Five years down the line, I see Triton attached to a global group.

Triton Communications has gone through a lot during its thirteen-year existence, since it came into existence in 1992. And, from the look of it, there are lot more transformations in store.

Triton has always been known as the mid-sized, low profile agency that shies away from the limelight. But, if one goes by what Ali Merchant, director, Triton Communications has to say about Triton’s future plans, then big agencies better watch out. The future, according to him, belongs to mid-sized agencies. Read on to find out what he says about the future of advertising and more, to Prajjal Saha and Devina Joshi of agencyfaqs!...

Edited Excerpts

At the time when I got into advertising, people entered the field by accident, not by design. I’m referring to a time that was years back. Today, the scenario is different.

Anyway, I’ll tell you about my accident, which actually happened. After finishing my law studies here, I worked as a lawyer for a while. But I realised my real interest wasn’t law. I actually wanted to be a diplomat. So, I pursued a course in international relations abroad.

During that time, I went on a holiday to Europe, where I had a near fatal accident. My folks ordered me to head to India right away! Once back in Mumbai, I didn’t want to go back to law. It so happened that someone I met at a party told me that since I was such an intense talker and thinker, I ought to try advertising.

So, this is how I started my career in advertising with an agency, which was then called Clarion McCann. I had the good fortune of working with Subroto Sengupta directly.

Not really. We had a one-year training programme, where I got to work in every department of the agency, ranging from a finishing artist to a copywriter.

Years later, Munawar Syed and I decided to start Triton. In fact, we started Triton with clients like Aptech (which was then called Apple), and Eureka Forbes among others.

When we started Triton, we were very clear that we needed the support of a multinational corporation. We partnered with BDDP Disruption Network, a global agency, and became its associate. But unfortunately, BDDP got bought over by an agency, and that agency, in turn, got bought over by Omnicom. So, after five years of association with BDDP, we finally got out of it.

As far as the present scenario is concerned, all the top 20 agencies have international alliances. We seem to be the only one left without a MNC association. Yes, we are open to alliance with a global partner. Our only criterion is that the MNC must bring in business to Triton; we can’t have an alliance just for the tag of being associated with a global name. We don’t want to simply make a quick buck here.

We’re not stupid; money does matter, but it’s not the driving force behind an alliance. The MNC must bring us ‘X’ amount of business, and an opportunity for growth. After all, we need to secure our organization. We’ll be looking at the quality of the business as well as the quality of the global group.

In fact, a lot of people on our team have worked with agencies that have MNC partners. I’ve personally worked with people in the US as well as the UK. So it’s not as though we don’t know what the international scenario is like.

So, as I said, we would love to have a global alliance too. It’s not as if we are craving to be entrepreneurs all the time! Being Indian has its own set of struggles.

We started Viking Video Productions in 1992, where we marketed TV serials such as ‘Chandrakanta’, ‘Shaktimaan’, ‘Jai Hanuman’ and ‘Tipu Sultan’. A year after that, we got into PR and started our PR division called Abacus. Other than these, we have an in-house division for newsletters and corporate communication called CCS, a website development and designs division called Spartan, and Triton Rural for rural communication in North India.

Around a year back, we even started Triton M, our media buying and planning division, which is doing quite well for itself with clients like Crompton Greaves and Panasonic. More often than not, Triton’s clients prefer to give their media duties to Triton M.

Triton is also a member of ICOM, which is the largest worldwide independent ad agency group.

Yes, well, we also have acquired some large businesses in Mumbai such as Metro Shoes and Shalimar Paints. In Bangalore too, we have won quite a few accounts. But as far as coming out of our “shell” is concerned, I’d like to put it this way: There are two kinds of news.

The first comprises what you actually do in terms of activities. Secondly, there is the ‘page three’ news. We don’t belong to the latter, and never want to. We don’t want to cunningly connive and use PR in this way. But yes, when we get new business, we like to talk about it.

Ah, yes. There are two new things we are planning to unravel by September/October. First, we’ll have something called the ‘T-Box.’ It is a tool for strategizing. It is the DNA of strategy for us, so to speak. Basically, with the help of the T-Box, we will help our team develop newer and better ideas that will help us strategize for our clients. In fact, the T-Box has been inspired by the theme of disruption/discontinuous thinking. That’s all I can reveal at this stage.

The second important change at Triton will be the launch of a new logo, a new corporate identity. As a matter of fact, it’s a huge step for us. This is not being done to derive PR value, but it is being undertaken mainly to help our clients and to energize our team and infuse them with freshness. I also believe that the corporate identity must be established only after having achieved something significant. Do it first, and then re-energize; not the other way round.

The theme on which we have based our corporate identity is the seven deadly sins. Each of us will pick up the one sin that drives us. For me, my sin is ‘pride’. The purpose behind this is that we believe all creative ideas emerge out of the seven deadly sins. And, it’s true! Look at all the advertising in the past: You’ll see a reflection of the seven sins everywhere. So we’re going to convert the seven deadly sins into a marketing idea. I think it is going to work wonderfully for our clients.

I’m not a great believer in awards. Creativity for the sake of awards gets you nowhere. Building the client’s brand is more important. No client comes to an agency because of the awards the agency may have won. At least, I’m yet to come across it. They come to you after looking at your previous work for other clients and your resources, and how best you can service them.

There was this agency called MCM, if you remember, that made brilliant creatives and won every award in the book, but despite that, it folded up in around seven years. That was because the agency, despite producing stunning creativity, was unable to build brands for its clients.

I’m not saying that awards are nothing; they do enhance the creative morale of the agency. In fact, as far as image enhancement is concerned, it happens only on the creative parameter.

I believe in awards given for advertising effectiveness, where credibility comes in. Those are the kind of awards I would like to patronise. We’ve never sent out entries for the Effie awards, but this year, we will. We were even short-listed at the Abbys. But that particular category had a lot of humourous advertising, which ended up winning. In fact, around 80% of awards won at awards shows are humourous ones! I’ve hardly seen an ad with an emotional connect win.

The task of the creative is based on the task of the client. If humour sells, so be it. I personally don’t think humour is the only thing that works in the market. Feature films, too, are a guiding star for the creatives. But at the end of the day, it depends on the brand, and what exactly the client wants. We’re based on ideas. That’s what clients pay us for.

Specialization is definitely happening. Setting up creative hot-shops is one way of doing it. You see, clients these days are asking agencies to dole out a lot more than they used to; now, an ad agency offering integrated services is a given. Agencies have to go even beyond integrated solutions. Agencies will have to rediscover and re-engineer their offerings and help their clients in a better way.

It’s not a question of choice anymore; it’s an issue of survival. Agencies offering pure advertising are going to face a huge problem. Offering the whole gamut of value-added services is the only way to go. Agencies will have to think of different formulae, if they want to survive in the future.

The biggest disadvantage is that big businesses – the Rs 50-100 crore ones – sometimes don’t select us for pitches because we’re mid-sized. We often lose out even if we have a brilliant idea. Some clients don’t understand that, and don’t give us a chance. It’s unfair on their part.

Mid- sized agencies have to be twice as smart as multinational agencies. Big is not better, smart is. Another point with these MNC agencies is that they try and apply universal ideas in all the countries. Every country has its own culture, which is so strong that you can’t apply a single idea everywhere.

I feel these world ideas can only be applied on high-end products like cars or airlines. And, certainly not on FMCGs or durables. For these, you need ideas from the local soil. Clients don’t want to be restricted to a single agency. They have started giving products outside their ‘MNC club’ agencies due to this. And, it’s going to happen more and more. So here, we have an advantage.

Another trend is that people are switching from big agencies to small/mid-sized ones. This is largely due to the opportunity to experience creative freedom, and to share the big idea, which may or may not be heard in a big agency.

Also, one sector that’s going to gain a huge importance is the government sector, the public sector units. That will have a huge bearing on mid-sized agencies. PSUs are going to come up in a huge way.

I also predict that Indian agencies will soon become global. They will soon tie up with big business houses, such as Samsung, who are thinking global, rather than having an alliance with an MNC agency.

The hard reality today is that the growth of the core brand building/corporate advertising sector is not more than 15 per cent annually. And, I’m not talking about shareholding, or matrimonial kind of advertising. Also, gone are the days of the 15 per cent agency commission.

Today, billing is not as important as the revenue you actually end up earning from the client. There is also the share given to media houses. So, these revenues are perhaps shrinking. Naturally, an agency can’t give the kind of increments to its employees the way it used to. As a result, employees tend to switch to other, more lucrative options in media.

We started off in Mumbai, but soon we realized that Delhi was turning more and more lucrative. All the action was happening there, so we decided to open an office there. Post that, we opened offices in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and lastly, Pune. If we decide to expand, it won’t be in India. We’ll be looking at the Middle East, particularly Dubai. Or, we may even consider China. These places are going to boom.

I see Triton attached to a group. It could be a multinational group, an Indian group, or a media group. I see an alliance with a global partner for Triton. I don’t see Triton on its own five years from now. Certainly not.