The proverbial writing on the wall is becoming more and more vivid, as Britannia- a brand established in 1892- has taken a leap of faith to collaborate on a retainer model with three new-age agencies, Schbang, Talented, and The Womb. The question that comes to mind is – what is determining such a move, especially from brands that are seemingly aligned to the idea of days of yore. As both contemporary as well as legacy agencies raise the stakes with a plethora of services to stay in the game, even traditional brands are slowly re-evaluating their choices. After all, a jack of all trades could be the master of none, but is oftentimes better than a master of one.
The Narrative Shift 
The transformation is a reality, says VR Rajesh, Group President, Ogilvy India, “We had to at some point in time get onto it because we were losing our share of wallet. One thing which was clear to us is that the tenets of brand building are not going to change. It is the tenets of how we are speaking to the consumer which is evolving.”
The line between what is mainline and what is Digital is getting blurred as 50% of spends are already on Digital, states Shamsuddin Jasani, CEO, Wunderman Thompson South Asia. “Digital has become more mainstream now, and consumers are agnostic of the medium on which they consume content. So, as an agency, you need to be cognizant of the uniqueness of each platform in order to be able to unlock synergies through the creative use of data and technology, and lean more into emerging technologies to provide integrated solutions for clients and their businesses,” he says.
Hari Ramanathan, CEO of VMLY&R, South and South-East Asia and Japan, explains the shift. “To encapsulate in a very simple way, if a campaign two decades ago comprised three moving parts (Print, TV, and some Outdoor), over the past decade it had about six-seven moving parts (with the inclusion of social and digital video and display ads). And now, ‘campaigns’ are not time bound, but a year-round experience orchestration that has many moving parts, and requires many different skills to come together both at the agency and client ends, we are talking about technology, CRM, data, and creative.”
Going Digital means being in tune with the trends, and trends change in rapid succession. This is by far one of the most challenging aspects for advertising agencies. Agencies need to deploy appropriate resources to make the right moves, at the right time.
The single sort of epochal event that has happened in the lives of agencies is the explosion in Digital without a doubt, according to Sideways Consulting Founder, Abhijit Avasthi. “I think this has put an enormous pressure on creative agencies. The reason being that, Digital is a universe on its own. So, what’s happening is that agencies are figuring out where their play lies in this entire Digital tech universe. It needs a lot of up-skilling, a lot of fresh talent hiring, and I guess it needs to be in line with where they are currently.”
Is It Easier For Independent Agencies To Make The Shift?
There’s a school of thought that believes it’s tougher for network mainline agencies in this Digital era, given their humongous structures, lacking the flexibility and ability to experiment.
Says Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous, “A lot of network mainline agencies have created a culture of ‘knowledge enough’ or a culture of ‘change enough,’ because the momentum for them may be way too much. From where they’re coming from, it’s very difficult for them to change the momentum.”
“It’s not so for a nimble agency like ours,” he continues. “This is an agency that was formed on the back of many clients like Lenskart, ShopClues, OLX, BankBazaar, and so on. We got influenced by their way of working, developing those capabilities, and skill stack, so that we are better equipped for the task at hand. I think 2023 is a year that a lot of marketers are looking forward to,” he says.
Rakesh Hinduja- Co-Founder & Managing Partner of WondrLab is of a similar view. He says, “The advantage that the new-age agencies have over the legacy ones is that they are aware of this shift, and they’re getting quite capable. While I’m sure that a legacy network agency can go ahead and buy certain capabilities, the symphony of these capabilities talking to each other is very important. The 10 heads of Ravana need to talk to each other for this symphony to work out, and that is where brands start to win.”
However, according to Piyush Pandey, Chairman Global Creative & Executive Chairman India, Ogilvy, nothing actually changes. Now whether it is through what you call traditional advertising, or through Digital, at the end of the day, you have to motivate somebody to take action. According to the ad guru, that principle never changes.
“And to be sure, if you look at it, the kind of work that has happened at Ogilvy, for instance the Cadbury’s Diwali campaign - Not Just A Cadbury Ad, which uses machine learning to recreate Shah Rukh Khan’s face and voice to promote local stores. That’s all today’s work- where is the legacy? And other big agencies have also done similar work.
“So, it’s not a question of legacy or new. It’s a question of how smart you are to be aware of your audience, and their behaviours and practices, you need to respect your audience. You can’t say that my audience has changed, but I’ll not change.”
Dheeraj Sinha, CEO, Leo Burnett, South Asia & Chairman BBH India corroborates the view. He says, “Today demarcations such as mainline and Digital agencies no longer exist. We are moving into a world where the brief from the client is no longer mainline or Digital focused, but to solve a business problem. Our task is to create a narrative for the brand that goes across the most relevant platforms.
“We wanted to be the go-to agency for new-age (internet economy) clients, create work that uses data, technology, and creativity to solve problems and be home to mutant-DNA talent,” he says, adding, “Today, more than 30% of our revenues come from new-age clients, such as, Meta, LinkedIn, ACKO, Spotify, Airtel to name a few.”
Case in point, in its Airtel 175 campaign, Leo Burnett recreated the 1983 World Cup match where Kapil Dev scored a 175 not out. Using deep-fake technology, it gave viewers an immersive and futuristic content viewing experience.
It’s very easy to say that traditional agencies only focus on TV and Print, which is not necessarily true, it’s a bit of a misnomer, believes Rohit Ohri, Chairman & CEO FCB Group India. “It depends on which agency, and what’s the brand that we are in business with. COVID 19 actually accelerated the Digital transformation process. So, for many organizations it became critical to do it in a very short telescoped period.”
Referring to FCB Group India being named ‘Adweek’s 2022 International Agency of the Year,’ he says, “One of the things that they felt we got right was this whole Digital transformation that we are doing.” He cites the recent work done by the agency collaboratively with the Kinnect creative team, ‘Chatpat’ campaign for SOS Children’s Villages of India account, where they came up with this concept of creating an influencer instead of using existing influencers. “So, not really tech, but we used a lot of data to figure out how to talk to the existing base of the NGO. It really worked, and that was the most awarded campaign that FCB had done globally.”
In 2021, the FCB Group acquired equity stake in Kinnect, an independent Digital marketing agency, which is a 400-plus team with in-house capabilities for influencer and talent outreach, and ORM, to meet the rapidly evolving needs of its clients.
The argument that legacy agencies have found it difficult to keep up with the change that’s taking place in the ad space is rebutted by Prathap Suthan, Managing Partner & Chief Creative Officer at BangInTheMiddle as well. “You need clients on the back of whom advertising agencies’ exposure or their inclination to get and drive Digital comes. That has not happened at the speed in which an advertising agency would like. The reason behind brands spending just about 30% of their money on Digital until about three to four years back is because they’ve been slow to catch up with the change,” Suthan points out.
Manpower invested on Digital Transformation
The evolving landscape has also led to changes in the composition of teams within ad agencies. Technologists are now a mainstay across departments, so are data analysts, and even content creators who understand the shifting dynamics of the social media ecosystem.
There is both manpower investment and investment in manpower, says Rahul Pahwa- SVP and Business Head, North, Grey Group India. “In our agency, we have seen this implemented successfully, with everyone across teams becoming comfortable with the lingo and codes of Digital. New functions like tech, data, and social media analyst are sitting comfortably with strategy and creative teams. This cross functional jugalbandi is not just helping in putting exciting creative ideas on the table, but also in making them more effective.”
“Specialists have been brought in to seamlessly weave technology into communication, be it voice or emerging concepts like Metaverse,” Sagar Kapoor, CCO, Lowe Lintas shares. “With this approach, Lintas has not only beaten ‘traditional’ agencies, but also, the many so called ‘modern Digital agencies.’ The agency has won many brands having a Digital-first / Digital only mandate in the last 3-4 years, such as Yezdi, Pepperfry, Healthify, Lifebuoy, CRY, Starbucks, to name a few,” he adds.
During the lockdown, Lintas released a campaign with TikTok in order to orchestrate behavioural change across continents. It held an activation for its H for Handwashing campaign – where Lifebuoy conducted the world’s biggest classroom on YouTube.
“Digital transformation is often mistakenly treated as a one-off project, but it’s a process, and so we like to call it the Total Experience Strategy,” says Hari Ramanathan, CEO of VMLY&R, South and South East Asia and Japan. He further shares, “The work that gives a glimpse into this approach are the CNA Newsroom Transformation, Ageas Federal Life Insurance – Young Sachin, and Maxx Flash - Killer pack. For the Young Sachin campaign, the agency de-aged India’s cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar as an 11-year old boy with the help of Deepfake AI.”
“We are also looking at strategic acquisitions to speed up some of the capabilities we feel will add a lot of value to our clients and our aim to becoming strategic business partners to our clients”, says Shamsuddin Jasani.
Last IPL season, Wunderman Thompson crafted a campaign for Nestle Munch, tying up with four cricket teams to create an experiential and immersive gaming experience for cricket fans involving AR, and the metaverse for fans to engage with their favourite cricket Heroes.
“We launched Leo Burnett Digital in 2020 – not as a separate vertical, but as a horizontal one. In the last few years, we have adopted a continuous training programme to up-skill our entire team of 650+ Burnetters in new technologies,” states Dheeraj Sinha.
“Rediffusion converted its sister agency Everest into a Digital-first ad agency last year with 40 Digital professionals. By March this year that number will be 60-70,” says Dr. Sandeep Goyal, Managing Director, Rediffusion.
The agency created work in the ESG domain for Tata Power - a mobile calendar where a new tree appears as a screensaver every day. It also worked closely with 63 Moons last year to create an app that integrates a crypto university, a cryptowire, and a crypto trading universe.
Aditya Kanthy, CEO & MD, DDB Mudra Group, says, “We have 50+ people in the tech company, who help clients build and run sites, apps, run programmatic buying and performance marketing strategies. They also expand creative possibilities for brands using technology.”
The agency went on to create Bothard, an AI-powered rapper for MTV Hustle 2.0 with the GPT3 platform. It has also helped Royal Enfield build a Digital ecosystem for over a decade, wherein it brought the motorcycle building experience to consumers’ phones and laptop screens.
“Over the past few years, the skill level is steadily moving up the value chain from open source to enterprise solutions like Salesforce, and Magento. It’s this kind of Digital-first thinking and tools knowledge that has helped us produce work like Bothard for MTV, a first of its kind in the industry,” he adds.
New verticals / efficiencies launched by agencies to stay in the game
So, what are these agencies doing to ensure that they firmly remain in the reckoning in this Digital era of new-age efficiencies?
Wunderman Thompson launched its new specialized practice ‘WT Health’ in June last year with a multidisciplinary team of 100 plus. WT Commerce is another ‘hidden gem’ in the WT team, with over 600 people, doing high-end commerce strategy and development, says Jasani who strongly believes that it will be a growth engine for the agency.
Talking about the launch of DDB’s specialised e-sports and gaming offering, For the Win (FTW) in November 2020, Aditya R. Kanthy says, “This comes as no surprise considering the rapid growth of the gaming industry. You’ll hear more from us on FTW India’s plans soon,” he promises.
In 2019, VMLY&R Asia added an e-commerce component, and in November 2020, the erstwhile Geometry was merged into it as VMLY&R Commerce, to offer full-funnel commerce solutions from e-commerce to on-site traditional marketing. Says Hari Ramanathan, “We have boosted our specialist experience in commerce through hires, and for social and gaming, etc. it’s a combination of acquisitions, training, and upgrading when we fill departures.”
Innovations are becoming commonplace for agencies that want to stay ahead of the curve. As Ashish Khazanchi says, “We’ve added a number of capabilities to Enormous in the last two years, and much more in the second half of 2022. So, from analytics to pure-play digital, creative digital strategy, to creating a web of alliances, we have deep learning here in the agency. And we have a series of affiliates who help us with optimizing media, buying media, doing performance marketing, programmatic advertising, & influencer marketing,”
Leo Burnett launched its specialised strategy offerings LB Digital, LB Consult, and LB Design in 2020. The agency also launched Leo Burnett Regional in 2022 as it realised the potential of regional focused content.
Rediffusion too launched ‘Next by Rediffusion’, an agency dedicated to start-up businesses, emerging technologies, and new ideas, while Rediffusion Studios was launched for work in both traditional and Digital design. It also brought to its fold the strategy boutique Been There Done That in 2022.
The MullenLowe Lintas Group launched a division called Lintas Live in 2020 that blends data-led insights and LIVE storytelling across Digital and conventional platforms. It is live-wired to proactively help brands with solutions for their business challenges through PR, Digital, Content, Moment Marketing and Technology. Lintas has also collaborated with influencer agencies like NAS Studios (Nas Daily fame) to deliver new world solutions for their brands.
The Grey Group, in 2018, acquired a majority stake in Digital agency Autumn Worldwide. It now provides services including Digital and social media campaigns, influencer and blogger marketing, ORM, content marketing, marketing Big Data and insights and Command Center Management Services (CCMS). Apart from this, in the last 4 years the Group has developed a data and analytics team, and a tech team that works on execution of new age tech driven solutions.
Three years ago, Ogilvy started a unit called the Content Force. “What we did is create a very agile and young unit and started integrating clients who had already strong relationships with us by handling all their Digital social content,” says VR Rajesh. “Now we have a 100 people team. The idea is to only take on integrated businesses so that the whole mandate sits with us. We are also aggressively building an influencer database which the advertising, content, as well as the PR teams can dip into,” he states.
The agency also developed a Tech innovations team about three years back, whose job is to execute any idea that is innovative, and marry it with a technology to take it forward.
Rajesh shares the example of the ‘locked’ Coke bottle fitted with a special Bluetooth-enabled cap it helped Coca-Cola India roll out last year. It was a technological product innovation that is programmed to open only in the presence of the sender’s mobile phone- in line with Coke’s #MilkeHiManegiDiwali campaign.
Agencies, both mainline network as well as independent, are undertaking what is necessary for them to deliver what clients are looking for right now from a communication and commerce perspective. They are doing it by creating work that is sitting at the cusp of technology, commerce, and creativity.
Talented, one of the newbie agencies that has made a name for its cutting-edge effort in its 10 months of existence, shares its work that was formed by this approach. This includes engineering the internet brainstorm for Swiggy with ‘How’s this a Swiggy ad’ campaign, and hijacking every e-commerce sale for travel app ClearTrip, by showing shoppers travel offers from Cleartrip on scanning any sale ad in the newspaper.
As Talented CCO & Co-founder, PG Aditiya puts it, “Ending up on social media is now a sensible yardstick to measure if the work is worthy of conversation, debate, applause – everything. Creative teams that are able to engineer this effect can free themselves from the limitations of the source medium. Like Gautam, my co-founder at Talented, loves to say: It isn’t a print or TV ad. It’s a print or TV-led viral opportunity.”
A line from Bob Dylan’s 1964 song, The Times They Are A-Changin’, seems apt for agencies young and old at this time, ‘And you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a-changin.’
