Saatchi & Saatchi is a creative agency and not a media house.

Kamal Basu, executive vice-president and branch head, Saatchi & Saatchi, Mumbai, has stuck to the agency through thick and thin since he signed on with it in 2001. To the extent that, despite his stints with RK Swamy/BBDO, Rediffusion DY&R, Leo Burnett and O&M, Basu is practically synonymous with Saatchi & Saatchi.

In this interview with Pritha Mitra Dasgupta of agencyfaqs!, the man who has juggled between big and small agencies talks about life at Saatchi & Saatchi and what has kept him going there for five years now. Riding down memory lane, he explains how Saatchi & Saatchi has shaped up in the last five years.

Edited Excerpts

I got into advertising in the year, 1984, straight after graduation. I did a marketing course from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. But in the last two decades, I have not regretted getting into this profession one single day.

When I graduated in 1984, the options I had before me were to get into finance, computers or advertising. The reason why I selected advertising was because a few of my family members were in the business. So, to some extent, I was predisposed to this profession.

However, I started my career with a CA firm. And after two days of working there, I quit (laughs)! I couldn’t see myself doing all that number crunching. I went to Brinston Miranda, the then head of RK Swamy, Mumbai, to seek advice. After a couple of days, he called me and offered me the job of a management trainee. That was my first job in advertising and I spent two and a half years in the agency. After RK Swamy, I spent a very brief time with Chaitra (now Leo Burnett). Then I joined Clarion and spent two and a half years there. Next I moved to Rediffusion DY&R and spent three and a half years there. Then I spent seven years in O&M.

After this, for the first time in my life, I did a career shift and crossed over the fence to the client side. I joined the dotcom boom in the January of 2000. I was head of marketing for IndiaInfo.com. And after the dotcom bubble burst, I quickly gathered my wits and got back into advertising. I joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 2001 and, ever since, I have been a part of this agency.

Saatchi & Saatchi came into being through a very small equity partnership with Sista’s in 1994. The actual agency took shape in 1998. Globally, Saatchi & Saatchi handles the P&G business and it was the main business of the Mumbai branch at that point in time. When I joined the agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, as a full-fledged agency, was only two years old. At that time, the focus was on generating new business and laying strong foundations for the future. Financials were also a key factor at that point. The team was small. We had around 40 people working in here. It was doing well, but we could have done better.

Over the last five years, we have been very fortunate to get the Mumbai office up and going. Our revenues have grown by 300 per cent in five years and I believe it is a very healthy growth. We have seen both bad times and good times. But let me put it this way, we have seen more good times than bad. However, the bad times have been a great learning experience for us. Today, we have reached a stage where I can say that the Mumbai branch is very sound financially. We have also seen some very nice creative products coming out of the office over the last few years. We got nominated at the One Show, D&AD and Clio. We have got some awards at the local level also.

But now our focus has shifted to driving some brilliant creative products out of this office.

Yeah, we have taken a conscious decision to keep a low profile. It is a strategy that is maintained across Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide. Even at the international level, nothing much is written on the agency.

We believe in letting our work speak for itself. And it has helped us in many ways. We get called in for the right pitches. The Brand Equity ratings have rated us well and we have certainly been elevated from our previous ratings. So I don’t think we have paid any price by being low profile.

I think there is a flaw in the question – I don’t think they have ever sacrificed being creative. The brands that we handle for P&G are Aerial, Head & Shoulders and Pampers. Most of the Aerial work is done out of the Mumbai office. The rest of it is done out of the Bangkok office. If we look at Aerial, P&G has spent billions of dollars in research and development in putting together this product. And it’s a simple message that we have put out as brand communication for this product. So, it’s not a mandate that was sent to us by the client. We tried to bring to light the kind of hard work that has been put in for the product. We have won awards for the Aerial commercial.

I don’t think pushing a strong idea depends on the size of the agency. Instead, what matters are the conviction, belief and knowledge in the category. A healthy mutual respect is required between the client and the agency. None of our clients treat us as a mid-sized agency or expect less work than they would expect from a large agency. So, size doesn’t really matter here.

No, I don’t think it is a strategic decision. There aren’t many people in the industry who can actually fulfil the role of a national creative director. It is a difficult job. Creative people are not always keen to undertake administrative responsibilities. It is also not true that Saatchi & Saatchi does not want a national creative director. It’s just that we don’t want the wrong guy to come on board. So wait and watch till we find the right guy.

I don’t think these people left the agency on a bitter note. Secondly, they were working out of the Saatchi Delhi office and I have no responsibility over that branch. One must also understand that when a very senior person leaves, there tend to be some fall-outs here and there. This happens in every agency. I am not saying that their exit was linked to Ramanathan’s departure. I think they had a very good run in the agency. We take great pride in the kind of work they did for the agency. So, we have had a great relationship with them.

Yeah, we did well in 2003. We could have done better in 2004 and 2005. I think, after 2003, we tended to focus a bit more on the financials. The issue that commonly confronts a mid-sized agency is the financial one. A small shake in the business could impact a medium-sized agency more heavily than it would a large agency. Today, if large agencies lose a business of Rs 5-7 crore, it wouldn’t dent them as much as it would affect us. That’s the primary difference between a large agency and a mid-sized agency. We focus to consolidate our financial side. The 300 per cent growth that I have mentioned earlier came in the last two years. Maybe now, we should shift our focus to the creative. Also, to some extent, the lack of a national creative director did affect our creative output and we will get really aggressive this year to fill that position.

Absolutely!! I am extremely happy, more so because no agency of this stature has grown so rapidly and built expertise in categories. Benchmarks get set automatically both on the creative front and the financial front. There is a momentum that’s going on in Saatchi right now. There’s a buzz around this place. And as the unit head, my mandate is to keep this going and let the wave keep rising high.

Every agency has its own business model, and they are significantly different from each other. Our differentiator is the way we work. Every year since this agency was conceived, we have elevated ourselves to new heights of success. Every year has proved to be better than past years. If one looks at the last five years, the highest growth that we have got is from our existing businesses. We have also won a number of new businesses. But our clients have actually shown consistency in partnering with us and they have been investing in us for years now. We have been able to retain much more business than we have actually lost.

The major accounts we lost were Zandu and Glycodin. Alembic (Glycodin) had a different point of view in terms of brand communication and that’s why they moved out of Saatchi. Zandu, on the other hand, underwent a management change and the business went up for a pitch and we lost it.

It’s all linked to the way consumers react to advertising. SOTC is a pioneer in this industry. They started the concept of packaged tours in India. The market has really become a commodity market in terms of people picking up prices.

Having said that, I do not agree that the SOTC adverts don’t break through the clutter. They do, as they manage to get thousands of queries through the advertising. This category essentially comprises first-time international travellers, who are seeking a lot of information about the countries they plan to visit; they want value out of their holiday packages. Hence, the advertising in this category is price and product oriented.

However, this market has also evolved. And as the market grows, newer ways of brand communication will also evolve.

If you talk to most of our clients, they will acknowledge the fact that we are a creative agency and not a media house. At Saatchi & Saatchi, we believe in the power of ‘ideas’. In fact, our mission is to be revered as a hothouse for world-changing ideas. Ideas presented to our clients are media neutral, which essentially means that it is the idea that determines the media and not the other way around. For example, on any brief, we do not start with a film script or a print campaign, we start with an idea. And then decide what will be the best media vehicle to let the idea fly, thereby creating more impact for our communication.

It’s very much the same, though China is growing significantly. But I think in the Asia Pacific region, India, China, Bangkok and our new operations in Indonesia are key operations for Saatchi & Saatchi. Of course, Australia and New Zealand are very big for us and extremely profitable for Saatchi. But if I talk about just this part of the world, then it is these four branches that contribute to the profits for the agency.