Bollywood has taught 'storytelling' to Indian creatives: Keith D Smith

In a chat with afaqs!, Keith D Smith, president, international, TBWA Group talks about the global agency's emphasis on digital, the growing significance of the Indian market, mergers and acquisitions, and more.

Keith D Smith, president, international, TBWAGroup is a busy man! On a whirlwind visit to India, he packs in acquisition meetings, new account wins, client relations and overseeing TBWAIndia’s work, all in a single day. Amidst all of these, Smith also spares some time for a chat with afaqs!.

In a freewheeling talk, Smith explains the agenda behind his India visit, hinting at a possibility of a major acquisition, a global account win and more. He also shares his perspectives on Indian advertising, recent significant developments in the industry, the inevitable chat on digital focus and the ever-important Indian market.

Edited Excerpts

Until four years ago, we were building a solid base of local businesses particularly. And then we made a change when Shiv (Sethuraman, chief executive officer, TBWA India) joined the company. We upped the gear. We went through some fairly dramatic house cleaning as well, just to get ourselves in shape for the way forward. So, are we exactly where we want to be? No! Will we be significantly more important in this market in the next 6-12 months? Yes, I think we will.

When you see the account wins, the acquisitions, you will see the significant increase in our progress in line with the Omnicom group.

Any market with a big and important film industry like India is going to be very creative. A good learning from Bollywood is about telling a story and entertaining people. The entertainment may change in the way it is presented but the strategic principle of delivering something that people will accept is a good principle to work with.

The curve where India is lagging behind is in the whole new media sector. I have just returned from Spikes in Singapore where there has been very, very good work by Japanese agencies including ours (TBWA Hakuhodo) awarded and a lot of it was in the digital space. India, for historical reasons, has been a lot into more conventional forms of advertising, largely around television.

Having said that, India produces great television commercials. Films are so hugely important and it does not necessarily revolve around the good old 30 or 60-seconders anymore. It is about content. India can do incredibly well if it knows how to produce good content on film. If that happens to be on TV, it is one thing; if it is on YouTube, it is something else.

It is changing the game completely. Digital has made storytelling much easier. I grew up in a world of advertising storytelling in the UK but it was hyped then by the convention of being in a 30, 45 or a 60-second time length. What digital enables you to do is to build a really strong story online without the inhibitions of time length. The great thing about it is that if the story is good, it gets an immediate response from various people.

People here are working towards using new media opportunities to capture the feeling of what India is all about.

Brands cannot dictate consumers in the digital world. Consumers build a point of view on brands very quickly which is why brands have to be absolutely truthful in the digital world. You have to tell the story like it is.

And that is exactly why doing great content that can live in different formats is important. India is good at that. This is a country that is good at storytelling. It has produced storytellers over thousands of years. Those stories can happen wherever it should happen. Sometimes, it could be a TVC but hopefully in the future, as the infrastructure improves, it is going to have much wider application.

Our message is going to be something that people would want to see a few times over.

I think one of the great campaigns here in the last few years has been that of Vodafone. It is not high budget but there are always different twists. You can even watch six Vodafone commercials in an hour. It really is engaging, fun and entertaining.

If you compare India to China, India is light years ahead in terms of storytelling and creative quality but obviously, way behind when it comes to technology. China has a lot more opportunities to reach people through a lot more channels but it does not necessarily have the indigenous creative talent that India is full of.

There is huge opportunity for India to nurture talent within the country as well as export it. You only have to look around in markets around, Southeast Asia particularly, to see a huge amount of Indian talent. This is why Indian creatives work all around the world because they bring an interesting observatory skill and a lot of advertising is about observation.

Among other countries, I think Japan is going to be really important in the next 10 years. Japan understands the new media opportunities really well and it will be a major source of talent in the new world.

ou have to be able to do both. In an ideal world, if you really want to manage a brand properly, it is better to bring them all under one hand. The way TBWA is set up, we can have one leader who can manage all processes. But the reality is that some clients don’t want that, they want to cherry pick. So you have to be able to have state-of-the-art expertise in every area as well as be able to bring them all together.

Also, if it is all under one brand, I don’t think you can necessarily hire the best people in every category. Like it or not, there are people who say, “I am a digital guy” or “I am a retail activation guy” and some such. So, you have to respect the reality of the market as well and the way individuals want to be employed.