"Awards should work as tonic, not steroids"

Satbir Singh was all geared up to become a lawyer, but destiny brought him to advertising. In fact, he never knew advertising was his cup of tea until his younger brother, a budding creative guy, introduced him to the great land of copy.

Singh, a graduate from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, began his career in advertising with Trikaya in 1993. Since then, he has worked at agencies such as Contract, Equus, FCB-Ulka, Leo Burnett and Ogilvy.

Today, Singh is the chief creative person at Euro RSCG India. On a laidback afternoon, taking a break from his daily chores, he spoke to Rachit Vats and Neha Kalra of agencyfaqs! about Euro RSCG 2.0.

Edited Excerpts

To be specific, I have spent slightly over two years at Euro. Well, for the first two years, my focus was entirely on the Delhi branch and to beef up its creative output and profile, in which I think I have been fairly successful. This is also why Suman (Srivastava) entrusted me with the responsibilities of the other Euro branches in India such as Mumbai and Bangalore. In fact, in the last two years, we have been successful in winning some prestigious businesses such as Volvo, ‘Business Today’, Reckitt & Benckiser, Oriental Insurance and Makemytrip.com.

But having said that, I would also say that despite our efforts, we couldn’t win the Maruti Zen Estilo business. In fact, I would admit that our focus was so much on winning new businesses that we became more quantity conscious than quality.

In my first year at Euro, the agency was on an award winning spree, but unfortunately, we could not follow that up in the following years, whereas I would have just loved to double the tally. But now that we have been quite successful on the business front, hopefully, we shall bag a few more awards next year.

See, there could be quite a few reasons to lose a business. Sometimes, it’s because the client wants to review its business every year.

The Red FM business that you are referring to happened because there was a change in management, and it wanted to look at everything afresh.

In fact, Red FM was a great brand to work on, and we can take pride in having conceived the tagline, ‘Bajate Raho’, which has done wonders for the brand. It helped the brand move up to number two from bottom of the heap.

Similarly, the Max business moved out after five years. And I can’t give you any reasons for that. All I can say is that it was painful losing the account for which we had done some great work. Euro RSCG was involved in the entire ‘Deewana Bana De’ campaign, and also in positioning Max on cricket and movies. It got a lot of women to watch the World Cup, and also brought a whole of products and brands aimed at women to advertise on the channel during cricket matches. In fact, before the World Cup and Mandira Bedi, not a lot of female products were advertised during cricket matches.

On the other hand, Voltas has been there with us for quite some time now. This also proves our belief in organic growth, and the strategic and creative output that we have been delivering.

First, my responsibilities have almost tripled! (laughs). It is no longer restricted to only one branch in Delhi, now it’s all about Euro RSCG India and all its branches.

Till a few years back, Euro needed to grow both in terms of scale and reputation. We have certainly grown in terms of scale, and now we need to enhance the agency’s creative reputation and be listed among the top three in the country, which catalyses the chance of winning businesses.

As a national creative head, my mandate is to provide creative leadership to the agency and increase our awards tally both at the national and international levels, and I think that’s important. Today I can say that Euro has moved to a place where talented people with a proven track record are interested in joining the agency.

I would agree that today, most people are obsessed with awards. On one hand, it helps you in creating new benchmarks for yourself. For instance, in a particular year, you have won a number of awards, next year, your aim would be to increase the number and win more.

Well, according to me, awards should work as a tonic for an agency, and not as steroids.

Contrary to popular belief, being a creative guy, we are happier when our piece of work, irrespective of the medium, becomes all pervasive and gets quoted. Advertising actually mimics real life.

For instance ‘Yaaron da Tashan’ for Coke became larger than life. I am sure it gave its creators a larger high than a couple of awards. Take ‘Chak De! India’, every time someone hits a four or a six, the entire nation would reverberate with the ‘Chak De!’ anthem. Again, I am sure this leaves the makers of the movie and others involved in the process with a major high.

When you see small town folks talking about your work, the happiness that comes is larger than awards. At the end of the day, awards are nothing but a 15-day celebration. Awards let people judge the creativity index of the agency. Clients come to the agency for creative solutions, and at the end of the day, awards are used as a parameter to judge the agency.

But if you see, in various spheres of life, and in nearly every industry, one recognises talent through awards – be it the music industry, Bollywood or Hollywood. Especially in the creative field, awards act as a great encouragement, and act as a carrot to get very good minds into the business. Awards give agencies a standing, a certain brand appeal and badge value. We have all seen in the past how awards have also got new businesses for agencies.

Ten years back, when Euro RSCG started off on its journey in India, it was mainly with the international clients aligned to it globally. The first five-six years were spent on consolidating these international businesses. And as luck would have it, many of these international businesses moved out, not because of the agency’s performance, but because of global alignment and realignment.

These were large businesses, and when you suddenly lose large chunks of business, you have a setback. So, the entire focus shifted to winning new businesses, for sustenance, and to attract and retain the best talent.

And also when you start off, it takes time to hire the right people, to set up new offices.

As of now, we are currently stable in terms of businesses, and one will see a faster rate of growth in quality.

Advertising is a funny business; it’s also the most promiscuous. In spite of it being such a homogenous mixture, each agency has its own vibe. Advertising professionals are a bit like chameleons – when they join a new place, they completely take on the character of that place. This is because most agencies are ‘brands’ – they have their own brand worlds, and there is a different kind of feel and vibe that you experience and expect.

The Trikaya of the early 1990s had a different feel then and the same is the case for agencies such as Contract and Ogilvy, which had a completely different feel from any other agency, and so has Euro RSCG.

The best part is that it is like a second coming for Euro RSCG – it is like Euro RSCG 2.0. We are at a very happy point in time where we can give a whole new character and feel to the place. It’s not just that feel, vibe that you as an advertising person feel, but also what the clients feel.

The same client will buy different kinds of work from different agencies because you expect different things. One goes to Ogilvy with a different mindset vis-à-vis other agencies. There is a difference in culture.

Most agencies are as different as the competing products in any other category, so just as there are different kinds of consumers for Reebok, Adidas and Nike, similarly, different agencies offer different experiences.

There is a very interesting philosophy, Tao, it is all about the moment, and that moment is in the present. You cannot look back and say, this is what we did, because you are only as good as the work that you produce today. And you are less of what you produced yesterday, and you have no clue of what you are going to create tomorrow. If you concentrate on the future moment, it can or may not get you momentum. If we build the right momentum, there will be growth – the right growth is not known. Does it mean doubling in the next two years, or tripling, or probably quadrupling in the next two years? It is also a matter of sustenance, because sometimes, the growth can be supersonic, and an agency might feel that it is unable to handle it. But we don’t know what that supersonic growth which we cannot handle is, and so we would like to grow as much as possible.

No, we are not contented. It is definitely the moment. That is why I say that I love the Tao philosophy. Having said that, I would also say that I love and adore dissatisfaction – I rate dissatisfaction higher than satisfaction. It is only when you are dissatisfied that you yearn to do better, and push harder and grow. The moment you are satisfied, you start preparing for retirement. I want my clients to be satisfied, I want my creative not to be exactly dissatisfied, but to be led by dissatisfaction; everything that we do should not make us complacent.

Neither I nor the best of the industry veterans can look back and say that they have already done the best work of their lives, be it Piyush Pandey, Prasoon Joshi or Balki and the likes. The moment you say that you have done the best work of the life, you’re over. I am sure all of these gentlemen that I have named are still looking for that even greater piece of work, and that’s what I mean by being led by dissatisfaction.

Historically, Mumbai has been the financial capital of the country, whereas Delhi has been the political capital. Economically, Delhi has been the city of small businesses. So, you have a lot of traders and cash-rich kind of businesses, which have never really, in the old economy, felt the need for advertising because they have been used to working on a completely different model. The North, traditionally, has been a very big spending geography, and where a lot of conspicuous consumption takes place – you have the biggest cars selling in the north as also the biggest televisions.

Today, in spite of companies having their manufacturing base in completely different parts of the country, they are setting up their marketing offices in Gurgaon. In fact, I have also heard that some of the hot new agencies, such as Wieden+Kennedy, are setting up shop in Gurgaon. Mumbai has had a head start, and Mumbai will still be ahead of Delhi for some time to come, and will continue to be the advertising centre for financial corporations as also for media and entertainment clients, such as television channels, who are amongst the heaviest spenders in advertising. Apart from that, some FMCG companies operate out of Mumbai because of historical reasons because they have been there forever. However, some of the largest brands in India have their marketing offices in Delhi and the NCR – Pepsi, Coke, Reckitt & Benckiser, Dabur, Hyundai, Maruti, Volvo, etc.

To compare, traditionally, Euro Mumbai has been doing well, but with the performance of the Delhi branch picking up, the two branches stand neck-to-neck.

The South has its own strengths. There are quite a few IT as well as non-IT companies out there. In the mid-1990s, Bangalore had huge potential, but Delhi has overtaken the speed at which Bangalore is growing in terms of advertising. Purely, in terms of advertising, Delhi is growing the fastest, also because Delhi’s base was smaller, because of which it appears to grow the fastest. But the South remains a market which cannot be ignored.

But what is sad is the way Kolkata has lost pace, and I say this because I have grown up in Kolkata. There were some great advertising minds in the city, and suddenly it lost focus and a lot of companies shifted out. I just hope Kolkata, or in particular the East, gets back on to the advertising map.

Advertising is just one of the contact points for companies setting up base in India. They come with expectations, but once they come here, they are Indian. It is like they have to think global and be Indian. We approach all clients with the same importance – whether it is in terms of strategy, creative or other things. All clients are given the same treatment.

There is plagiarism that is intentional (which we should be against) and then there is some unintentional plagiarism that sinks in. As an advertising professional, one should trust gut feeling. Creative folks should believe in what they create.

In life, there are about only nine original stories. There are various permutations and combinations possible. So, there are limited original ideas. I can vouch that no serious creative professional will ever copy in his entire life. Even if he does, it will be unintentional. The consequences are drastic. The client will sack you, the agency will disrespect you. And then there is so much self-respect involved that creative professionals will not like to copy. There is no safeguard against stealing. It is more of a conscious and an ethical belief. There are some isolated cases which keep coming up and give a bad name to everyone else.