9/11 predictions for 2011

Shoaib Qureshy brings out his crystal ball.

Unless you are an Al Qaeda operative in hiding or you are not a regular Aurora reader, and so don’t know what has been happening, it is no secret that the world of the advertising agency has changed dramatically (and not to the agency’s liking) in the last decade. This process will further accelerate as we enter a new decade.

Although I don’t have a crystal ball, based on hundreds of conversations with entrepreneurs, multinational brands, fellow agency practitioners, and having critically looked at the tidal waves taking place abroad within the profession, here are nine predictions for 2011 that are more like a 9/11 warning for people in the agency business:

The emergence of the do it yourself client

The balance of power will shift in favour of the client; be it to save time or costs. Many companies, big or small, can now handle in-house more and more of the work that they formerly expected their agency to do. Although there will always be a market for clients who need help, the point is that they might not need help from a bloated agency that employs old-school tactics; rather they might prefer to go to smaller agencies and so retain greater control. Clients today are much more educated about advertising, activation, PR, media planning, social media, blogging and creating online content and thus can, and are, calling the shots to have things done faster. 

The emergence of the jack of one trade agency

The future will be about partnerships between specialised expert agencies rather than the one big box model of the full service agency. The days of Mad Men are gone and big agencies are on the decline. Why? For one thing: massive salaries, overheads and extravagant lifestyles. The full service model ends up driving up expenses and instead of a well oiled machine, creates an environment that often is not cutting edge, but rather too slow-moving for today’s urgency.

The fall from grace of the big agency

According to a recent international study, 52% of CMO’s believe that traditional, large advertising and media agencies are ill-suited to meet future marketing needs. As a result, brands are relying on small set-ups for big ideas. These set-ups are more creative, less siloed and therefore more nimble when it comes to exploring new media and experimentation.

Perhaps the biggest hindrance for the traditional, big advertising and media planning and buying agencies are their senior and mid-level managers who are too pigeon-holed due to the fact that they were born on the wrong side of the new marketing world order. Their media and account management expertise does not necessarily translate well when faced with providing the technology-based marketing solutions demanded by the new consumer.

Two new species of agencies

As advertising agencies continue to subsist on a diminishing set of resources, what will be left of these organisations will fall into two categories: the idea generators (makers) and the idea executors (technicians). This change will apply to all agencies, be they advertising, activation, media, PR, content, etc.

Advertising practices will change

Clients will increasingly question the same old marketing and media plans for every new brand challenge. Although ad spend will slow down due to the recession, political instability and the security situation, activation and digital will gain considerable share at the expense of TV, radio and print. Mobile phones and retail will become increasingly powerful mediums. My guess is that spending on creating websites, online communities, digital marketing and developing HR competence to drive digital and social media is growing, but we don’t know by how much as it is not reported.

Brands’ relationships with TV and media agencies will undergo a structural change

TV will no longer be looked at stereotypically as a medium to merely air commercials. Clients will directly negotiate cross-platform relationships aimed at deeply integrating the brand into the programme content (so viewers cannot fast forward past the message). This will bring the media planning and buying agencies under greater scrutiny, especially from clients who may believe that their media agencies remain old fashioned in their approach by restricting themselves to asking for more media investment every year, rather than keeping tune with the demands of changing times.

Clients will call for a structural change in their media agency in the same way they did a decade ago, by dividing the big agency into separate creative and media agencies. I envision the media agency business will require further client surgery as they continue to take the bulk of the client’s money and yet fail to deliver cutting edge, creative new media thinking to address brand challenges. A new breed of media agencies will emerge; hot shops maybe – I call them ‘creative media agencies’ – that will create TV ideas, content and integration, while the traditional media agency will probably continue to buy as per the creative plan; bringing in buying value not planning value for the client, as they have done for a decade.

Brands will need less advertising and more content

There was a time when brands could hand over their marketing, advertising or PR to their agency and then sit back and approve the so-called magic. The problem is that smarter, faster, cheaper promotion and advertising requires greater participation from the client. Agencies of the future are going to have to hop onto the content train for all kinds of media and solutions.

Agencies will no longer outsource relationships

Agencies have become too accustomed to being the middle man; outsourcing relationships and taking a commission. But when the going gets tough, the middle man gets kicked out. Building relationships and trust cannot be outsourced. Agencies will have to go back to the basics and immerse themselves with the brands they handle and build in-house capabilities to deliver world class executions. The future will also be about evolving from the commission agent role to taking control

of the work.

The shorter term client – agency relationships becomes the norm

The time of the decade old client-agency relationship has gone. Today the relationship lasts on average about three to four years and I see it declining to as low as three to four months and it will be based on key project or campaign contracts. This will be primarily driven by short term pressures on the client (i.e. marketing directors and brand managers) who will want to see an even quicker turnaround in the fortunes of their brands and therefore prefer to keep their options open rather than being stuck in a stale long term relationship with their agency. In their view, this strategy will increase the chances of more creative thinking and therefore a business breakthrough.

Final thought

There is no fun in making predictions about the future without a debate (and honestly, this article took quite some time to write). So if you have made it this far, please do feel free to share your opinion and views on the above.

Shoaib Qureshy is Chief Strategy Officer, Bulls Eye Communications.

shoaib@be.com.pk

First published in the November-December issue of Aurora.

The lady has passion – and plans

Mamun M. Adil profiles Rashna Abedi.

Most people who work in advertising and media circles love to talk. About themselves. About their work (read: about their accomplishments). About how ‘passionate’ they are about their work. And sometimes even about how the love of their life inspired them to be ‘truly creative’ (yes, this has happened more than once).

And then there are people, few and far between, such as Rashna Abedi, Executive Creative Director at IAL Saatchi & Saatchi, who remain reticent without being difficult to talk to; who have a lot to say without blowing their own trumpet.

Like most people in the trade, Abedi did not begin her career in advertising. Instead, it was journalism.

“I interned at SHE magazine when I was 18, and worked with Zuhra Karim, who is a very interesting and focused person, and is willing to give young people a chance.”

After graduating from college, Abedi worked at Us Weekly, an in-paper magazine of The News. Abedi then left for London to do a six-month course in TV production. Returning to Karachi, she began to work with Saquib Malik on commercials primarily for P&G and Unilever. And two years later, she joined IAL as a Creative Manager, and has been there for almost 10 years, which in agency terms, is the equivalent of a lifetime, given the hop, skip and jump attitude of most advertising professionals. Clearly, there is something about the agency that keeps her there.

For one thing, she is full of praise for the agency’s CEO, Ruby Haider, and her creativity, and leadership skills. For another, she likes the fact that IAL’s atmosphere is “an open one. People are free to be what they want to be, honesty is encouraged and mistakes are tolerated. Young people are encouraged and given access to clients very soon.”

Perhaps what really keeps her at IAL is the fact that despite being an affiliate office, IAL “works like any other Saatchi office worldwide” and as a result “we also have the chance to work on brands outside Pakistan, such as Ariel or Safeguard in Africa, so we are creating work for other markets.”

What strikes me about Abedi is the fact that behind her soft spoken demeanour, lies a woman who clearly loves her work, not only because “it is the perfect mix between magic and logic” but also because of the challenges it poses.

As she admits later on, “the thrill of the kill” is what keeps her going, and describes, after a lot of prodding that a few of the career highs that she has experienced include “winning a pitch as a wild card entry (we did it twice!), selling a seemingly impossible idea, creating campaigns that transform our clients’ business and taking on a very powerful Anglo-Dutch FMCG multinational (if anyone needs a little help there, contact IAL).”

As our conversation progresses, it becomes clear that Abedi is not only someone not to take at face value, she is also someone who is perceptive about the people she really works for – the consumer. She feels that there is a tendency among advertising professionals to think of consumers “in terms of us versus them”, which needs to be remedied because they “are smart people who can kill your business if they decide not to buy your product. You have to respect them and stay on your toes in order to understand them.”

When I ask her if her quiet demeanour is a weapon she uses to gauge consumers, she shrugs it off by saying, “I’m not an introvert; I can start a conversation with a complete stranger if I need consumer insight… but I like to keep my life private. However, I am prone to sudden bursts of spontaneity, such as agreeing to this interview,” she adds with a smile.

Unwilling to harp on about her accomplishments, Abedi finally opens up about her brand portfolio, when I mention a brand manager I interviewed earlier who was nauseatingly effusive about the brands he worked on. She then, almost grudgingly, admits to feeling equally passionate about some of the brands that she has worked on.

She says that Pampers is one of her favourite brands, and if she ever has children, she will use it. She stresses that Pampers also does “fantastic stuff, like a hospital education programme, providing free medical checkups, setting up mobile clinics in the flood affected areas.”

However, the realist in Abedi doesn’t underestimate the real function of advertising – selling the product.

“When you work on multidimensional brands you become emotionally attached to them; and when you believe in them, you feel passionate about them and end up creating more meaningful advertising.”

Other than her work, what emerges is the fact that Abedi also feels passionate about Karachi, despite having travelled abroad frequently. And clearly, she thinks of Karachi as a person (even a consumer, perhaps), expressing as she does an understanding of the city’s personality – and even optimism.

“I love my city even though it’s a crazy city and makes no sense at times. I love Karachi’s spirit, sheer resilience, diversity, and ability to accept people as they are; Karachi’s eccentricities, chaos, and paradox. We may crib and seem jaded, but when the need arises, people come together.”

When I ask her about her favourite places in Karachi, she reveals another passion – food. In fact, she goes so far as to say that the places she likes in Karachi usually have to do with food, such as bun kebabs from Nursery or a Hanifia burger and a Pakola from Boat Basin.

She adds that once she retires, she would like to open up a khoka – with a twist – since she has an interesting concept in mind for it.

For the time being, however, she has some definite goals in mind that have to do with advertising only. She says that she would love to “work on sustainability solutions and experiment with alternative media, because that is the next frontier. I would also like to work on more campaigns for foreign markets.”

Clearly, the lady has plans.

Mamun M. Adil is Assistant Manager, Business Development & Research, DAWN. mamun@dawn.com

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

"The differentiating factor will be the level of thinking that we bring to the table and our ability to put forward game changing solutions"

Raihan Merchant CEO, M Holdings speaks to Aurora about media prospects in recessionary times.

AURORA: What led you to recently sign up with the Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG)?
RAIHAN MERCHANT: We have been a company that has continued to grow. Now, when you are growing you can either handle that growth out of that one company, or sometimes you are pushed into either acquiring or creating new companies, which is why we created Brain Child, which is also into media buying. Next, we looked at our options in terms of whether we should look for another franchise or go back to our existing parent, Group M and explore growth opportunities there. But WPP (the media parent company of Group M) prefer to own the companies they run and I was asking for a franchise. So we looked for alternative options and ended up signing up with SMG.

A: Before signing up with SMG, you were running Mediacom as an independent entity which is unusual, as globally, Mediacom is part of Group M. How did this come to be?
RM: While Group M in Pakistan handles (through Mindshare) Unilever, Pepsi and Motorola, we, as Mediacom, were handling P&G, Coca-Cola and Nokia, clients that are important enough internationally to ensure that their handling is done independently of the parent operation if need be, and which is why we could exist as an independent set-up.

A: Although you are no longer with Mediacom, you are still handling P&G and Coca-Cola despite the fact that you have signed up with SMG. How does this work?
RM: P&G Pakistan reports into the Arabian Peninsula region and their buying agency in the region for the last 14 years has been SMG. Pakistan was the only aberration by virtue of the fact that we used to handle it as a franchise of Mediacom. Because P&G were happy with us they did not feel the need to move the account to SMG. Now they are very happy that the whole region is under one agency. Internationally, P&G works with three agencies: Starcom MediaVest, Mediacom and Carat, depending on which market they are in. 

A: Within the SMG context, what is the status of Brain Child and PakMedia Communications?
RM: They are also franchises. We have the option of growing this relationship because the Publicis Group, which owns SMG, has made equity investments in Pakistan that date as far back as 1998, when DMBNM (D’arcy Massius Benton & Bowles) bought equity in Wahedna and Leo Burnett bought equity in Manhattan Pakistan. In 2004, Publicis bought equity in Red Star which then became Publicis Pakistan. Publicis’ experience in Pakistan has not been that great. It is always a better approach to start off with a franchise and see if the country responds, if the partners you have taken on as franchisees respond, and then slowly look towards buying equity. Until that happens we are happy with the franchise arrangement.

A: What are the benefits of being a franchisee?
RM: The advantages are the aligned clients that SMG have and which in the case of Group M we were not getting. Group M was handling Mediacom’s international clients on its own.

A: In your opinion, given the economic situation, what are the prospects of growth in media?
RM: Pretty big.

A: On what do you base this forecast?
RM: Pakistan was hit by a recession in 1999 that lasted until 2002, yet we grew during that period too. So one, we know what to do in a recession, unlike a lot of other media independents which were not there and don’t have the experience of what to do. Two, during a recession the average consumer has less disposable income and consequently tends to spend more time at home watching TV. Therefore, by advertising during a recession advertisers are able to reach a wider audience with better chances of getting their message across. Audiences shrink when the market is growing.

A: Yes, but things have changed since 2002. People now have the internet and mobile phones and iPads to engage them. So is TV as strong a medium as it used to be, especially given that the quality of some of the programming leaves a lot to be desired?
RM: In 2010, TV advertising will grow in excess of 20% compared to 2009. Last year TV grossed about 15 and a half billion rupees; by June 2010, TV had already grossed 12 billion – with another six months to go. So even without doubling the figure and adding only 30%, TV will still end up grossing 18 billion, which is 20% up on last year. This year the media industry as a whole may not grow much compared to 2009; it will probably hit six to seven percent, but TV has picked up; it is the big gainer compared to other media. However, TV channel owners have realised that any money spent on advertising will be evaluated on the back of the audience numbers that are delivered and that if they are not prepared to invest in content and get the requisite audiences, they will either not get the rate they are asking for, or they will not get the advertising.

A: Do you see digital growing in terms of ad spend?
RM: It is growing. The reasons why there have been a lot of improvements on the communications side is because of the international companies that operate in Pakistan. The most creative ad was not created by a local company but by an international company’s marketing team which decided to take a risk. Similarly, it was P&G and Unilever that decided to appoint an AOR, not Zulfeqar Industries or the Lakhanis. Now, because digital penetration has gone up to about 80% in the West, the involvement of digital in marketing plans is much greater over there. However, these international companies are bringing these learnings to Pakistan. Nestlé, P&G and Unilever are already spending money on digital in Pakistan. Telenor, China Mobile, Mobilink and even Ufone (which is owned by Etisalat) are international companies and fall into that category of organisations that are leading the learning and spending towards digital.

A: Would you agree that as an effective rating system the Peoplemeters leave much to be desired? 
RM: No, I would not. Peoplemeters are delivering on what they set out to measure. The expectation of the Peoplemeter’s data is to provide data regarding which TV channels people watch and at what time, without them having to rely on their memories to write it down after a week. That is level one. However, when this data comes in and, for example, the sample is split 90% satellite and 10% terrestrial, PTV might argue that this does not reflect their numbers, and therefore their sample should be increased by five percent. Or, AVT Khyber might say that there are three million Pathans living in Karachi and therefore AVT Khyber is watched in Karachi. Yet, if you look at the Peoplemeter ratings, AVT Khyber is not there. So there needs to be a formula whereby the Pathan community living in Karachi become a part of the sample. But that is level two. These are industry learnings
and they have to be incorporated over a period of time. But if you say that I want this two-year-old child to be able to ride a horse, then I think we are asking for a little too much.

A: Apart from an effective TAM rating system, what are the other factors required to take media planning up another level?
RM: We need research on outdoor, and there is no industry based print research. As a company, we undertake a National Readership Survey every 18-24 months. We have one in the field at the moment, and we carried out two similar exercises in 2007 and 2004. The point is – why do we have to do this? That data is only available to us or to the media owners who support it; it is not generally available. Forget TV, where you are saying the data is questionable; at least it is available, in print there is no data that is available.

A: What about people skills?
RM: The people aspect is extremely important; as important as the press that prints a newspaper. The problem is that the business schools do not offer specialised communications degrees and the universities, at best, offer degrees in mass communications or journalism. As the first company to enter this market, we realised that if we hired from outside or from within the industry we would have to make those people unlearn the practises they learnt in other agencies and then make them relearn, which is a longer process. We are the only agency group in Pakistan to have developed a management training programme that we pitch to business schools, such as IBA, LUMS, SZABIST and so on. We only hire people at entry level and train them. Some leave and some stick around. Those who leave are hired by TV channels or other media buyers, and hopefully the quality of their people will also improve.

A: To what extent is piracy an issue for a company such as yours?
RM: Very big and I don’t think the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) understand the definition of piracy in terms of intellectual property. Firstly, Star does not have a license in Pakistan, yet it is the biggest TV channel here – not Geo. Star Plus, Star One, Sony and Colors, these four channels rank among the top 10 TV channels in Pakistan. My question is – has India granted any landing rights to Pakistani channels? Do cable operators in India air Pakistani channels? Why don’t they indulge in piracy? Because the television regulatory authority in India would come down on them like a tonne of bricks. Secondly, PEMRA says it has given the cable operators a license to run a number of in-house channels, what PEMRA forgot to tell them is that they have to buy this content. I had a problem with the legalities of this and I raised the issue with the Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) and in 2008 they asked their members to stop supporting such channels. Basically PAS did what PEMRA should have done. However, although the major clients have stopped advertising, these channels are still getting advertising and PEMRA has done nothing about it.

A: Earlier you mentioned that in terms of media, TV would be the growth area, what is your forecast for advertising and media agencies?
RM: I see growth, but only for those companies that are willing to either invest or are prepared to work on a lower overheads basis. If, as a buying house or an ad agency, you still expect to make 15-20 crore (150-200 million) rupees a year, then you might as well leave this business, because I don’t think advertising will deliver those kinds of margins again. The other directional change I see is the creation of the ‘one-stop shop’ as a strategy. When advertisers started pressing their agencies to reduce their commissions, the agencies divested themselves of some of their services, created other companies and offered those same services under a different name. As a result, clients today are working with a PR agency, a buying agency and a creative agency and they now feel they are dealing with too many people. So we need to consolidate. The full service advertising agency concept is coming back, and it is possible that internationally five years down the road, Mindshare will merge back with JWT and Starcom with Leo Burnett, and so on. Quite a few of our clients are involving us in their brand and creative strategies; they are expecting us to do a lot of research analysis which is something that agencies in Pakistan are not geared to do. This is a capability that we have developed, so the differentiating factor between us and the next agency will be the level of thinking that we bring to the table and our ability to put forward game changing solutions.

Raihan Merchant was talking to Mariam Ali Baig. For feedback, email aurora@dawn.com

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora

Blogging for corporate success

Every company needs a blog. Salma Jafri explains why.

Let’s assume you are a new restaurant looking to increase sales. Or a courier service wanting to run topical service promotions. Or a laptop manufacturer looking for usability feedback from customers on your latest model. Or a clothing retailer wanting to tell customers about the latest seasonal stock available.

So you set about to do the typical advertising and marketing tasks; TVCs, print ads, mobile marketing, POS, direct mail, etc. But hang on a minute! There is a tool that may seriously supersize (and in some cases, replace) your marketing efforts! Really? Yes, it’s called a blog.

A blog is all that and a bag o’ chips
Blogging has evolved from a pastime to a heavy-duty marketing, customer relations and traffic-and-sales-generating phenomenon. Some of the world’s best businesses and CEOs are using blogs as a platform to communicate, inform, interact and conduct market research. Notable examples include Amex, Coca-Cola, Dell, Fed-Ex, Southwest Airlines and Zappos. But perhaps my favourite example is the BBC’s website where editors blog the back story of their editorial decisions.

Good blog, bad blog
A great blog has many things going for it. It helps build a community around the brand, showcases the company’s personality, develops rapport with customers, answer comments and clarifies issues, encourages interaction, shares important company information, gives insider tips, shares industry news and builds trust by talking in a sincere believable ‘voice’. At worst, a blog can be robotic, formal, maintained by one person and spew nothing but hard-sell advertising and ultimately become a complete turn-off. However, possibly worse than a bad blog, is no blog or an inactive blog, as that shows disinterest and misuse of a communication tool.

Blogs can positively impact your bottom line
The advantages of blogging are not necessarily measured in currency terms. Yet blogs can significantly help with communication, goodwill, PR, brand building, search rankings, media attention (and more), thereby eventually contributing to your company’s bottom line, financially and otherwise.

Furthermore, the time needed to set up and maintain a blog is measured in hours, not days or weeks. Blogs can be created virtually free of cost, updated quickly, maintained dynamically, and have the potential to draw in tonnes of traffic. Not a bad time and cost investment.

Here are some of the ways a blog can boost your business:

1 Build a community
One of the best uses of a blog is to create a conversation around your brand and encourage the sense of community that develops from it. Your customers, suppliers, buyers, advertisers, and others will flock to your blog to obtain info straight from the horse’s mouth, while your company will be in a better position to directly answer any questions or engage on any issue. The basis of community is loyalty and trust. A blog can help build that.

2 Establish credibility and leadership
Blog for any length of time and suddenly you will find that your blog has become the go-to source for information on your industry. You will be called a thought leader and an expert. Once crowned thus, your competitors will be hard put to dethrone you. Trust once earned via a blog helps establish long term credibility and leadership in yourself (the blogger) and your company.

3 Improve search engine rankings
Search engines love regularly updated content, and that is exactly what a blog is designed for. Select carefully targeted keywords that you want pointed towards your business and every time someone searches for them, your company may be the top dog in the search results. Give the search engines what they want, and they will give your page rank, link love and traffic. And everyone knows traffic is directly proportionate to sales.

4 Drive social media traffic
Of course your business has a presence on Facebook, right? But why let your business stay on a third-party site; why not bring your readers back to your blog for meaningful dialogue and discussions? This will help keep readers on your site longer, thus increasing your conversion rates. If your social media followers like your blog content they will link to it on to other social networking sites, thus giving you quality links (and perhaps viral content), which in turn will raise your site’s search rankings.

5 What kind of content should go on your corporate blog?
In general, the more informal the blog, the better. Readers don’t want to see marketing messages, advertising or other hard-sell tactics on a corporate blog. They want to see discussions and interesting (perhaps even controversial) topics under discussion. And they want to chip in and be heard, so ensure that comments are enabled!

6 Content and editorial policy
Before you write that first blog post, develop blogging editorial guidelines which will contain rules on what topics are okay to blog about, a theme and a solid content structure, covering who can contribute, what the tone of the messages should be, and which topics are off-limits (e.g. financial information). These days, when a single tweet may get you fired (yes, I mean you Octavia Nasr of CNN), your company has obviously got to cover its legal bases.

7 Example content
The kind of content that could go on a corporate blog is endless. Using the first paragraph of this article as an example, the new restaurant could blog about their cuisine theme, choice of interior decor, menu options, the Pakistani palette, launch offers, etc. The laptop manufacturer can blog about upcoming product releases, conduct beta testing, and encourage early customer reviews and feedback. The courier service can use holidays to build promotions and include some controversial posts to drum up discussion (e.g. why does Pakistan celebrate Mother’s Day). The retail outlet could have posts ranging from style tips, fashion do’s and don’ts, trends, new stock availability, etc. And who says your blog should be limited to text? Include images and go for video blogging to spike interest!

8 Employee participation
Enrich your blog by encouraging employees and managerial staff to contribute. For example, if your company is active in relief aid distribution for flood-affected people, employees who are distributing the aid can blog about it and include photos and videos in their report.

9 But I already have a Facebook page for community interaction, so why would I need a blog?
Right, and when tomorrow Facebook changes it policies, or our government decides to ban social sites altogether, the community that you have painstakingly developed will vanish faster than you can say Mark Zuckerburg. A blog is your own turf, just like your own website or your physical store for that matter. It is not owned by a thirdparty; no one but you decides how you manage your interaction. Why would you entrust your long term reputation to anyone else?

Shockingly, during the course of research for this article, I could not find a single mainstream example of a Pakistani corporate blog. Small businesses, news media outlets, individual bloggers and a handful of musicians definitely rule this arena. Perhaps after reading this, the bigger, progressive company(ies) out there will trail blaze the blogging path, reap its many rewards and show their contemporaries how it is done!

Salma Jafri is the owner of WordPL.net and part-owner of CustomSocialPages.com. salma@wordpl.net

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

"Ninety-nine and 100% aren’t one percent apart; they are worlds apart"

Muzaffar Manghi, Creative Director, Red Communication Arts, speaks to Aurora about living the creative life.

AURORA: As creative head, how much emphasis do you put on personal packaging and presentation?
MUZAFFAR MANGHI: Advertising is all about packaging, about how you present yourself; it marks the differentiation between yourself and the other people out there. How you present yourself communicates something about you and that is at the core of advertising. When it comes to creatives, the stereotype is that they are a wild bunch; arty and quirky, and this is what clients expect to see when they first meet someone from creative. I encourage my team to uncover their individual packaging, but it has to reflect who they are. You can’t lie, because people will sense that. But whatever the packaging is, it has to be presentable. When I go into a meeting with my copywriters and designer for the first time, clients usually expect them to look the way they think mid-level staff should look like. But if they go in dressed in a certain way, present themselves in a certain way, crack the right jokes at the right time, they make a lasting impression; it’s basically an opportunity for them to position themselves. The benefit of this is that it helps my clients realise the scope and calibre of the team available to them and avoids the one-man-creative-show syndrome.

A: Why are a lot of bright creative people no longer considering making a career in advertising?
MM: Firstly, until about six or seven years ago, people had certain notions about advertising; that it was fun, very bling and shiny, which it is, but not exactly in the way they imagined it to be. Then as the advertising business grew, the reality sunk in that it was not just about bling. Secondly, the media has expanded. Whatever trashy content they have is a different matter; they are hiring people left, right and centre and they have money. Thirdly, Pakistan has a very young population. Those youngsters who 10 years ago were 15, are now up and coming professionals, they are very energetic, very exposed and they know they have options. At the same time some of these reasons also account for why people are entering the advertising profession. They have seen TV channels and they know it’s mostly trash. They have seen radio stations and they are like, ‘Is that it? That’s all you guys do?’ At least that is the impression they get. I think that now more than ever, the people who do choose to enter advertising, really want to. Before it was, ‘I’m not sure what it is, but I think I will like it.’ I had no clue about what advertising was. Someone asked me if I could read English; could I proofread (I didn’t even know what proofreading was); was my grammar and punctuation good? I said yes to all, and they said we will give you 600 rupees a month, are you in or not? I said fantastic! Ten bucks a day pays for my cigarettes and my transport, cool. I got in by default. And I love it and I am very, very passionate about it.

A: What was your original career plan?
MM: I wanted to join the Air Force and fly fast planes.

A: Why the change?
MM: I realised it was my true calling. I have the gift of the gab and advertising is about communicating. I have been very lucky to have encountered two or three very good people in my life. Karim Rammal said something that changed the course of my professional life. He told me not to surround myself with negativity; to avoid negative people and situations, otherwise one becomes negative and people don’t like hanging around losers. This changed the way I approached situations. Jamal Mir told me to pay attention to detail. He taught me that there is a difference between an upper case and a lower case and a full stop being there or not. It is the difference between the complete and incomplete; 99% and 100% aren’t one percent apart; they are worlds apart.

A: Don’t you think it is disrespectful to suggest that because you have a good command of the language you can automatically become a copywriter? 
MM: You can’t teach anyone to be a copywriter. Either you have it or you don’t. Copywriting is about being very, very funny. You need to have a sense of humour and be able to laugh at yourself and at other people. Humour is the brain’s way of approaching a situation from another angle; this is what makes everyday situations funny. You need to be curious about a lot of things. You need to have an information pool in your head from which your brain generates images, words, thoughts and sentiments, which you can then translate into work.

A: Which pools do you draw your creative talent from in terms of hiring?
MM: For one, there is a circle of creatives made up of people from the TV channels, newspapers, radio stations, design houses, digital companies and agencies, and when the word spreads about an opening, people start showing up. Then there are the student internships. But you have to go to the colleges yourself and pick the best; you cannot treat this as an auto-pilot exercise. These kids are in the middle of their curriculum and you can career counsel them in the hope that you may hire them two years down the line. This produces a lot of positive energy and gives you a good rapport, so that when they graduate, chances are they will prefer your agency because they liked what they experienced there as internees. However, some of the best talent I have seen has come from people who did not have a background in advertising; they joined because someone out there took a bet on them. They were hired and then they were trained. Those are the best hires; when you hire a person who has the right attitude, the sense of humour, the confidence, the cockiness even.

A: What made you reverse the normal career process by moving from a multinational agency to a national one?
MM: All agencies are the same. The difference lies in the people who work there; it is the top leadership that dictates the culture, the relationship with clients, the accounts that are taken on board. The people you work with will determine the quality of your day and how much international exposure you get. A creative director sitting in New York does not care whether you are working for Ogilvy Lahore or Angoor Communications in Chitral, because when he sees your work and it blows him out of the water, he will pick up the phone and call you. If the quality of my work depends on the people I am surrounded by, what am I going to do with a fancy office or a fancy name?

A: As a 31-year-old creative director, where do you go from here?
MM: There are a lot of options. You can work regionally, you can go into filmmaking, into production, start your own set-up. There are so many opportunities in Pakistan. I would assume a good creative director would also have a good sense of humour. Do you know how badly we need funny stuff on TV? So the next step for a creative director with a little bit of courage would be to go out there and do something hilarious. In radio, there are opportunities waiting to happen. You have specialists in digital, BTL, event management, but where are the radio specialists? Where is that little hot shop of three guys writing kick-ass radio spots? Within the agency itself there are opportunities. If a creative director in Pakistan goes to his boss and says: ‘I have this idea. I don’t want to quit my job but I want to take your business in this direction, this is what it is going to cost you and this is what you are going to make in return.’ Do you think he will say no? You think people don’t like money? A lot of it has to do with your initiative, ambition and business sense. If you don’t have these, you are going to stay in creative for the rest of your life and hit the glass ceiling. As a creative director, the only way is up. It depends on you.

A: A lot of young creatives today seem to lack passion. Why?
MM: It has a lot to do with upbringing I think. The upbringing that people were given is very different from what it is now. People who were teenagers in the 80s are parents now. I am not saying the values are gone, but that sense of ambition is not inculcated in kids today as much as it was. When we were kids, we were told that we had to do the best, and whatever we did we had to have a plan. A lot of people from that generation are now out there kicking ass; maybe they are kicking so much ass that they don’t have the time to put that ambition into their kids. Also, a lot of college graduates don’t like getting their hands dirty. They don’t like hearing that ‘you will be at the bottom of the food chain and you will have to work really hard and are you up for that?’ It also has a lot to do with what the colleges are teaching these kids. Advertising is not about Photoshop and coming up with funny images. Advertising is about your instinct and teachers are no longer imparting instinctual knowledge. The instinct is gone! I had the good fortune to work with two very well known foreign creative directors; these guys were award winners through and through. Their strategy head was also very well known. They were working on an account and they decided to work on the strategy first; a lot of work went into the strategy and finding the insights. Then these two creative guys sat down and came up with an idea, and their gut feeling told them that this idea was where it was at. You know what they did? They said to hell with strategy! They sat down with the strategy guy and had him decode that gut feeling, and when they did, they realised that they had instinctually stumbled on a goldmine. So they reworked everything, they reverse engineered, and today there is a product out there that is a success. That is instinct. Of course you have to back it up with research, but it all comes from your instinct.

A: We keep hearing that Pakistani advertising is on the verge of a creative breakthrough that will give it international recognition, yet nothing happens. Why?
MM: No, we are not. We were on the brink of this great business breakthrough and it happened; a lot of foreigners came in and gave us a lot of dollars. It was a business breakthrough. The creative breakthrough has always been there, only it never comes out. The kind of work some agencies do for small clients, if you look past the local executional restraints, it really is fantastic.

A: Why is this work not talked about?
MM: Because we don’t market ourselves. We are so busy making money that we don’t market our work. Look at how India markets. It’s a mindset. The digital revolution will change this, because it becomes so much easier to market your work internationally. On Ads of the World (adsoftheworld.com) you will find work done by young Pakistanis. The ideas are there, a bit muddled and fuzzy maybe, but they are there; they are muddled and fuzzy because a lot of people struggle when taking these ideas to a larger canvas. It is not the weakness of the idea, but a weakness in the ability to translate it onto larger mediums. But having said this, cut my hands off if we don’t win an award in the next two years. Someone from Pakistan in the next 24 months is going to win a Gold at Cannes.

A: What exactly do you mean by the ‘digital revolution’? 
MM: Globally, Pakistan is being left behind in terms of what is happening. If you think about where global advertising trends are going, in three to four years, if we don’t do something about it soon, we will be in the Stone Age. The world has gone digital. Chapter closed. There is going to be a digital boom. There are a large number of Pakistanis out there who access the internet from their phone; the technology that connects a mobile phone to the internet is present in virtually every phone, no matter how cheap. People are becoming more and more web savvy, and within three to four years when the new technology coming
on-stream is even more deeply widespread and internet awareness is even higher and with more young people in charge of the world, what do you think is going to happen? Everyone is going to be on the internet.

A: Even in Pakistan?
MM: Whatever is happening in the rest of the world will eventually happen here. The world is going in one direction. Even if you are lagging behind, you will be dragged along by that tide. I may drive a car and own a BlackBerry, but what will happen when the same technology becomes available to the guy on the motorbike and with a more basic phone? He and I are both young; we have the same drives and ambitions in life. He wants to make money, I want to make money; he wants to rise above, I want to rise above. Both of us want to retire and party after 35.

Muzaffar Manghi was talking to Mariam Ali Baig. For feedback, email aurora@dawn.com

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

The madness of MCom

By Marylou Andrew
 

In the 80s, Bollywood masala films often contained a catchphrase that was repeatedly used (usually for comic effect) throughout the film; “Mogambo khush hua” from Mr. India is my personal favourite. In much the same way, Omar Alavi (Regional Director of MCom Karachi & Chief Strategy Officer Pakistan and Overseas) has a catchphrase of his own. He randomly exclaimed, “we’re mad, we’re MCom” at least five times (if my math is correct) at regular intervals during the interview for this profile. When he said it for the third time, I laughed inwardly, wondering whether he had lost it or was just very passionate about his job.

I found his strong emotions towards the agency slightly odd considering that he has been there all of four months, and also because prior to joining MCom, Alavi worked with Manhattan International aka. MIL (as Director Strategic Planning) for nearly 11 years; in advertising terms, 11 years is practically a lifetime.

Clearly there is no separation anxiety here. Seated in a spacious office with yellow walls covered with Absolut Vodka ads, Alavi looks comfortable. His hair, which has undergone several transformations in the eight years I have known him – from bleached, shoulder length to slightly trimmed and unbleached – is now short and presumably in its natural colour. This conventional hair-do comes with a rocker-style goatee, which is perhaps Alavi’s way of paying homage to the non-conformist within.

‘Conformist’ is certainly not the adjective one would use to describe someone who views every strategy presentation as a rock concert that has to be performed to the hilt. It is quite commonplace for him to take cues from the musical stylings of Neil Diamond and Bruce Springsteen. His explanation:

“Most of this music was written in turbulent times, but it applies to now as well, because history is repeating itself.”

I wonder how this goes down with clients, but he must be doing something right to have reached this point in his career.

Alavi’s induction into advertising happened late in life. The year was 1997, he was 32 and had returned to Pakistan after 14 years in the United States, initially as a student and then as an industry analyst in the telecom sector.

Although he doesn’t say so, Alavi probably struggled to find his feet in Pakistan considering his fairly short stints (one year or less) at IAL (now IAL Saatchi & Saatchi) and Asiatic (now JWT). He worked on accounts like PTC and Lipton Yellow Label but doesn’t have too much to say about them.

The next move was the one that would establish him on the advertising scene. He moved to MIL as Media Group Head and it was here that he met Wamiq Khairi, the man he calls his “mentor”.

“Wamiq interviewed me and brought me into Manhattan, he taught me the connection between media and creative. When he passed away, it was a very personal loss for me. I took over his position and while I may not have done things as well as he did, I don’t think I let him down either.”

Alavi explains that people are important to him and good people were the reason he stayed on at MIL for 11 years. So why the move at this stage?

“At 46, you need challenges,” says Alavi, “and you need a different work environment. When I looked around, I thought MCom would be a place where I would be challenged in a lot of different ways."

It is obvious that the move to MCom is Alavi’s way of reviving the passion that he may have initially felt for his profession but which, at some point became jaded by the monotony of routine. His feelings about MCom are pretty strong, as evidenced by the “we’re mad, we’re MCom” number, but according to him, this is not an act.

“We’re mad because we have people who are willing to go out there and do whatever is needed to grow the business. This is why in the last two years, when there has been a great deal of lethargy in the advertising business and people have been losing money, MCom has grown. We could not have done this without mad, go-getter people.”

So does the M in MCom stand for ‘mad’, I query innocently? No, he points out a tad sheepishly, it stands for ‘mind’.

Glad we cleared that up.

But underneath all the ‘madness’ (excuse the pun) lies an issue that is close to Alavi’s heart: What makes a good planner?

He says good planners understand where brands stand with people.

“When I say people, I don’t mean statistics, but living, breathing human beings, people like you and me.”

Another quality of a good planner that is important to Alavi is the ability to differentiate between accepted consumer beliefs and insights.
 “Consumers will tell you that they do something because... a mediocre planner will stop at ‘because’ and that’s the domain of accepted consumer beliefs; but a good planner will go further and carry that thought through to its natural conclusion.”

Perhaps some of these concepts need to be taught to students studying planning at business schools? Alavi is happy to do this but explains that he will only do it in his own style.

“I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I can stand up right now and give a lecture or a presentation, I don’t need books to do it. If someone wants that kind of [practical] knowledge, I can teach it.”

The implication is that business schools are unlikely to adopt this method of teaching anytime soon. So we switch to talking about Alavi’s plans for MCom for the next 12 months.

“Sohail (Kisat) has reposed his trust in me. As the head of the Karachi office, which is the hub of the advertising business in Pakistan, my aim is to go out and get the best business out there. I will not achieve this by using my name but because we have good people and good systems at MCom.”

After all, we’re mad, we’re MCom, right?

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

Upside down thinking

Sabene Saigol reviews the milestones that have defined the decade for Pakistan’s advertising industry. 

Almost everything has changed significantly since I joined the advertising industry in 1996. Fourteen years later, I can confidently say that we have come a long way and are slowly but steadily inching our way to make a mark regionally at least, if not globally. Of course we have a long way to go, but we also have some key ingredients in place today that we did not have 10 years ago.

Starting with the talent, both on the client side and the agency, to the hyper segmentation of services, to increased international exposure and interaction, everything has changed. The media landscape brought a great level of exposure to our market and consumers and to a large extent, has challenged our creativity behind the brand.

Let me start with the most important, critical and magical ingredient – the one that really makes all the difference – people.

It is said that in advertising, 99% of our assets walk in the door in the morning and walk out at the end of the day. It is these young Pakistanis who have joined the industry in recent years that have contributed most significantly to the development of our industry. They are a new breed who have grown up with the internet, communicate using social networks and live a lifestyle that is way more global than it ever was before. The talent that we see now, comes in much larger numbers, has a very different take on commercial communication and is the driving force behind the trend of specialisation in our industry. And because we live in a very small world, it is these same individuals who are integrated with the world around them and can feel the pulse of what is around the corner. This is very different from the grey-haired agency owners who sat in their very large, very quiet offices, puffing cigars and counting beans when I joined the industry. Advertising is an industry that must keep up with the times and since time changes everything, we have to move with it. The only way I see this happening successfully is by engaging future generations and motivating them to join

our industry.

This talent has not only come into the ad industry, it has also entered the related sectors, including the client side. Clients are much more aware of agency operations, film production, idea generation and brand understanding. Clients now talk about media in terms of efficiency units and not generic reach and frequency. They describe consumers as people with feelings and emotions. They ask for the big idea. Brand managers dig deeper into consumer insights. They want to see the 360-degree of it all (although this is still largely TV driven). A few have even expanded their frontiers into digital. They are savvier. They work with the brand architectures and understand messaging architecture.

This talent has also led to the change in our media landscape, which is one of the biggest breakthroughs we made. The real impact being the sheer size in rupee terms that exploded. A little unnatural, but duly awaited; the overall industry growth has been exponential.

The talent pool on the production side has increased significantly due to the rapid increase in satellite channels and radio stations. We have new job roles and titles. Specialisation seems to be the buzzword.

Hyper segmentation is the second on my list of significant changes or we could just call it specialisation. In advertising it has taken over completely. Imagine, in one meeting you could have an account director, creative director, BTL creative director, media planner, agency planner, BTL planner, brand manager, category manager and the group brand manager. A few more could be there, research and PR manager, maybe even a digital consultant and the client’s communication and BTL manager (if any). The money and the value pockets have increased, and although being a specialist holds a narrower role, it definitely holds greater value for clients.

Then comes the role of the international communication groups. They have become much more proactive in recent years. This qualitative change has motivated our local talent and in many cases the exposure and training has developed their skill sets. We have yet to see the true impact of this, but surely it will not be far off. We have seen affiliations become stronger in active participation, joint venture, equity deals and complete ownership structures. This will raise the bar both strategically and creatively as it also raises client expectations. I hope this will lead to greater human resource transfers and greater learning and engagement across regions and globally as well.

The future looks bright for advertising in Pakistan if we can sort out the country’s larger problems. International collaborations are set to grow in the face of our growing industry and the fact that the world is a much smaller place today and Pakistan cannot be ignored as a market. Clients have started to work and initiate more cross border/ regional creative projects. Our talent pool will benefit from better opportunities, both here and abroad.

If you broadly look at the communications industry, some of us have been trying to move from one-way story telling to dialogue and interactive communication. We should now gear up for these conversations – between brands and consumers and even among consumers. It is these continuous conversations that will spark the requisite changes that will take us forward in the next 10 years.

It will be the agency with the most courage that will grow in the next decade. The agency that has the ability to think inside out, upside down; the agency that works with no preconceived notions; the agency that is agile and flexible. And this time around, it won’t be a question of may the better man or woman win. It will be a question of may the better team win.

Sabene Saigol is Chairperson, Red Communication Arts. sabene@red.com.pk

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

The killing of a medium

Marketers have killed the SMS as a promotional tool, writes Tariq Ziad Khan.

The SMS (short messaging service) has died; not as a conduit for communication but as an effective marketing tool. It had a very short life as far as marketing mediums go, coming along as it did in early 2000 and becoming a staple with the cell phone using public as late as 2002. Then, we marketers came along and murdered what could have been an extremely successful platform for customer interaction and communication.

Part of the failure of the SMS as an effective marketing tool was due to the way the telecom industry grew in Pakistan. The biggest advantage SMS was supposed to have over other media was that it provided unrivalled access to customer profiles for the simple reason that when customers signed up for a cell phone connection, their geographic location (through their area codes and numbers), their gender, profession, age, approximate income potential (through their choice of packages and call plans) as well as a plethora of other information became available.

However, like most well laid plans, this one went a little haywire. The mushrooming of multiple networks, the introduction of mobile network portability (MNP) and a culture of number carry-overs and golden number acquisitions, all colluded to make the subscriber information a little hazy. Add to this a general aversion among customers to reply honestly to the questions on the subscriber form (despite much insistence by both the telecoms and the regulatory authorities). Further complicating matters is the fact that the emphasis of the telecom industry (even after nearly a decade of unprecedented growth) is still primarily on customer acquisition rather than generating more revenue out of the existing client base by encouraging more usage and pushing value added services (VAS).

The failure of the mainstream telecoms to aggressively promote their database as a marketable commodity has seen this vacuum filled by new tech vendors; outfits offering web, email and SMS marketing solutions as a bundle. Being in an industry as competitive as the financial services, I have the good fortune to interact with a fair share of new tech vendors, and a recent such proposal came with the offer to “reach over one million unique customers for less than one paisa a go…”

Piqued more than interested, I called the vendor over for a chat. The gentleman came promptly and gave me a head’s up, claiming that his company had a database of a couple of million customers, and that given the opportunity, they would carry my product message to all of them at a fraction of the cost of any mainstream media.

All well and good I answered, but what was the standard conversion rate? He had no answer for this, claiming it did not depend on the SMS but rather on how good my product was.
I pressed the matter further. Given that he had close to two million unique users (and growing daily), how many of them matched my customer profile (people willing to put large amounts of money in low cost deposits)? Again the gentleman had no answer. This time he claimed that it was impossible to know the status of each individual number.

But that was not the point, I countered. SMS by virtue of being linked to a traceable network connection had a user profile attached to it. To which the gentleman informed me that his company could only ensure that the numbers to which the text was sent were active subscribers. (These numbers were collected from a variety of sources that would only be divulged once I signed on the dotted line).

He added that no other information was available because customers lie on their subscription forms. SMS in his opinion was a shotgun medium for spreading a message to as many people as possible and the response would come, he assured me.

Trying not to be outmanoeuvred by the spiel, I asked about the possibilities of conducting market research through SMS, and the gentleman went almost into raptures regarding the efficacy of instant response that SMS as a medium guarantees.

But, I had to ask, why would customers respond to a random SMS asking them about their banking preferences? He was ready for this one.

He suggested I package my research proposition with an offer for a Toyota Corolla (no less) as this would guarantee the kind of response rate that would put the Gallups and Nielsens of the world to shame. But wouldn’t that defeat the purpose and the objectivity of the exercise, I dared ask?

He replied with a disdainful smirk, “Nobody does anything for nothing”.

“You seem to,” I said, “by offering to reach a million plus customer for less than a paisa a pop.”

That effectively was the end of the discussion and needless to say I did not opt for the SMS marketing bonanza presented to me.

The above conversation underscores why SMS as an effective marketing medium has died the death it has in Pakistan – we marketers have turned it into a mass irritant. SMS is peddled on the basis of the number of customers that can be reached rather than on the number of relevant customers likely to respond to the product proposition.

As a consumer I am surprised by the number of unsolicited texts I receive on a daily basis. Even more mind boggling is that I don’t know how anyone got my number.

Yet that does not change the fact that I am bombarded daily by texts ranging from offers to finance my car at exorbitant rates, give me the hair transplant I don’t need, or tuition my children for their O’Levels, despite the fact that they haven’t even begun to go to school yet. Why any of these companies feel that I am a relevant customer is beyond me.

And then there are the good texts. Texts from my bank informing me when my credit card has been charged or my account debited/credited, from my favourite brand of trousers informing me that the khaki pair I could not afford at full price is on sale, or my insurance company sending me a birthday greeting (a way of thanking me for not popping my cork and hence still being a profitable entry for at least another year). All have a common denominator; I opted for them, putting them in the category of Permission Marketing, a tool that is measurable, accountable and above all effective because it is not invasive. Marketers in Pakistan have forgotten this cardinal rule. 

Today SMS has died as a relevant marketing medium and has very little potential to generate customer response or attention. At best it is now used as a core communication platform by service brands. For this to change, marketers need to understand that to make this medium tick, customer permission must be solicited before sending out text messages. Customers, for their part, must also know that just because there is an option to receive free SMS alerts, they do not have sign on for everything. You might love a particular brand but receiving a daily text about it may, in the long run, hold as much charm as spending a holiday working on your tax returns.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of JS Group or any of its affiliated companies.

Tariq Ziad Khan is Vice President, Product Development & Management, JS Bank.  tzk999@yahoo.com

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.

The frog is in very hot water

Patrick Collister reviews a decade.

Looking back over the last 10 years is a bit like surveying a battlefield. There is wreckage everywhere, of companies that have collapsed and jobs that have been lost and which will never return.

This is not just a conflict between traditional and newer ways of doing things but also a struggle between Baby Boomers and Gen Y.

For a quarter of a century, Baby Boomers, born in the immediate aftermath of World War II, have had a vice-like grip on business and most other social institutions and they are extremely reluctant to let go of the sources of their wealth and influence.

But Gen Y are digital natives. They have been changing the world without the old guard really noticing until recently.

The frog has just begun to understand that it is in very hot water.

Just consider some of the ideas that are less than 10 years old and which have already turned advertising on its head.

iTunes was created in 2001.

3G mobile phones were launched the same year.

Google floated in 2004.

Facebook launched in 2004 but only to Harvard students.

YouTube was founded in 2005.

Twitter did not exist until 2006.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is 26.

Chad Hurley of YouTube is 33.

These are people who have made their ideas freely available.

By contrast, Rupert Murdoch is 79. He has just put up a paywall around two of his newspaper titles, The Times in the UK and The Wall Street Journal in the USA. Every other mass media company is watching with bated breath to see what happens.

Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post (2005), has recently been called a “parasite, living off the journalism of others”. To which she retorted, “Once again, some in the old media have decided that the best way to save, if not journalism, at least themselves, is by pointing fingers and calling names.”

You can see the same tensions between old and new in Adland.

Most of our clients’ businesses changed radically two, even three times, between 1945 and 2000 as technology and globalisation impacted on them.

Ford, for example, moved from being a car company to a bank. The financial products they offer make it possible for more people to lease or purchase the cars they also happen to make. Incidentally, and if you are looking for further examples of almost unbelievable change, since 2002, this American company has been assembling Mondeos in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Advertising, though, has remained largely unaltered. Until now.

The creative director of a large agency was, in essence, the editor. He (and in 98% of all instances it was a man) made the decisions about what was and what was not fit to appear in broadcast media. When I worked for the legendary John Webster at BMP in London, he approved the final edit of a TV commercial and it would never have occurred to a client to query his decision.

Now, creative direction is provided by any number of brand managers and marketing folk. At every creative presentation there are at least half a dozen people in the room with the licence to criticise and dismember the idea. Seldom is there someone present with both the authority and the intelligence to say yes.

Old-time creative directors offer parallels with medicine. You would never pick an argument with your doctor, they say. You don’t query the course of treatment prescribed or demand a different brand of pharmaceutical the way clients nitpick at ideas and veto their agencies’ choice of photographer or production company.

Well, as a matter of fact, wikification is coming to medicine. There are already many sites where you can exchange information, learn about alternative therapies and chart your own course through illness.

‘The doctor’ as a concept is as paternalistic and as patronising as ‘the creative director’, Gen Y will tell you.

Collaboration is not something advertising creatives have been very good at doing. Many campaigns are not as integrated as they might be because the different agencies find it so hard to sit at the same table.

Sir Martin Sorrell called this behaviour “kiss and punch”.

Be pleasant in front of the client, deceitful and difficult after the meeting. 

Increasingly, though, campaigns are being put together the way movies get made. Hardly anyone works for the production company. Every single little part of the job is subcontracted out.

As a result, freelancers have learned to be flexible, collaborative and to be generalists as well as specialists. This adaptability is now being learned within agencies. But no one knows yet what the best model will be.

Anomaly in New York and London sells ideas, irrespective of media.
3Sixty in Bristol is a cross between McKinsey’s and AKQA with some IBM consulting thrown in.

19 Management builds brands through entertainment properties it has created such as Pop Idol.

Zappos, the shoe company, do the whole thing in-house. No agency, no messages, just 50 people using Twitter to start and maintain conversations around the world about footwear.
By the way, they have done it very successfully too, building a business that went from start-up to fetching $1.2 billion when it was acquired by Amazon in 10 years.

That’s an idea that didn’t exist 10 years ago, the idea of dialogue with your customers.
Seth Godin published Permission Marketing in late 1999 but even today there are many marketers who still believe in the old P&G model of putting a message in front of people and relentlessly repeating it until consumers give in and buy your product.

P&G themselves are not among them.

Their (recently retired) CEO, A.G. Lafley urged his marketers to “learn to let go”, because, he observed, “the more in control we are, the more out of touch we become.”

Therein lies the fundamental dilemma for marketers today, the issue of control. It suits the CMO of a big company to have big ideas because, heck, he has a big job. Yet Nike, a global superbrand if ever there was one, now invests only in small ideas. Local ideas.

Integration has been the big buzzword of late, yet here is a brand wilfully disintegrating.

One has to feel sorry for the organisers of the Cannes Advertising Festival. They only created their Titanium/Integrated category in 2005 and already it looks as if it is becoming redundant.

But then, who would have thought that the Direct Lions would become the most interesting awards won at the show? Direct only got recognition at Cannes in 2002 and for a couple of years direct marketing agencies entered mailshots and brochures. Now creative behemoths like BBDO, New York; Abbott Mead Vickers; BBDO London; and Saatchi & Saatchi, London, enter fabulously crafted video-based campaigns which run online and get people clicking measurably and thus directly.

Indeed, Abbott Mead Vickers, Cannes TV Agency of the Year in the past was Direct Agency of the Year in 2010.

The arrival of the iPad with, in its wake, a host of tablet competitors, is going to bring further radical change to how brands communicate and where and to how agencies create ideas and with whom.

As sure as an egg is an egg, there will be further convergence between publishing, music, gaming, entertainment and advertising but that is the subject for a further piece.

As the ancient Chinese curse puts it, “May you live in interesting times.” Truly we are cursed.

Patrick Collister is Editor, Directory magazine. He is former Executive Creative Director and Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather. patrick@directnewideas.com

First published in the November-December 2010 issue of Aurora.