"There's been a shift in the thinking of urban India towards social causes": Lynn de Souza

Lynn de Souza's five-year plan is to get India to volunteer more. She has been active in the not-for-profit space for over a decade and announced the launch of her startup, a 'communications firm for the social sector', few days back. afaqs! spoke to the former chairman and CEO of Lintas Media Group, now co-founder of Social Access, about the need for such a venture, the triggers that led to it and why Meenakshi Menon, founder, Spatial Access, is the ideal partner. Excerpts.

Edited Excerpts

I wanted to do something like this in 2006-07. Then, in 2008, IPG asked me to lead the women's leadership network, an HR effort aimed at keeping and growing women in agencies. At the time I thought it was a bad idea segregating women like that, but once I got into it I realised that women definitely need to be empowered and supported beyond the ordinary. This made me want to do something for girl children. I got involved with helping Population First, by doing workshops with broadcasters and agencies aimed at depicting the girl child better in our communication.

Within LMG we had something called LMG Humanity which encouraged our staff to do something for lives other than their own. Employees were given paid leave while they went out to volunteer for causes.

When you work in advertising, you realise that a lot of what we do here is 'dressing up'. In 2011, when I chaired Goafest, I got the feeling the advertising business was losing its sense of responsibility. To me that is critical. Advertising is a weapon that can be used well or it can be misused.

You know, I wrote an article to Piyush (Pandey, executive chairperson and creative director, Ogilvy South Asia) about the pug in his ads. It's not a dog meant for the Indian climate and environment. I said, "Why don't you use the Indian dog? He's as much fun and can stand for anything." I was concerned that in Indian advertising, while we were seeing creativity, copycat creativity and adapted creativity, we weren't seeing responsible advertising. I missed that in the business, as a whole. Also, a lot of the pro-bono work that was being done for the non-profit sector was being done only for awards.

Then Meenakshi caught hold of me last August and said, "Lynn, come on, isn't it high time we got off our butts and made this work?" When I quit, we reached out to each other and a few meetings later, we started putting it together.

She already has an environment-conservation NGO, Vanashakti. A few years back she started an advertising agency for the non-profit sector which is the base for our current venture; that's the company I bought a stake in and now, we've transformed it into Social Access.

Besides, Meenakshi and I are old friends. She was my predecessor at Lintas. When she set up her audit practice, I was one of her few supporters. I welcomed the fact that there was someone coming in to pass a judgment on our work but most of my industry peers were upset about it.

Also, I think she compliments me; she's a hard-nose businesswoman and I am softer, more compassionate. I represent the right brain and she, the left. Her healthy disrespect for the advertising profession -- what it has evolved into over the last few years - is quite well-known. I defend it to her and we have a good laugh about it.

It's a fee model. The fee won't necessarily come from the non-profit organisations. It could come from anywhere -- a corporate, the government, a funding organisation, or from the non-profit organisation itself.

And we don't really expect to use paid media. As far as possible we'll use owned and earned media. There will be a lot of use of social media. If at all we do use paid media, the funding could come from the entities I mentioned earlier.

The time is absolutely right because the country is ready for it. In the last two years there's been a shift in the thinking of urban Indians towards social causes. When it comes to philanthropic behaviour, while Indians are still away behind the West, between 2011 and 2012 there was a massive increase in 'giving'. This could be because of the growth of social media; it enables you to come out of yourself and become more aware of what others are doing.

It could also be because the media as a whole has become more active about social causes than it was earlier -- be it through initiatives like Satyamev Jayate or the general outpouring of expression towards social causes as we saw in the Jessica case among others recently.

The biggest problem is communication. The non-profit sector doesn't communicate well. They either miscommunicate, or over-communicate the emotion and miss out the rationale, or just under-communicate by hiding their light behind a bushel. This sector has a lot of heart and funds but lacks organised structure and communication.

Advertising has given both Meenakshi and I the required communication skills. Then, there's a certain discipline and structured approach that one learns at Lintas. And the non-profit sector can do well with having some structure in the middle of all the madness. Both of us understand the non-profit sector well and the problems it faces. We know what kind of professionalism they need and we know how they can be very emotional.

Indians don't volunteer enough. That's a huge challenge. Today 23 per cent of all Indians volunteer. In the next five years I hope to raise the figure to 50 per cent.