Can creativity solve business problems? Melt

0:01 [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome to melt time Suresh wut it's been quite the year for FCB group India the interpublic group or ipg owned Network R in D Sinha as group CEO for and South Asia and followed it up with the appointment of new deputies and creative leaders across its multiple shops the agency has also been in the news for winning pitches and Awards as well be it at the Curious creative Awards the abies or even the recently held KH lion is there a secret to this

0:47 success for the answers we are in conversation with dirat sinina himself so let's get down to business and talk shop as we get ready to melt with DJ Sinha so D let's start with a fundamental question today how do you define the advertising agency of today and therefore advertising of today I think the two are related obviously right uh the good thing about advertising of today is that we are being called in uh not just to do another ad or not just to do another campaign we are being called in to solve problems what has helped is that the pallet of advertising has increased change right we just back from can look at all the body of work which is getting done you're using technology using data you're using AI uh you're Building Products You're Building

1:33 packaging you're solving something at a distribution end right so the fundamental definition today is creativity which solves business problems and human problems that's where the ask from advertising as a businesses and that's the advertising agency of today if you attend KH or any other advertising Festival it can be a bit confusing are you a creative Le business are you a technology Le business or are you a data science and AI Le business what are you today so I think there are different positions uh different people are taking uh on this uh there are organizations which are saying yes we can make money doing data work uh yes we can make money doing digital business transformation work which is pure uh takeown work for us at FCB we are very clear that we're in the business of creativity uh creativity which solves

2:20 problem uh and has data Tech diversity as a service to the idea of creativity so we are not against data we not against Tech but we are using all of that as an ally but at the core of it we are in the business of using creativity to solve problems then can you tell us how the design of the FCB universe as it were aligns around this idea of say let's say creative Center Tech data AI supported so I mean for example basic things like for example at the heart of the global board there's a chief creative officer right Susan who's our uh chairperson and now uh you know part of the ipg group so uh the fact that there are people uh our leaders are embedded into creativity they have a center seat at the table they are

3:05 defining the narrative for the brand and the organization for example is a is a basic starter uh on that piece right if you look at all the hirings for example we've done in India in last 3 to six months has all largely been on the creative front right so a investing in Creative Talent putting creative leadership at the center of the table uh as a conversation what's your proposition to the Clans we're not getting into Clans and saying we can help you restructure your organization from a tech and data perspective that's not our product on the table we're saying we can come and help you build success for your business right we can give you a credit solution we can give you a data solve we can get you a text Solve but all around the idea of creativity in fact even the media work we are beginning to do now is wrapped around Creative Solutions and creative

3:51 ideas uh right so that's how we are structured in people terms in terms of where we're putting our money in terms of uh talent and structures and our positioning of what product we putting on the table for our clients and the different agencies within the FCB world what role does each of them play so if you look at the India India Rapa right we have connect which is the largest and I would I would say the best digital company in the country uh so connect is our Arrowhead and our sharp end on everything which is Tech data CRM uh CX ux uh and even digital media uh right so so that's where all the Innovation all the data Coe uh decides uh bulk of our digital Awards and media digital awards are service out of connect right connect

4:38 is also playing a large role within the group to get ourselves Future Ready the group data Coe for example resides with connect so that's connect uh if you look at FCB ulka that's where we are very very equipped to build long-term businesses right if you look at AMU look at tataa Motors you look at ITC deep business integration right at the business business conversation and through the line execution but here we specialize in what I say the companies and Brands which Drive India's economy right and we have the capacity capability uh the mindset to deliver long-term success over a period of decades the talent also uh in ulka is is a long-term talent I mean kulvi who's the CEO of ulka actually joined us as management train he is now the co so

5:24 that's ulka for you FCB India is our youngest baby and therefore they do more new age clients uh like uber Google poror and so on and so forth that's FCB India FCB interface uh started as a conflict agency but now has its own rapu of CLI a national agency now and it's a good mix of starting with main line but delivering through the line in a very very beautiful way so that are the four companies which make the the group in India and and as a group then we can go from very high in strategy to Mainline to digital to creative to CRM to to digital media to production all in one pnl one shot and as a newly appointed CEO are you looking at any Acquisitions any inorganic growth in the offing we

6:10 are uh having conversations with companies here in the region and so on and so forth but for now if you ask me personally I'm really focused on incubating Kinnect it's a large acquisition for us we're seeing how we can incubate Kinnect uh you know integrate them uh make 1 plus 11 11 with connect n FCB and connect ipg so that's a big part of the focus on acquisition D you have spoken about strategy before and you're a big believer in the power of strategy traditionally agencies like yours have been allowed into the brand strategy and the advertising strategy are you getting a seat on what problem to solve on the say corporate strategy of a company or the business strategy of a company if you look at so let me give you examples I me look at say clients such as ITC we are we have the seat at

6:55 the table with the cosos there right and if you're meeting an ITC client they would say there you know in X category our market share is y how do we get it to y + 5 what should be our strategy for that right what what should we be doing at the product level what should we be doing at the distribution level at a brand level comps level portfolio level we are definitely engaging with our clients at a CO level across boardrooms across clients are we going to a tataa motor saying what should your car look like no we don't have expertise in that so we don't get there but beyond that all our briefs are on help us get our business uh to grow acquire uh you know so we are solving for acquisition we solving for growth we are solving for Market penetration we're solving for Behavior change across our clients and

7:41 we're being called in into boardrooms for those answers does this mean you need to hire different kinds of people in the agency people who have for instance Behavioral Science experience I mean FCB has always been the strategy agency right and even if you look at our uh business leadership teams right they're very very well vered in strategy so we are not sending account management to clients offices uh just to have a coordination meeting our leadership when they're sitting in clients offices they have a point of view on the portfolio they have a point of view on growth they have a point of view on media they have a point of view on the businesses headed and what initiatives uh we should be building uh so a leadership is attuned to that they've been doing it for decades there's a huge thrust on hiring strategists who are able to do that and even a credit folks are not coming to the room saying hey what's the next ad

8:28 campaign or what's the jingle or what's the TVC I should write but they coming saying what's the business I can solve through creativity so that tuning is is what we live with day in and day out the FCB group inia recently conducted a program called FCB now to bring platforms and Brands together and you got together to discuss uh and I'm quoting you embracing brand building in the New Age yeah what came out of this meeting what was what what followed up so the whole setup was you know we had about 90 clients we have agency leaders and we have these five or six platforms that we have preferential arrangement with come and present to us what are the products available what are the Technologies available and how can we weave some of the brand work streams into these uh Technologies it's kind of a crucible uh

9:13 you know kind of a hackathon uh if you to say between platforms uh Brands and agency and what's come out of it is about 60 work streams uh where clients have said that uh I am doing this category and I would be interested in doing a certain work stream with a Google or doing a certain work stream with share chat or doing a certain work stream with Amazon mini TV and our teams are now following up on that building ideas prototypes and hopefully in about say 30 days 60 days from now you'll see some of those ideas get to the market and did this work well the collaboration between clients agency and platform because it traditionally these are not the friendliest of relationship yeah it was beautiful right I mean and honestly this is the first time we're doing it here uh and this is the first time I would imagine any creative agency has done it right so we had a bit of a

10:00 repetion but the way it went it was fantastic and in today's age when you know everybody says uh these are days of very less attention levels we had plans staying on till the end having conversations we had platform Partners agency folks uh Millennials and JZ staying on till the end through the day uh so that was that was amazing to my mind do you believe that we live in the age of low attention span I ask you this because I'm just finishing watching 6 hours of absolutely TV show last night yeah I I feel our thres hold for poor content has gone up uh right I don't think we uh so our attention span for something which is not not worth my attention arguably that was always low I mean yes I know I mean I was born in kishidan Era uh right and and you had Jingles pumped to you in every some of

10:46 those pieces of work that we feel nostalgic about today if those scripts were being presented to us in agency or as clients I don't think we'll accept them uh right so it was a captive audience uh you know I mean chitrar used to be 15 minutes say I'm that old you couldn't afford to have a high degree of uh you know dissonance with that kind of content today is a is a plethora of choice right you're you're flitting from one but what you like you are embedded to you're right I mean people are spending all night back to back uh you know watching binge watching we're up all night watching football at 12:30 at night I'm watching Cricket till 12:00 at night and then I'm binge watching a TV show the next day so I don't understand where this attention spent this theory is coming yeah even at the FCB now platform what came out very clearly is that you know I mean we should take huge

11:32 pride in this whole personalization at scale oh my God I'm churning out 100 social media post per month but who's watching those who's liking those who's interacting with that so I think the world has come back full circle to say you content needs to be human it needs to be either emotional or humorous or engaging right only then it is worth it uh for Brands to engage with it so I think I'm so happy that we're coming back to the to the era of being more human to the of being more creative and of course with the help of data and Tech you are able to Sharp Target sharp shoot and so on and so forth that's where the role of data and take is your recently concluded group meeting you've had the theme of growth guts and Glory yeah how does that message resonate with the diversity that you have in the organization yeah I let me just break

12:18 that down so I think for for us growth is critical right you in the fastest growing economy of the world uh right there are many markets in the world where growth is hard to get right and when you look at your role as a portfolio in the global scheme of things India is a big growth driver and that's what ipg looks at us for that's what FCB Global looks at us for and to my mind if you're not growing right I mean you're still water and that leads to dangu so so growth is very important uh as a culture as a mindset and growth is not just about Revenue growth is as people individuals are we growing right in our mindsets are are we progressing right as a culture are we progressing so growth comes from there uh Glory obviously I mean we like winning right I mean if you're if you're an athlete why would you not want to win at Olympics of

13:04 course you would want to win in Olympics if you're part of a cricket team You' want to win the World Cup right so you want to win you want to win in the right way for the work which has worked for the client for main Brands that's where the glory agenda comes from and GS is about the culture right we want to be younger as a as a culture we want to be more our glass uh we want to have a hierarchy organization where anybody where the entrop is very high people are colliding with each other around ideas so those are three pillars of our theme for the year and maybe a year or two more to come uh and early this year we got to Gua with a very very diverse team I must say and we discussed this and that's become our kpi for the year that's become our Benchmark around how every day we are navigating our thinking as an organization D you recently got back from Khan this year how was fcb's

13:50 performance at Khan this year everything depends on the context that you set up for yourself for us can this year was we've got four newly minted ccos uh we've got new ncds we've got uh you know Coos some of us have been to can not been to can so have a new executive leadership team uh pretty much right and the idea was to be there as the team a have conversations about our business our future strategy future of our industry in the backdrop of can where the best work is being discussed where the best narratives are being discussed so we used can almost as a leadership Workshop uh format and we were discussing every day about the future of our own agency that was one objective second objective was obviously for the leadership team to interact and meet our Global Leadership you know so so we were

14:37 on the boat with the FCB folks globally celebrating understanding the culture eming and third obviously you go to can to win uh so we had a few short list we had a win globally our our our hashtags has never finished right so so we aren't completely happy with it we always work in progress we want to win more but we want to win it in the right way we don't want to Short Circuit or engineer something AR offcially there's a certain kind of work we want to put we want to win on big Brands work which is real which is what the HDFC Bank brand was uh it's a real work it's a tech and data piece it's something that people saw it's on the largest bank brand in the country so I'm happy with what we won but we could do more which is what the program is okay let's go from KH to Goa Goa Fest this year yeah you moderated session that aimed to chart the fut

15:23 future of the agency it boiled down to three or maybe four points Talent remuneration and and value yeah right is there a pecking order in these three things pay well get the talent get the value out of the talent I would say talent talent is the biggest pecking order because see we are not a we are not in car business we don't make cars we are not in a fmcg business we don't make shampoos right people are the only ingredient of this business right and uh we CRI that the best people from say B schools or colleges aren't come to advertising then why will advertising produce the best work right so to my mind Talent is the biggest question that the industry needs to answer answer for itself uh and then related to that question is how are we paying them are we building a a stream in the agency where the young people are getting

16:08 credit are they getting FaceTime or are they buried in some layers and not getting visibility not get seen so those are the the questions that we need to answer but to my mind getting the best talent on board creating an environment where they do the best work of their lifetime right where it's is enjoyable it is diverse it is non-toxic as a as a culture and that's not just for my agency as is for the industry on the whole right so fixing that and second I would say uh how do we get paid as a as a business it's a big question as well right I mean everybody is cribbing that you know continuously clients are reducing our remuneration uh right so how do we get counted for outcomes and not just input uh that's the second big shift that we need to make as an industry and those two things will solve a lot of Woos that everybody's is going

16:54 through right now I would say okay I recently spoke to goam of talented and he echoed some of the things that you said that we are being questioned about mans and how much we pay our employees and we are paid for number of hours of uh input and not for the creative output that we did so the question for you DJ is large Network agency independent uh personality driven hot shop what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses relative to each other I think this market for both and they are two very very different kind of offerings right I think I can talk about ourselves clients come to us for long-term impact clients come to us for outcome guaranteed impact so there are projects with clients where we are for three months just working on pure strategy we are in no hurry to put a campaign out so clients are not coming

17:40 to us as just as snipers I mean uh you know that your snipers come give me a quick campaign and I'm out we are known for outcome delivery building Brands businesses over a period of time and I think the difference between a team of snipers versus a team of army we also have snipers but we not just snipers right uh and dependents I think some of them are doing great job a lot of hard for the work that's coming out of agencies such as talented right they're at it and my view is that everybody should grow right I don't feel I come from a generation where we feel that we all grow and therefore the industry grows and are all of you United in this demand to clients that you got to be paid for outcome and value not for input yeah so I want the independence to grow I want us to grow I want all my compr network agencies to grow because we are

18:25 at a point in time where either the industry finds a new model and survives and becomes great or we all die okay let's change track now now the issue of self certification of advertising hit the headlines recently what is the FCB view on this so I mean more than FCB view we have an industry view because I'm also part of the ad club and tripi we're trying to as an industry body come together have conversations with the ministry uh we are trying to navigate the Judiciary uh as well I mean it is something which puts huge amount of strain on the current client and the Ed structures at the same time we do understand the need for regulation and there are certain proposals that uh Triple A ofi Plus ad Club combined Plus aski have put together to the government which are being discussed as of now where we can actually do self-regulation

19:13 but with execution abilities which are a little lighter uh on on the resources so all of this is under conversation till then we are complying because there's a regulation uh let's see how this this unfolds as a story all right 2024 elections over we have a new government power I know there are state election that are coming up uh it seems to be stable for now what are you hearing from your clients over the next 5 years are they gearing up for a massive wave of growth in the industry and therefore a big wave of growth for you I think the India story is intact right I think the mistake sometimes do is that we respond to a quarter uh right quarters will come and go here and there but I mean to my mind a few critical things are if we are able to unleash the manufacturing pie right in next 2 3 four 5 years that will fill a lot of uh consumption money in

19:58 the middle of the market so next five years important that the belly kicks in so you then go to 120 to 220 250 million legitimate consumers in the country what does it mean for for an agency like yours like a crazy boom in business over the next 5 10 years yeah I think I think the agency business in India largely will be characterized by capacity creation are you able to build capacity are you able to get and retain the talent which will'll be able to deliver the success and failures will be determined by capacity because there will be demand I don't think there'll be lack of demand it's what's the kind of Agents you able to build in terms of skill sets response time agility quality are you able to retain that will be the biggest driver of agency success in next five years in a market such as India final question the when's your next book coming out so there's I mean there's an

20:45 idea there's a contract on the table but right now I mean either you can build an agency or write a book at this point in time so all focus on building FCB uh New Wave uh so let's see once I get breather from it then then hopefully okay D thank you very much for thank you so much pleasure talking to you thank you and now time for a creative pick this spot for orange by paris-based agency Marcel wowed one and all as it set the Benchmark for technology infused creativity named women's football this clever bait and switch ad instantly calls out gender bias hard-hitting and memorable no wonder that it ended up winning the film Grom Prix at the recently concluded con line take a look

21:35 [Music] spe [Music]

22:22 [Applause] [Music] with that it's a wrap on melt today keep following melt on social media the handle is ready to melt or simply log on to ready to.com if you'd like to follow me I'm atank on X till next week goodbye and thanks for watching