<FONT COLOR="#FF0033"><B>Guest Article: Anand Narasimha:</B></FONT> Will the dinosaur dance?

Anand Narasimha

Saatchi & Saatchi

There’s a profound Chinese saying, “At the end of the day, you go to bed with yourself.” Each one of us in the advertising business needs to ask ourselves, hand on our heart: Are we in sync with the reality of the times?

It’s quite a paradox that we preach to our clients and the world about refreshing and rejuvenating brands; about keeping up with the changing consumer; about long-term vision; about changing paradigms; about transformation and disruption, but when it comes to our own industry, we still by and large live with the conventional.

It’s fashionable to pay lip service to going beyond the 30-second commercial, but do we actually?

As one of my ex-clients aptly put it, “360-degree solutions from an agency is like the proverbial Yeti. Frequently spoken about, but seldom seen.”

No wonder we keep complaining about squeeze on margins, lack of differentiation between agency offerings and clients treating us like suppliers.

When I was the client, after a multi-agency pitch, it was amazing to see the ‘sameness’ in what the leading agencies presented. My CEO’s directive: “Choose whoever gives us the best deal, since it’s like choosing between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

What’s alarming is that advertising is not on the radar of leading B-School graduates today. It has completely fallen out of favour and is not seen as a ‘happening’ career any more.

Are we, the so-called brand custodians, facing commoditisation in our own backyards? Are we slowly turning into dinosaurs? And turning our own brands into ‘blands’?

In order to get out of this rut, the advertising business needs to re-invent itself and re-invent now!

To begin with, we need to get out of the obsession with our product – the stereotypical TV commercial, the obvious print campaign, followed by some POS material and leaflets as an afterthought. We need to get obsessed with our consumers. In knowing how they consume communication in this dynamic era. How their world is changing. The fact of the matter is that you can’t get beyond 8-10 GRPs on a television programme today. Also, media advertising is becoming increasingly intrusive and the consumers’ moments of truth are moving to other points of contact as well – the store, the net, the cell-phone, an event.

There is an equally urgent need to restructure the advertising agency resources and skills around ‘consumer verticals’ segmented by consumer touch point domains. Very akin to the consultancy business model, wherein there are domain specialists. For example, an agency profit centre could be integrated with verticals like media advertising, direct marketing, sports/entertainment marketing, event marketing, shopper marketing, digital marketing and so on, under it.

Finally, as an industry, we must abolish the media commission model forthwith. Moving to a fee based structure will make us break the shackles of mass media bondage and move towards ideas and solutions that are media independent. Let’s face it, making a TVC and putting it on air and getting our commission meter ticking is the easy and lazy way out. It becomes a barrier to expanding our minds and ideas into new horizons.

 So, tonight, when you go to bed, think hard about it. Hope you dream of a dinosaur dancing, for in that dream lies our only hope.

(The writer is executive vice-president at Saatchi & Saatchi. You can write to him at anand_narasimha@saatchi.co.in.)

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