If Pops and I had been doing the Pencil/One Show kind of work, we too would have been called 'quacks'

R. Balakrishnan (Balki) and K.V. Sridhar (Pops), executive creative directors at Lowe, make a strange pair. One is passionate, combative and wince-inducingly blunt. The other is quiet, methodical and professor-like. Yet, despite their outwardly differences (even, at times, in opinion, as we shall see), the two share enough wavelength to make common cause for the kind of advertising they believe in. This formidable combination has been at Lowe's creative helm for the past four years, helping produce "solid advertising", which has lifted the agency's creative product up several notches. In this interview with N. Shatrujeet of agencyfaqs!, Balki and Pops talk about the creative revival - and its challenges - at Lowe

Edited Excerpts

Balki: 'We have to do some better ads' - the mandate was as simple as that. Let's get the creative act of the agency together. That's all.

Balki: I'll put it this way. I think we were producing very hard-working stuff for a lot of clients. And the brands were doing reasonably well. There was nothing wrong with any of the brands. It's not as if they were sinking and whatnot. Lintas was quite sound, doing all the right things.

Interestingly, it was around the same time that the advertising crunch started hitting. When there was more focus from everybody around - industry and clients - to make the money work harder. For ads to be that much more interesting. That was the time that people were asking, 'It's not enough for me to pump in Rs 15 crore of advertising. Can I do more with less?' So, the desire on the clients' side to have more interesting ads - that worked harder - was coming into the open.

I think the way Lintas was, at that point in time, there was a skew towards getting things 'right'. Rather than getting things 'interestingly right'. My job was to make a lot of correct things look interesting.

Balki: If I'm not mistaken, the very first project that I worked on in Mumbai was Surf Excel. And Surf Excel had really grown as a brand on the back of hardcore testimonial advertising. So you had people on television who said, 'This is my life, I use Surf Excel and this is what Surf Excel has done for me.' Nothing wrong in that, really. All Levers wanted to say was so many people believe in Surf Excel. But there are lots of better ways of saying this, instead of having people talk into the camera. 'Testimonials' cannot become a strategy. If a brand has to say 'I'm the best and I can remove any number of stains,' there are many ways of saying it.

One way is to say, 'I have no fear of stains.' And that is how 'Surf Excel hai na!' came into the picture. I remember there was this young writer called Deep Chatterjee who came up with this line. And because at that time the agency was so much steeped in 'that way of thinking', it was very hard for them to receive this as a thought for a detergent. So Deep had this line, not knowing what to do with it, not knowing how to push it through this system. When I saw that line, I saw infinite possibilities. It is the biggest thing a confident brand can say.

To break that thinking of the agency, to achieve the same task that these guys wanted to achieve through testimonials, that was my task. Just saying 'I am a confident brand because so many people believe in me' in a simpler, more interesting, consumer-friendly way. After all, it's a detergent. The biggest focus shift was to give the product the respect it deserves - don't give it more, don't give it less. People here were giving products a lot more respect than they deserved. If you start treating toothpaste like a cure for cancer, you have a problem… because the consumer doesn't see it that way. That was a shift we brought, and fortunately, it started with Levers. With Levers, a lot of things were correct, but also boring. Nobody wanted to see that kind of advertising .

Balki: Two things, really. One, a lot of wrong people were taking the calls on advertising. A lot of people, whose only interest was in saying the right thing, were also taking the calls on how it should be said. When people who want to say the right thing start taking calls on how it should be said, most of the time, they're not open to a lateral way of looking at the same thing. The logic they apply is, 'It's so simple, just say it like that.' And then you sincerely start believing that the consumer actually wants to hear, let's say, 'Pepsodent fights germs 24 hours a day.' Nobody wants to hear that, please. People want to get that message, but not said that way. Before, when clients and agencies used to analyze commercials, they used to have a checklist saying, 'Yes, it's communicating this, it's communicating that, da-da-da…' Commercials are not viewed by people like that. You need human beings to judge advertising, not automatons. That was one battle

The second thing that I saw wrong was what I call the biggest disease in advertising. The problem with Lintas wasn't anybody else… it was its own creative people. I've always believed that in an agency where the creative is not good, the creative people there are at fault. They are at fault because… see, there is no point in having a desire to produce great advertising. If you are able to give a reason as to why you are not able to produce great advertising, you can still live in peace and still call yourself brilliant - because you've given yourself an excuse for not producing great advertising. A lot of people here had that one excuse. Things like the system doesn't understand great advertising, there's no point in pushing… I am brilliant, but the system doesn't respect my brilliance, so the system is at fault. Creative people have to remember that they are judged by their product, which is on television. And there you cannot go and tell the consumer about the system and how it doesn't respect your brilliance. This is the basic thing that these guys forgot.

Balki: The only thing that we brought to focus was, 'Everything is your problem.' You have a problem with the system, you are supposed to rectify it and produce that damn good ad, because I'm not going to change any system for you overnight. Doing that great ad is your job. Now what battles you have to fight for it comes along with the territory - if you want to be with Lintas. Lintas comes with a certain way of working. It's not a creative hotshop. If you want to do great work on big brands, you've got to take the baggage of the big brands along with you. There will be 35 people on big brands, and 35 different points of view. Despite that, you need to keep your focus on great advertising. So keep your focus in mind, let your excuses take the back seat. I think that was another shift.

Another thing that I must mention is that there was also a phase in Lintas where a lot of account planning - that is, getting it 'right' - was done by the creative people. Now the problem with this is that when you spend so much time arriving at the 'right thing to say', you lose the energy to say it interestingly. Partly because you believe you have cracked it. And you can take the credit for setting the brand 'right'. But that's actually not your job. What should be happening is that once someone arrives at the 'right', the creative interpretation should take the leap. That's why you have a planner in the agency. So there was a lot of confusion of roles, and everybody here was applauding everybody for all the wrong jobs. That shifted with Pranesh (Misra) coming in, whereby he took on the onus of saying the right thing, while creatives looked at how to say interestingly. Yes, if you are the only person who is getting it right, great. If you are the only one the client feels comfortable dealing with, great. But by God, you're going to be judged only by the quality of your creative work.

Balki: I must tell you one thing. When Prem (Mehta) decided to do all this, he had a very clear focus in mind. He understood that - and I must grant him completely on this one - there is a price to pay for this. A lot of things that people were comfortable with had to be shaken if we had to be prepared for the future. And he took that risk. So what if people were unhappy? And I don't think too many people were unhappy because all we were telling them was to do better ads. Prem just stuck to his guns and said that regardless of how indispensable people have been to this agency in the past, if they do not believe in our culture of advertising, we will not put up with it.

Pops: I think the shift in the agency's thinking made all the difference. There are some things that are very infectious, and passion is one of them. I think the shift happened the moment a Young Turk - an unknown quantity - came from the south of India when Prem made a decision and put this guy in charge of the agency's creative product. What Balki did was exhibit a passion for doing good creative work, and that was inspiring enough for the others. And what we are consciously now doing is percolating it down. At the end of the day, that's the only difference. Everybody is talented, everybody wants to do good work. But you need a catalyst. Someone who can lead by example

Balki: Honestly… all that I've just told you is a summary of the past three-four years. Now I'll tell you about my first six months here. I had no clue as to what to do. I came in here, and was almost in tears many evenings. I really didn't know what the hell had hit me. Then one day, Chax (KS Chakravarthy) told me why don't I meet up with Pops, as he is onto something. So we met. And before that, I had met him only once, in a boat in Cochin. Anyway, we seemed to hit it off together, and as I had no clue where I was going, and he didn't seem to have a clue about where he was coming into, we thought let's work together. That's how it started.

In the first six months, there was a lot of talk here about change and all that. A lot of talk… and one Surf and a couple of other things were done, that's all. Once Pops came in, he put together a lot of systems. We had a creative meet in this place after many, many years. We got the people together, simplified groups, put the right people in charge, shifted people to Levers and asked how do we do great advertising on Levers?

Balki: Levers was focus. We figured that if Lintas had to be different from other creative people who were chasing this award and that, we had to get it right on the big brands. Get right on the brand that nobody has ever got it right on - Levers. Bajaj was the other focus.

Bit by bit, we brought about changes. Preeti (Nair) was already there on Clinic. We put a little bit of a structure up for her, and she got in a lot of young talent in her group. Ramki (D. Ramakrishna) took over a part of Levers, and he brought in a fresh set of people. Madhu (Noorani) moved from Johnson & Johnson to Levers… Then there was Rahul (Sengupta), Zaheer (Mirza), Sharon (Nayak), Sudhir (Makhija), Ashit (Desai), Narayan (Kumar) and Abhijeet. These were people who contributed to the change that this agency underwent.

Pops: Actually, around that time, I was scheduled to move out of Leo Burnett India to Burnett's regional network - to take care of bigger creative challenges around the world. It might sound silly, but one day, my son asked me why I was moving out of India. He asked me if I would like to see Sachin Tendulkar bat for Australia and win matches for them. And if not, why I was going outside India and doing good work there and winning awards for them, rather than here. At a very personal level, that set me thinking. I figured there was a lot more to do in this country, and that it's best I stay here. By this time, Aggie (Agnello Dias) had been announced as my replacement at Burnett, and power had been handed to him. And anyway, I had decided to move out of Burnett.

So I started looking at options here. One thing I was clear upon was that I wanted a big canvass - to do good work on big brands. So joining a smaller agency was not an option, as it takes a really long time for a small agency to acquire big brands - and I was not willing to wait. Also, I was clear that I did not want to work in a place where the business head does not have an ambition to see his agency produce great creative. Lintas was a good option, as it had some really good, big brands. More importantly, it had made its intentions of doing good advertising very clear by making this young 32-year-old boy from Bangalore its national creative director and giving him a free hand. I saw the opportunity and took it.

Balki: Lintas has always believed - and will always believe - that this 'so-called creative' kind of work is bad. That if you let creative have a free run, they'll ruin our brands. This is because Lintas has seen a lot of false advertising, where people have been doing things for their own glory. Fortunately - for both Lintas and the two of us - we were not from that school of advertising which said, 'I'll do a One Show ad or an Archive ad.' We just believe in doing solid advertising - for the brand. If Pops and I had been doing the Pencil/One Show kind of work, we too would have been called 'quacks', and would have never been taken seriously. What we did was come into this agency and say, 'Creative is not a bad word, but one that is good for your business.' Prem always understood that, but it takes an understanding between the creative chaps and the business head where the creative people say 'We are not here to ruin your business, but to help you'.

There are too many people in this business who believe that creative is about peer accolades, not consumer accolades. Today, getting consumer accolades is far more difficult to getting peer accolades. So, our belief in advertising was slightly different, and more in tune with what the agency wanted in terms of creative.

Pops: It's all about trust. Traditionally, the way creative is viewed, the client always suspects that there is some hidden agency agenda when the agency asks him to do things this way. Within the agency, servicing is always under the suspicion and fear that the creative people are up to something. And this is because creative people were always looking at doing things differently - but not necessarily in a way complimentary to the brand's needs. Naturally, they failed to win respect. Who is to blame? Try and speak in the same language that they are speaking, work for the same objectives and get them the results by doing a damn good product, and they will trust you.

Balki: The shift we were arguing for coincided with the time Vindi Banga came in and said, 'Our advertising is really boring, we need to do something about it.' There was a lot more push from Levers' side, and they were a lot more receptive to great ideas.

It's not that Levers has not been receptive to great ideas in the past. I have always believed in one thing about Unilever. They know a tried-and-trusted way of doing things. They also know brilliance, when they see it. Now there is a lot of area in between these two, and a lot of agencies, wanting to be better than the boring and the tried-and-trusted, try and do something in between. We all try and do this 'slightly better' stuff. Levers is saying, 'No. You either give me this, which I know and believe in, or you give me this, which makes me say wow!' Levers is willing to experiment with brilliance, not the mediocre. Because they understand advertising better than many people. And what Vindi did was tell them, 'Look, you have this quality in you, so go for this (brilliance) more than this (tried-and-trusted).' Not that we achieve it all the time, but when we aim for that, we at least land a bit closer to that.

Balki: We haven't even finished 10 per cent of our battle, and we've achieved next to nothing.

Balki: Because I hate all the ads that we have done so far. I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, don't like a single ad that we have done so far. It's not that I am saying so out of modesty. It's just that every time I see an ad of ours, I see so many things that are wrong in it, so many things that could have been much, much better… Like I said, I can find so many excuses for why those ads are not better. But the battle is to find fewer and fewer such excuses. We still have far too many excuses for producing the kind of ads we produce. I also think we aren't ambitious enough, that we are far too easily satisfied when we see that we are bigger and better than the nearby horizon.

Pops: No, I don't. Maybe I am not that modest. (Laughs.) I agree that we have achieved just 10 per cent. But I think we've done a lot of good work on big brands, which has made us look good, made our clients look good. I think the 10 per cent that we have achieved is good, and I can say it with all pride. Because when the entire Indian advertising industry, for the past four-five years, was chasing the pressure from MNC networks and doing work that pleased the networks, Lintas stood for doing advertising that addressed the core - our brands, and the consumers they addressed. It is very easy to win 15 awards and be in the good books of your network, yet be bad to your brands in your own country. I think the biggest plus is that our intentions are honourable.

Pops: See, today, everything has become a commodity. Technologies are commodities, benefits are commodities, insights are commodities… At the end of the day, how do you break clutter by doing and saying the same things? Coke says refreshment, Heineken says refreshment, Polo says refreshment. The only way you can be different is by choosing a tone that is different. Where you do a little thing that doesn't test the consumer's patience, but gives a little joy. That is how good advertising can be defined. I think most of Lintas' work has achieved that, to some extent. We are striving to make it more interesting, more likeable.

Balki: Yes, there are instances of middle-of-the-road work. And we are taking great pains at improving the work on Maruti. We're putting things together on Maruti… Yeah, we can do a lot more. Definitely a lot better.

Balki: Yes, there are instances of middle-of-the-road work. And we are taking great pains at improving the work on Maruti. We're putting things together on Maruti… Yeah, we can do a lot more. Definitely a lot better.

Balki: I don't look at it as being No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 or whatever. I just honestly think we are nowhere near what we should be. And I don't like to compare us to what is happening in this industry today.

Pops: I have been in a lot of agencies, and what I think is very good about Lintas - and the outside world may not know about this - is that we have no standard benchmarks. Indian advertising is not the benchmark we're going after. Awards are not the benchmark - that I must win so many awards. Satisfying Lowe International is not a benchmark - that I must have so many ads in their showreel. Appreciation from peers is not. The only thing we are bothered about is can we do this better. It is more inward looking than outward.

Balki: The only thing I can say is that, although I think none of the ads Lintas has made in this country are great, amongst the good ads, we have more solid, good ads then any other agency in this country.