India specifically, do you think our agencies are up to the task given the volatility and the rapid changes around? I'm talking specifically about the digital platform and the quality of digital work...
The Indian marketers, as well as their agencies take comfort in the fact that traditional media is still growing and still working in our country. Neither have yet felt the pressure of being in an environment where mass media just isn't enough. So while digital spends grow at 40 per cent-plus your on year, the base still remains approximately 10 per cent of all marketing efforts.
I personally believe that the quality of digital work put out so far is both reflective as well as a possible reason for why digital spends are still under 10 per cent. Having said that, there are enough challenger brands that are spending disproportionate efforts on digital and I'm optimistic that they will lead the way in creating excellence in digital marketing for our country.
Now to Mullen Lowe Lintas. Have you realised the benefits that you were expecting when in May 2015, the Interpublic group merged the two agency brands, Lowe & Partners and Mullen Advertising, into the Mullen Lowe Group?
This amalgamation is a great example of the sum being greater than the parts. The reach and solidity of Lowe + Partners, and the challenger and scrappy operating model of Mullen has made sure that the merged entity is bringing to the table, what clients are exactly looking for today. And with every passing day, we are all only getting more and more convinced, that this merger was absolutely the right decision at the right time and with the right leadership in Alex Leikikh.
What is your core strength now? And what are the capabilities you think the agency needs to hone to stand up to the challenges ahead?
Our agency today is in the best shape it has been, in almost a decade-our creative product remains top of the line, three years in a row now; we are on course to post our highest revenue growth in almost a decade.
Our priority for 2016 is to make it the start of this evolutionary journey where we work towards creating an agency model that could become the industry benchmark. The only given is that ideas and the creative product will be absolutely at the centre of everything we do tomorrow's market.
