JWT’s fresh creative energy

Colvyn Harris’ office in Mumbai has a souvenir ‘wall’ adorned with awards. Amongst the metal ware sits a small rubber duck. It has been sitting there since January 2005 when Harris took over as CEO of JWT. When his colleague and JWT managing partner, Rohit Ohri, asked him why the rubber duck was there, Harris had replied, “That’s the place for the Lions.”

The Lions came duly, but this year was especially sweet because JWT India won the Grand Prix (awarded to one of the Gold winners in the category) The Times of India’s Lead India campaign in Direct Lions, which was a first for India. It also gave the country its first Integrated Lion in the Titanium and Integrated category (a newly introduced category that is tough to win).

Harris is a ‘workshop’ man. It was part of his strategy when he took over. He strongly believes in investing time and effort in people at JWT. In 2006 itself, the agency spent 2,400 mandays on training. That works out to just over four days per person per year. In 2005, that figure was three.

“As an industry or in our business, there is stress, so one must spend some time to have fun. When I came in, they gave me a whip,” says Harris. He crafted a coffee table and put the whip as a centrepiece under the glass of the table ‘as a reminder’. That’s Harris. Calm and collected, he is trying to turn the 79-year-old agency into what he calls “hot, fresh and sexy”.

Creative afterthought

JWT, in the 1990s, was like a straight-jacketed monolith. Recalls Nikhil Nehru, a former JWT man, “During the time I was at JWT (1971 to 1992) it was known as HTA and it was the most solid agency. We were never ever known for our creativity. In fact, our mission statement was to create the most effective advertising in the marketplace. The keyword was ‘effective’. But through that process if we did create advertising which was creative it was fantastic.”

But change was inevitable. The entire environment of advertising changed in the mid-1990s. With liberalisation came more clients, there was greater competition, more money and an attitude of ‘we want more money for our buck’. The media clutter intensified dramatically. From one Doordarshan, there was an array of channels. And this change happened quite quickly. Suddenly, the communication had to be more India-focused too. “That was the time when JWT (then J Walter Thompson) did not keep up with the change. It was still sitting with this grandfather image,” believes Nehru.

The focus on creative-led business in advertising began in the 1990s when Ranjan Kapur took over at O&M and gave Piyush Pandey a free run. By early 2000, it was clear that O&M was India’s most sought after ad agency. This was also the time when McCann got Prasoon Joshi, and Leo Burnett roped in K V Sridhar. JWT was unable to keep pace. Mike Khanna was perpetually on the verge of retiring. Sunil Gupta and Kamal Oberoi came and went after brief stints as heirs apparent. The top leadership was in disarray.

Mr Fixit arrives

When Harris took over in 2005, there were many detractors. After accepting the fact that the problem was with the creative output, Harris set about his task in earnest. “We looked around at the current people to decide what we needed to do with them. The second part of it was to get people with newer skills. Office by office, we went about injecting this new gene of becoming a more creative agency,” says Harris.

‘Creating a benchmark’ has always been Harris’ motto. The vibrancy that came along with fresh blood infused in the agency has started showing. Suddenly, the agency began winning awards with Levi’s winning a Gold at Cannes in 2006, even though no one had seen it till the ad won. Nike, though, was a whopper and won the top honours at Abby and at the Goa Fest. The crowning glory was of course the Grand Prix for Lead India.

The changes at JWT India reflected the changes that JWT went through worldwide. Just about the time Harris took over as the CEO in India, Bob Jeffrey joined as the worldwide chairman and CEO and Craig Davis as the chief creative officer of JWT.

Worldwide, too, the agency had been floundering. According to a business article, in 2002-2003, J Walter Thompson’s flagship operation in New York, had competed in 20 business pitches without a single win. It had lost accounts such as Kellogg’s and others were hemorrhaging.

The Indian arm saw other changes happening, some visible, others less so. J Walter Thompson became JWT in February 2005. This was done imaginatively. The entire staff went to Mumbai’s Gateway of India and hired a ship and sailed off to sea. Out in the deep, a little dinghy was set afloat for the commodore (symbolically J Walter Thompson) and sent away. “We re-entered India technically through the Gateway of India as a new JWT,” says Harris.

Changes were ushered in other countries too in interesting ways. In JWT Egypt, the staff planted the ‘seeds’ of passion, commitment and creativity, while in Mexico, they marked the rebirth with circus clowns and elephants.

Shaking off sluggishness

Immediately after his appointment, Jeffrey remarked in a release - “We are focusing much of our growth efforts on the BRIC markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China).... Our network is well-poised to capitalise on the promise and dynamism of many of these countries.” The focus on India as an important business centre too came around the same time.

As part of the new processes, a global council was set up where every JWT office in any part of the world had to send in its best work each quarter. Each creative was measured and got a score back. “There was a huge amount of pressure to start improving. So all group heads tried to push their work up. And over a period of time the focus shifted to how you can up your work on that scale,” says Ohri.

The global council also measured media neutrality. So while the Nike ad got a seven because it was a film, Lead India got nine since it was a campaign. Says Harris, “We changed many of our processes too - creating ideas, rather than scripting press ads, became the focus. We started ‘hot housing’ where we create the brief and the insight and start working on the idea. We went to the client with the idea. In this hot housing we involved our partners like Encompass and IPAN. It is not that we have changed the entire team when we came in. It was the direction we gave to the large ship.”

People power

Another important part was to put in place a solution for clients. RMG Connect, IPAN, Encompass, Fortune, Fortune ADK and the recently-launched HONK (a design unit) provided that solution. As Harris puts it, “We are just not creating a laundry list. The way we have fashioned the company is like a supermarket.”

Was there a clear agenda? “When I joined,” recalls Dias, “there was a goal - to up the creative work - but never any measurable tool to win X number of awards. Unfortunately, we are in an industry where the most practical manifestation of creative products happens to be awards. But it seems to be the universal kind of criteria that helps everyone arrive at some semblance of measurement. So that’s something which we go by.”

JWT is proud of its senior management team. Mythili Chandrashekar in Bengaluru, Shaziya Khan in Mumbai, Senthil Kumar at Chennai, Dhunji Wadia at Mumbai, Meera Sharath Chandra for RMG Connect are only a few of them. What happens when top people leave, as happened with Tarun Rai, managing partner and national business head, JWT (Rai is now CEO, Worldwide Media)? Did that rattle the agency? “We are in a dynamic world. Attrition is as big in any other company. What we pride ourselves is that we have a very stable management team for a long time. Some clients are very happy if they see the same people for three meetings. We have a loyal set and good talent. Having said that, it is a dynamic market. There are many categories where people go to and move to, so it is a great time for people to explore new industries,” says Harris.

Sticky clients

JWT India has had clients who have stayed with it for years. So if the company dished out unexciting advertising how did clients stick to them? Horlicks for 80 years, PepsiCo for 22 and Hero Honda for 25. Lever, De Beers and Ford also have had a long association.

Ohri feels that the measure of success is the faith the clients have put in the agency and that has not wavered at all. The only difference today is that the agency has managed to reassert itself. It had just added back the lost sheen. “Today it is hard to keep clients - especially because they are also aligned with other agencies. Pepsi with BBDO and GSK with Grey Worldwide. So we have to fight to keep every piece of business we have,” adds Ohri.

Dias thinks that the work done for clients like Rin and De Beers is as good and important as the Grand Prix at Cannes. Just because they do not get a certificate from a foreign organisation, does not mean that they cannot be rated at the same level as an award-winner.

Culturally different?

The mood at JWT offices is buoyant but restrained. The senior-most people at the agency are reserved yet forceful. Is that the culture of the agency?

Dias brushes it off, “Everybody is in love with the idea of culture. It’s a fashionable thing to say, likely driven by results. If an agency is very large then largeness becomes a culture, if you win lots of awards, then creativity becomes the culture. These are all tags.”

Kapur says, “I think every agency acquires its own culture. Sometimes, the culture is infused by the top management and history and heritage. And JWT is driven that way. For example, Ogilvy is very outward directed and media savvy. JWT is inwardly directed.”

Harris feels that the agency has earned a reputation in ethical standards in all that it does and has to conform to that. “The DNA of JWT is that we see ourselves as leaders. We have to be leaders in the kind of people we hire, in the kind of work we do and in how we conduct ourselves. It is an agency with leadership as the central theme,” he says. When asked whether his vision has been achieved or not, Harris says, “A vision is something you can never achieve; otherwise one will die of short-sightedness. We always have a challenge to face up to.”

“We have a group which is called Won at the top. Won is a euphemism of WON at the top. It also means ONE at the top. We are building an organisation. Great organisations are built with process and systems and understanding. If I left the company, I would make sure that all the efforts that we have put in do not come to a naught. It must continue. It is not about Colvyn Harris or Agnello Dias. It is about building a good team. And when you build transparency in an organisation it will work,” he sums up. For JWT it is working out perfectly, in terms of awards too.