Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Dec 24, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Dec 24, 2002 |
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Marketing
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Advertising How the ad industry can win back its respect Our Bureau
CHENNAI, Dec. 23 IT was a lot of introspection and must have made for much soul-searching too. The audience, comprising advertising professionals and aspirants alike, was told what ailed the advertising industry and why it was losing respect, and how it could win it back. The speaker: Mr Ishan Raina, Chairman and CEO, India/Middle East, Euro RSCG Advertising. The occasion: Presentation of diplomas to students doing a course at the Advertising Club Madras. Talking on `Creative Business Ideas - Way Forward for the Advertising Industry', Mr Raina said the industry had not walked the talk about remodelling itself. "The ad agency is a bridge between the client's offer and the minds of end-users, a system for turning insights into creativity into relationships and profits," but the ad agency of today still "resists breaking old remuneration models and does not think beyond a 30-second TVC or a double-spread print ad", he said. "While the industry was busy protecting its 15 per cent, consulting firms evolved the strategy, research agencies found the insights, the media firms got deals with the clients, public relations agencies made the CEOs famous, event managers did the media launches and celebrity models did the creative," Mr Raina remarked, saying it was "time to do something spectacular and win back our clients". According to him, an ad agency had to offer its clients ideas that constituted "brilliant strategy". Creativity was not just about good advertisements, it was all about ideas which united the forces of marketing, communication and technology. Supplementing his speech with instances of Euro RSCG's work worldwide, Mr Raina narrated how Intel Inside was one such creative business idea (CBI). Though Intel is all about high technology, the advertising focus was simply on how computer users could rest reassured with the presence of the Pentium chip. In fact, Intel even commissioned Euro RSCG to do a report for it as against the original choice, consultant McKinsey, he said. Similarly, Select Comfort, a mattress company which wasn't doing well, re-invented itself as one in the `Sleep Numbers' business after Euro RSCG suggested it capitalise on technology which enabled users to inflate their mattresses to their own comfort levels (which were marked by a number). Yet another instance of a CBI was what the ad agency did for Billiken, a candy company in Argentina. On its advice, the company asked children to design candy. The winning designs were manufactured as candy and the company also got a bank of 11,000 ideas from the children's efforts - this was an instance of a company and an ad agency becoming partners in an effort to put the consumer at the centre of its R&D, Mr Raina said, in support of his belief that agencies could make a difference to a client's business and bottomline. As for CBIs in India, Euro RSCG's effort with Sony Max, to turn cricket into family entertainment from its being just a man thing was an example of an "evolving CBI", he said. The TV channel had something for both the purists and the novices during the recent ICC cup and that succeeded in grabbing much attention and high TRPs. The reincarnation of personal transport moped Hero Puch as a business and utility vehicle for `delivery segments' such as couriers, milkmen and pizza chains was another instance of CBI, he said.
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