By Srabana Lahiri and Saloni Dutta
The energy is palpable as you enter the offices of Lowe Lintas +Partners at Nariman Point in Mumbai. The mood is upbeat, as the agency has just been adjudged the second most effective agency in the world at the Global Effie Index, 2014. As the agency’s Chairman and Chief Creative Officer R Balakrishnan (Balki) sees it, “All communication should be effective. Otherwise it is not communication. Every year we try and do what is right to solve a client’s problem, and to be effective you have to be creative.”
The agency’s campaigns for various brands – the innovative Kan Khajura Tesan for Hindustan Unilever (a winner at Cannes), and work for Idea, Tanishq, Lifebuoy, Fastrack and OLX among others - have made waves in recent times.
“We have had a great run on Effectiveness Awards in the last 12 months. Effies India, Effies APAC, Tambuli and finally being rated the second most effective agency in the world at the Global Effie Index. Our agency has been unabashedly biased to deliver great in-market results, with the help of breakthrough creative thinking. We also put out the best creative work in the industry and won the most new businesses,” says Joseph George (Joe), Chief Executive Officer, LL+P. Indeed, after a ‘slowdown’ year, LL+P announced in April that it had registered over 100 business wins in the preceding 15 months, roping in the likes of Hero MotoCorp, Myntra.com, Star TV, OLX and Heinz, the wins materializing across its seven divisions and nine offices in India.
That LL+P’s divisions outside of advertising have contributed significantly to business growth points to a healthy agency, with many of the over 100 wins being accounted for by LinOpinion-Golin Harris (Public Relations), LinEngage (Activation), dCell (Design), LinTeractive-Interactive Avenues and LinHealth-ICC (Healthcare Marketing). The key is to have idea champions in each of these verticals, people who actually encourage big ideas irrespective of the verticals they are in.
Joe attributes the business wins to great solutions provided by the agency. “Clients don’t look out unless they have a problem that the agency has not been able to crack. So if we go with solutions that clients feel confident that we will deliver on, that is how it is. We have just been a lot more aggressive on new business over the last few years, so we have gone out a lot more, but when we have got the chance, we have actually delivered with great solutions,” he says.
DO AWARDS MATTER?
LL+P is no doubt basking in the glory of accolades won recently, but it has famously stayed away from industry awards in India, creating its own property, the True Show, to recognize good work done within the agency. Commenting on awards and the purpose of recognition, Balki says, “Industry accolades are not about the awards they hand out at the end of the year, but about appreciation of work done throughout the year. It is more important that people appreciate their work themselves.”
LL+P India does not believe in participating in any award show, including Cannes. All its work entered for any award show is nominated by Lowe Worldwide. Kan Khajura Tesan too was a Lowe Worldwide entry at Cannes this year. “We were at Cannes because it’s good fun. I don’t think Cannes is such serious business that we pride ourselves for entering or not entering it,” says Balki.
“There is a far higher consistency in the way we deliver ‘winners’. There is a systemic hunger for growth. There is a larger alignment on the way we want to conduct business with our employees and our colleagues. There are more stake-holders within the agency, contributing to the future of the agency. All in all, happy enough to think and believe that we can do better,” adds Joe.
Talent at the CORE
A newcomer to LL+P need not have done great work. So, people coming with portfolios best serve as hygiene. “What we look for is their perspective towards communication, managing brands and how to create some sort of disruption in the category… It is an approach and a mindset that we look for. Even NCDs Arun Iyer and Amer Jaleel have developed a very keen eye and sense for spotting talent and all of them worked out brilliantly for us,” states Joe, observing that work is what makes people stay, and work is what makes them leave agencies.
The practice is to see how differently people approach any problem, and whether there is premium on originality, besides honesty and conviction about the work they have done. “Even now, in meetings with clients, I, Balki, Arun and Amer do not necessarily agree on a point of view. We have fought in front of a client, but amongst ourselves, which is OK,” reveals Joe.
The agency retains talent because of the opportunity to do the kind of work it does, and work with its clients. “With most of our clients, we are one team. For a lot of our work, the credit goes to our clients. An idea is not as good as the creator, it is as good as the buyer, always,” adds Joe.
So how much time do the bosses spend mentoring young people at Lowe? “I have not mentored a single soul in my life,” quips Balki, “I work with people and we just sit around cracking campaigns. I have never done anything solo. My intention is to solve the problem. Not to teach them anything. In the process, if they learn something, it is their credit and not mine. But I learn hugely from them.”
Joe feels that every meeting is actually a learning process, and junior and mid-level servicing people across agencies learn a lot more in client discussions than they learn internally.
THE challenges AHEAD
Ask Balki about his top priorities for LL+P India in the year ahead, and the challenges he foresees, and pat comes his reply: “We are constantly in the quest of improving our canteen. That is our biggest quest, one we have not been able to crack absolutely. Other than that, we need to surprise ourselves. Most industry people are exactly like us. Chances are that we all breathe, eat (we may eat some better food, considering our canteen) but we are all the same. The challenge would be to continue surprising ourselves with our work, it is a tough one.”
There can’t be any bigger pressure in advertising than where the next idea is going to come from, says Balki. And if you want the idea to be bigger and better or more surprising than what it was the last time, then it just builds additional pressure. “We don’t have clear cut divisions between planning and servicing, and everybody thinks of ideas here, everybody is doing a lot of things, everybody is under pressure to produce an idea, that is bigger than last time, in fact the account management team is sometimes far more worried than the creative, saying that we need something bigger. Sometimes they are clueless as to how to do it, like we are, but they keep pushing,” he says.
“We also get very worried when some work that doesn’t surprise us works really well in the market. We feel extremely ashamed to take credit for it. It is a learning experience for us,” he candidly adds.
For Joe, the pressure is to continue doing the type of work the agency has been doing for the last three years, consistently and across a wider portfolio of clients. About the strategy and direction he has charted for the agency for the next couple of years, he says, “To be best positioned to respond to the increasing number of clients wanting their creative agencies to orchestrate every aspect of their brands’ interface with its customers. To make our clients’ brands the providers of the best content for customers. To create an enabling eco-system by re-defining the way we hire, structure, ideate, execute and want to be remunerated.”
To him, the main challenges seem to be sluggishness and unpredictability in the business environment. “We are a ‘dependent’ industry, i.e, when clients do well, agencies do too. And when clients do badly, agencies most definitely do. And then of course there is the much touted ‘India story’ that is doing no favour on the expectations of all the networks from their Indian agencies! On the other hand, these are also times when clients play safe and decide to back only the best. And so if you can put out your A game as often as you can, you could well benefit in a situation like this. And that is what we try and focus on,” says Joe.
All the time, the camaraderie between Joe and Balki is visible. “Balki has played a disproportionate role in my continuing love story with advertising and why I continue to believe in the type of work we do. Our professional relationship is effortless, yet baffling to most - a bit parent-child, a bit child-parent, but mostly like siblings!” says Joe, summing up an association that has continued for more than 15 years.
THE KAN KHAJURA TESAN STORY
Kan Khajura Tesan, Lowe India’s work for HUL, is a unique mobile marketing initiative to engage with rural consumers in media dark areas. Although several villages in India cannot be reached via traditional media, rural consumers use mobile phones as their first device. This consumer insight was used to create and deploy a win-win solution for both the consumers and the company. Literally meaning ‘ear worm radio channel’ in English, the campaign used Radio to ask people to give a missed call to the dedicated number and receive a call back from Kan Khajura Tesan with pre-programmed content comprising popular local music, HUL ad spots, jokes and a RJ hosted show.
The campaign won a Gold in the Mobile Lions category at Cannes this year, after being nominated by Lowe Worldwide. “It is an idea that has been executed differently - using the old media vehicle to create a new media vehicle,” says Balki. He gives full credit to HUL for the idea, and “the foresight to create a medium like a mobile phone”.
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