Mudra will be among the top three some day soon.

With more than 25 years of experience in the field of advertising and marketing communications, Madhukar Kamath, managing director and CEO, Mudra Group, lives up to the image of a classic veteran. Though he began his career with the erstwhile Clarion McCann, he has been with Mudra since 1988, except for a four-year period in between, when he joined the Cordiant Group to bring Bates to India, complete an acquisition of Clarion, establish Zenith Media and 141 Worldwide, and take the Bates Group into the top 15. Kamath was invited to come back to Mudra as its CEO in April 2003.

Kamath holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics and a Master’s in business management. Today, he serves on the governing council of MICA (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad), India’s foremost business school for integrated communication, and on the boards of the AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India) and ASCI (Advertising Standards Council of India), while also delivering lectures on his craft at various educational institutions.

In a candid chat with Prajjal Saha and Devina Joshi of agencyfaqs!, Kamath talks about Mudra’s growth as an agency, the creative leadership at Mudra, MMS’ growing contribution to the Mudra Group, and DDB’s global philosophies

Edited Excerpts

Your question has triggered a lot of thoughts. I’ll have to revisit Mudra’s journey so far in order to answer this.

Mudra has always been one of the most admired home-grown agencies in India. The agency was amongst the top four in India within the first decade of its launch (1980-90), thanks to a string of successful campaigns such as Vimal and Rasna. In its second decade, Mudra bagged the Agency of the Year award on various occasions, while our star guys then – Freddy Birdy and Naved Akhtar – bagged the ‘Copywriter of the Year’ title several times. We even had some Cannes finalists to our credit.

But of late, because of the dominance of certain agencies, there is this perception that we are hovering just outside the top five. I’ll confess: We’re at Rank 6 at the moment. While that’s a good place to be for an agency, personally, I’m not satisfied. Believe me, I’m the unhappiest whenever any agency rankings are released because that’s when I find out we’re not even among the top three.

I want to see Mudra among the top three in the near future. And it will be.

I’m quite proud of the fact that we are known for our brand-building skills, as you said. But more importantly, we are slowly getting established as providers of creative business solutions.

Personally, I think I’m quite lucky to have seen Mudra as an agency both from the inside as well as from the outside. As you probably know, I left Mudra briefly for a four-year stint with the Cordiant Group to bring Bates to India, after which I rejoined Mudra in 2003, as its CEO. The biggest learning I got was when viewing Mudra from the outside, as a competitor. Quite frankly, like most others, I didn’t view Mudra as a serious competitor. It had an image of being a traditionally run agency, not buzzing with activity. In short, Mudra was a story that had started slowing down.

When I rejoined Mudra in 2003, I think Mudra stood at 3/10 in terms of creativity. Now, I will give Mudra 6/10. But internally, we will be satisfied only when we can give ourselves a 10/10. And this seems to be possible with Bobby Pawar coming on board as national creative director.

Mudra’s association with the DDB group, which has only been growing over the years, has also contributed to its growth. We follow DDB’s global mantra of the three Ps – People, Product and Profits – strictly.

DDB is a great beacon for us, and a benchmark, too.

Well, we needed someone who had the ability to increase Mudra’s value in terms of perception of its creative product. We were clear we didn’t need just another ‘creator of ads’. In Bobby, we have someone who can provide clients with creative business solutions, much like he did at BBDO, Chicago. He brings with him a unique mix of international exposure and experience, blended with Indian expertise, as he is quite well respected here. We have already sat down and had preliminary talks on Mudra’s and DDB’s standards of creativity, but a full strategy is yet to be worked out.

As I have been saying, we have great talent in the system; all it needed was someone to lead from the front. Bobby has been exposed to the US – the toughest ad market in the world, which faces new media trends every day. I’m sure Bobby’s experience in that respect will help us.

Ryan is an excellent creative talent. He’s a wonderful person to have in your team. Ryan’s a great guy to give a few accounts to, and to guide one or two teams of youngsters. However, the task of an NCD in Mudra is a much larger one, so, perhaps, it might have been a mismatch.

Two years ago, I got Ramesh Ramanathan and Ryan Menezes together into Mudra for some specific tasks. Let’s just say some things didn’t work out and, rather than undergo restructuring again at that point, we assigned Ryan to specifically turn around a fledging team here and there. He did particularly well with Mudra, Mumbai.

One of the first things we did was to take stock of Mudra as an agency, and where it stands as a brand for all its stakeholders – clients, employees and influencing bodies such as students and the media. That led us to review our offerings. It was then consciously decided that we should not limit Mudra to being an ad agency. Instead, we chose to convert Mudra into a holistic group by foraying into related areas. Allow me to explain why.

The consumer today is no longer influenced by a press ad or a TVC alone; he is now open to several delivery channels, be it the Internet, signages or even a retail innovation. We have moved from communication to engagement because brands are built through experiences. It was thus decided that we needed to go beyond mass media and delve into each of the touch-points in order to reach the consumer. The point was to not give a boutique offering to our clients, but, rather, total branding solutions; we made sure that each of these verticals should be amongst the best in its class.

Today, we have a lot to offer our clients. Under Mudra Advertising, we have created four independent profit centres – Mudra, Mumbai, Mudra, North and East, Mudra, South, and Mudra, Ahmedabad. Apart from Mudra Advertising, we have two other ad agencies in the group: Interact Vision for smaller or conflicting clients based in the North, East and South (though I personally believe conflicts lie in the eye of the beholder), and Canvas Communications, which is based in Ahmedabad.

Furthermore, we have just launched DDB Mudra in Mumbai, which is a dedicated unit for the Johnson & Johnson business.

But we have lots more than just advertising to offer. OMS is our media agency, under which fall Videotec and TANTR, our content arms. Further, we have Mudra Marketing Services (MMS), our specialised communication services arm. MMS further has several units under it, including Tribal DDB (digital branding solutions), Primesite (outdoor), Rapp Collins India (direct response), Mudra Health & Lifestyle (the erstwhile Mudra Brand Therapist) and Kidstuff Promos & Events (promotional marketing services).

MMS’ contribution to Mudra’s overall growth has been tremendous.

Clearly, it contributes 40-50 per cent of our bottom line. Out of the 800-odd people in the Mudra Group, nearly 300 are in MMS as opposed to 350 in advertising.

MMS is almost like a second agency for us. It is one of those rare integrated marketing outfits that has a national creative director (Meera Sharath Chandra). Under her guidance, MMS has got itself quite a few awards independently, both at the Indian and Asian levels, especially Kidstuff. MMS has even helped us get the edge during pitches. Because traditional advertising still occupies a large space in the minds of advertisers and ad agencies, and wrongfully so, other verticals haven’t got as much recognition as they deserve. But mark my words, soon, this equation will change.

Being innovative is a solution. To be innovative, you have to be creative. But being purely innovative alone is not being creative.

In Kidstuff’s experience, ‘Pepsi Blue Billion Express’ or the ‘Pepsi Khufiya Card’, or even the ‘Britannia Khao World Cup Jao’ are all examples of ideas that are a good mix of innovation and creativity.

Yes, they were.

Over the years, Vimal was becoming a smaller and smaller brand as far as advertising budgets were concerned. So, it had to move out of Mudra for no reason that can be attributed to the agency, if I may add.

With Rasna, we had spent 25 years, a silver jubilee celebration of sorts. But at the end of it all, we’re in the business of providing business solutions, and have to look out both for our clients and ourselves. If we aren’t growing along with our clients and that leads to a parting of ways, then so be it.

All said and done, I’m glad that Mudra, Ahmedabad, has recovered from these instances a hundred per cent. It has Paras Pharmaceuticals as its anchor client, with a bulk of its brands to boot, including Livon, Recova, Itch Guard, Krack and D’Cold. As is known, recently, Paras dropped O&M from its roster and divided the brands amongst Mudra and Triton.

I think Paras has successfully filled Rasna’s shoes as far as Mudra, Ahmedabad, is concerned. The agency also has some newer wins to its credit, such as Nutralite and Yo Bikes. I believe Mudra Ahmedabad’s DNA is in working with brands that challenge national leaders, and the agency is quite wonderful with its relationships with Indian entrepreneurial clients. Thankfully, Mudra isn’t amongst those agencies which believe in doing all their work out of Mumbai.

I would like to believe Mudra is the more trusted agency! (Smiles)

Eighty per cent of our business comes from Indian clients, and 20 per cent from businesses of MNC origin. You’re right… as we are the sons of the soil, our expertise is in growing Indian businesses. But it’s not as though our set of international clients are unhappy… their businesses are growing at a fast rate, too.

Ultimately, it’s the kind of brand-building solutions we provide that counts.

See, I really can’t speak for the Omnicom Group. I believe this question can best be answered by John Wren or Keki Dadiseth.

Yeah, that’s a good observation. I can only say that the very facts that Michael Birkin, the vice-chairman of Omnicom, is also the president and CEO of Omnicom Asia-Pacific, and that Keki Dadiseth has been appointed the non-executive chairman of Omnicom India, are indicative of what Omnicom has up its sleeve in the region.

I’m sure Omnicom first wants to grow its existing brands in India – DDB, BBDO and TBWA. OMD is also around the corner. Internationally, Omnicom is a treasure trove of world-class speciality brands …it has PR brands, health-care brands and design brands. It’s only a matter of time before these are unleashed in India. I think five years from now, Omnicom will be a very serious player in India.

There are only four ways for expansion – acquisitions, collaborations, joint ventures and start-ups. I’m sure Omnicom will use the right mix.

If you ask me about Mudra, I’m better placed to answer! We’re looking forward to establishing units in the design, rural marketing, events and sports marketing and public-affairs domains, all under MMS. We’re also interested in establishing a back-end unit to service our clientele and Omnicom’s global clients with respect to back-end functions such as production and studio work and post-production functions. For all-round growth, we’re looking to establish at least 10 growth engines under MMS. In fact, we recently forayed into trade marketing with our first client, Motorola.

A lot has led to this. The forces in the economy have changed… markets have changed, even competition has increased 10-fold. The market change has led to a mindset change. I think PSUs are beginning to realise that if they want to be competitive, they need to have a better corporate brand perception in consumers’ minds.

Contrary to what some people believe, I think the ‘Surprisingly SBI’ campaign is a fine example of this. At least, SBI reached out to younger people using a different communication strategy.

Closer home to Mudra, if I talk of MTDC and LIC, I can safely say that a few years ago, our recommendations of today would not have been accepted. Now, these clients are demanding more and more value from us, so, in turn, we are pushing ourselves to perform better. These are signs of good times ahead.

Mudra set up the Mudra Foundation in the belief that it has to put its money where its mouth is, and actually give something back to the profession. Over the years, MICA kept gaining importance and, at this point, we’re quite proud of the fact that it is the numero uno communications school in India.

As a part of an ongoing process, recently, we set out to review MICA and our own objectives for the Mudra Foundation. We realised that we didn’t want to limit the Mudra Foundation to a communication institute that churns out students year after year. We needed to start focusing on creating a communications knowledge pool, which these students, as well as faculty and professionals from the field of advertising and marketing, can refer to as and when the need arises. I must say, at present, there are very few original research and reference points in the communication area.

I’ll say the MICA-MICORE relationship is much like what is present in several leading international schools such as MIT and Bell Labs.

Of the 120 students that are churned out of MICA every year, around 30 or 40 choose advertising as their profession, the others migrate to FMCG companies, media companies and the ilk. I think ad agencies should actively start selling the profession once again to colleges across the length and breadth of India.

At MICA, we’re constantly taking steps to encourage students of advertising and allied fields. We’re even planning to set up a promotional marketing course very soon. At Mudra, our HR function is called LLC (Learning, Leadership, Change). This is led by Ajit Menon, who has a hospitality and BPO background. ‘Learning’ refers to creating a learning culture in the organisation; ‘Leadership’ is all about individuals in the agency, and leading by example; ‘Change’ refers to adapting mindsets to changing environment.

I think a festival is a wonderful idea. According to me, each and every one of us should encourage the concept of a festival, by participating, by talking about it, and even by winning. The industry really wants a congregation of sorts that goes beyond Mumbai or Delhi. And what more neutral a place than Goa, which also happens to be loved by all? Last year, we sent around 100 people from Mudra to the GoaFest. This year, too, lots will go.

It’s not a question of Abbys versus AAAI. It’s about what an agency believes in, and wholeheartedly chooses to support. The Abbys has been a wonderful institution in the past; I have enjoyed every single Abby function that I have attended. All I can say is that these award shows are like brands; there is a certain point in time in every brand’s phase, when it needs to decide whether to adapt to changing needs or not.

Having said that, I don’t think there is an anti-Abby camp or anything. I’d rather be pro- something than anti-something.

Laughs) Oh, it’s very difficult to get rid of tags…I wouldn’t say it has been a turnaround for Mudra or anything. Four years ago, I had considered Mudra as an agency with a fantastic lineage, excellent talent, and adequate resources. It just needed to be future-ready. That was the task I gave myself when I walked into the agency.

Though we have come a long way, I remember what Kishore Biyani had told me recently – “Every two or three years, one should examine one’s own organisation’s structure”. We at Mudra believe deeply in that. I’m satisfied with our progress till date, but there are many more steps to climb.