One of the campaigns that caught my eye both for what it said and how it said, is the one from Breast Cancer Foundation, Singapore.

Agency: DDB, Singapore. Via: Ads of the World

I think it brings alive the importance of regular breast checkups by cleverly juxtaposing it against things women typically obsess about. I thought the insight was bang on and the art direction was superb. But like so many such public service ads, I wish the call for action was a bit more definite & stronger: ‘show support for the women in your life by purchasing a Pink Ribbon’, says the last line. While this works for me, in terms of urging me to get my priorities right, does the slightly flippant execution take away from the seriousness of the topic?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

So what advice do I give my daughter if she considers advertising as a career? I have enough time (about 15 years) to think of a response but if I were to do so based on the industry of today? The positives of joining the industry are quite a few. What about the negatives? Maybe I should just point her towards AdScam who will tell her what’s wrong with the industry in a manner only he can, expletives and all. Or maybe I can list some points that come to mind:

Get paid less for what you enjoy doing: the entry level pay in advertising is poor compared to say Banking, FMCG marketing, media or telecom. The pay gets better as you climb up the ladder but nowhere near what a similarly experienced manager in a client company would get. At the very top of the agency tree its perhaps comparable to senior executives in other industries. Why so? An agency’s ability to attract & retain talent is dependent on its earnings (duh) which is directly linked to the remuneration received from the client. And for reasons mostly self inflicted, the agency business is getting squeezed, resulting in a crisis of talent management.

Ad folk can take themselves too seriously: Luke Sullivan, author of ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This‘ said recently:

“Dude, this is advertising. You’re not pullin’ babies out of burning buildings. You’re not curing cancer or making peace. You make commercials for cry-eye. Websites. End-aisle displays. Jesus.”

Advertising does play a role in changing societal behaviour and when it happens for a good cause it is satisfying. But largely it is to help sell everyday stuff.  Even those campaigns can be satisying especially if they deliver results. While the industry folk know this, they tend to obsess over the irrelevant things. Yes, your work is important simply because it’s important for the client, who is paying for it. You have to take it seriously, be passionate about it and give it your best. But a little bit of perspective never hurts. The kind of revenues the ad industry makes is pittance compared to other businesses – what an agency earns in a year is what a big FMCG or telecom company earns in a month or even less. Advertising does help build brands but there are a lot of other contributions too. I am not saying compromise on quality or have a ‘chalta hai‘ attitude. Yet so many unwarranted outbursts (‘that AE forgot to give me the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting! How dare he!’) over issues that can be sorted out easily, occur every day. The Denver Egotist puts it way better than I can.

Training, career path or the lack of it: perhaps a handful of agencies actually have a formal training program for new recruits. Mostly, it is a ‘learn on the job’ attitude, tagged along with a senior who perhaps learnt on the job too. Even for middle level managers or seniors, a new agency job simply means plunging into the task at hand. There’s no time or bandwidth to indulge in stuff like taking them through the agency culture, outlining expectations and so on. While it is acknowledged that in any industry there are 3 broad levels – directional, supervisory and executional, in advertising designations are invented at almost every level.

Living in perpetual crisis: being a service industry one is expected to respond to client requests and deliver under pressure. But on a larger scheme of things, the industry seems to be responding to one crisis after the other: the creation of specialist units and the irrelevance of the ‘generalist’; from being a strategic partner to being a vendor; the talent management issue, the award show issue…the list goes on.

There are other negatives too: politics, egos, personal agendas – common to other industries. And then there is the struggle to do what you think is right and the need to do what the client wants. Funny thing is, it is still a great industry to be in. Especially if you are passionate about the business of advertising. The joy of creating an idea out of nothing…an idea that can positively impact a brand and in turn influence the client company is priceless.

So do the positives outweigh the negatives?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

I liked the insight here: however much you love your gadgets or possessions, parenthood prepares you for sacrifice. And Nissan helps you have your cake and eat it too.

The ad is part of the new ‘Innovations for all‘ campaign from TBWA/Chiat Day for Nissan.

Closer home, Volkswagen India has been running the ‘Innovations for everyone‘ campaign with pretty much a similar idea – focusing on the little features that make a big difference. Which one works for you?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

I love print advertising. Especially when they create an impact by using the medium cleverly. Here’s one such from Volkswagen in the UK. Lovely use of the physical space, integrated beautifully with the central message. And seems like a collaborative effort from both the Copy & Art teams.

Who said you need a full page ad to create impact in a daily?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

My daughter, all of 4.5 years old seems to have artistic tendencies. She and I squabble over who gets to use the iPad (she wins invariably) and more often than not, she ends up drawing or colouring in the various drawing apps (Color & Draw for Kids, Drawing Pad) I have installed. She has also taken to crayons, water colors and clay models. It got me wondering about the kind of career she will pursue when grown up. Yes, I know, we are talking 15 years from now – who knows what will happen then? But just in case she considers Advertising as a career, what kind of advice am I likely to give her? Of course, it is wonky to base it on perceptions of the industry as we know it today, but I thought it’d be fun to put down the pros & cons.

Pros:

Get paid for what you enjoy doing: Movie stars are prone to say that theirs is a profession where one gets paid for doing what they enjoy, for having fun. Advertising too is a bit like that – unless you are passionate about the business you are not likely to enjoy it. And those who have made it to the A-List in advertising joined the profession simply because they loved the profession. I don’t know of other professions which call for passion as a pre-requisite (are Accountants passionate about Accounting?) but this truly can be about having fun and getting paid for it. The operative word being, can.

Personally speaking, advertising was & is a passion. I remember my days in Loyola College, Chennai studying Zoology but having little or no interest in that subject. I was obsessed about advertising as a profession. I seemed to have had a fair idea of the role & demands of an Account Executive (through books, mainly) and had no hang ups about a glamourous profession. After college, I made the rounds of all the agencies, collecting their print ads, dividing them by folder. I even maintained a register of TV ads jotting down the ads prior to a program – including the client name, the agency (if I had that information) and duration of – a TV AD Index of sorts. I used to take a bus to Mount Road, Chennai to buy the Mumbai edition of TOI just so that I could see the ‘national’ ads (one couldn’t see those ads in The Hindu – the local paper). That first-day enthusiasm for a job – big or small, is common among those who’ve stayed on in advertising for decades. The satisfaction of a job well done – be it creating a leaflet, cracking an idea for a multi-media campaign or writing a good document and getting paid for it is a great feeling.

Learn & un-learn every day: it doesn’t matter if you are 3-days old in the advertising business or 30-days old – there is scope to learn something new every day. Since the industry has to keep pace with changing media consumption habits and technologies what you learnt about printing technologies or Direct Mail 20 years ago is of no use today. The challenge to keep pace with new media & technology is that much more for those who joined advertising in the era of block printing, bromides, art pulls and 35-mm slides. But that’s the fun part.

Wear many hats: you could be discussing a business problem on a television brand in the morning and a milk powder brand a little later and maybe a two-wheeler brand after that. Each category poses a unique problem, different target audience mindsets in operation and maybe call for different solutions. Skill sets you need to polish? Here’s the laundry list: presentation, communication, people, negotiation and administration. Depending on the office culture and your boss’s working style there could be no restrictions on where creative ideas come from. So anyone can be creative, not just those in the creative department.

Talent & team work: the industry is filled with bright talent across functions. And because there is scope to interact with specialists in Media, Film & Radio production, Script writing, Interactive and so on, the chances of coming across talented folk and being influenced by them is great.

Like with movies when just a germ of an idea takes shape into a script and magically comes alive on the screen with a little help from artists & technicians, advertising too has its share of team work & magic. After its been long forgotten where the idea came from the elements of an advertising campaign come together seamlessly.

Business meets art: debate about whether advertising is a Science or Art aside, the profession presents a unique opportunity to solve a business problem through the Arts – the creative process, Film Craft, photography…after the marketing minds have done their job. So unlike movies it is not pure art, not a form of personal expression. The business problem need to be solved – so there is an accountability to the art.

Any other pros of the advertising business from a career point-of view? The cons coming up in Part 2 of this post. Comments welcome.

PS: This post has been selected by BlogAdda as one of the top posts of this week’s Spicy Saturday Picks. Thank You, BlogAdda!

Update: Read Part 2 of the post here.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

So two big accounts change agencies this week: Reliance Communications moved to Grey and now there is talk of Airtel moving to JWT.  On the media front, there was change of agencies at Coca-Cola too. What makes some client-agency relationships break? If it breaks within a span of months, you know something drastic happened – wrong chemistry, poor creative…whatever. When pitches are called for after 2-3 years of working with an agency the reasons could vary from a change of CMO at the client’s end, unhappiness with the agency’s response time, quality issues etc. Client CMO & brand manager stints are getting shorter and hence they are in a hurry to launch new stuff and do new things (junk whatever has been done in the past) during their stint. A natural repercussion: review. Consistency & retaining talent at the agency side too has been an industry-wide issue, leading to lack of continuity on a particular brand.

But it gets really puzzling when clients decide to terminate long standing relationships – the ones that last for decades. (In an October 2008 post, I asked ‘Are legendary client-agency relationships in trouble?‘. Most of the issues outlined there seem so relevant today).Global alignments with an agency group, especially for MNCs is common. They ensure that relationships at the top remain stable, a Global Account Director keeps track of brand issues across regions and so on. But for local companies to stick with an agency over decades is rare. When they do it’s usually starts with right chemistry between the two CEOs. Good business-building work is also at the heart of that kind of relationship. I think things go wrong when senior level involvement from the agency wanes especially in tough times for the brand. Which is directly linked to being able to retain talent within the agency over a long period of time. I think with consistency comes not just familiarity with the brand but also an ability to steer the brand in the right direction. In agencies you may find consistency at the CEO level but with levels 2-3 rungs lower, across functions, there seems to be a lot of churn. The ability to hold on to senior talent – be it for reasons of remuneration or otherwise, is getting difficult for agencies. An important element – but not the only one – is the agency remuneration that allows one to attract good talent. A handy guide on 10 deadly sins in agency-client relationships can be found here.

Recently, Strawberry Frog outlined the essentials of a long-lasting client-agency relationship:

Honesty. Whatever happens, client and agency, need to tell each other the truth. Trust and mutual forgiving of mistakes, which are unavoidable on both sides. Absence of fear. Nobody can produce great work, under a Damocles sword. Acknowledgement of jobs well done. Mutual agreement that carrots produce largely better and more work than whips. Openness from wherever ideas come from. They often come from the client. Close involvement at the top of client and agency. The big picture must constantly be clear to everybody. Nobody is permitted to waver in the belief of the essential values of the brand. A sense of humor, which allows both sides to have as much fun as possible, in the interest of outstanding commitment and work.

What are the ones we can tick in a typical client-agency relationship?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

An article of mine was published in the Brand Wagon section of Financial Express yesterday. It was a long over-due, last minute, deadline-looming effort – and maybe it shows? Would love to have your comments.

Click here for a larger image.

How about sharing some of the good briefs you have received or written, especially in the context of a new media or integrated campaign?

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

In advertising, almost every category has some ‘holy cows’ – brands in a category follows some category codes. When it comes to advertising high-definition TV or 3D TV it’s common to find the proposition, ‘it brings the characters alive’. And you have several run of the mill executions, with very little to differentiate between brands.

In this context, I was fascinated to see this execution for Panasonic’s Viera 3D TV from Chile:

Agency: Lobo, Santiago, Chile

Closer home, the LG Infinia ad attempted to weave a story and present the idea of ‘life like pictures’ in a different manner. With the Viera ad, just that little twist in the central proposition ‘the characters may alive but don’t belong in living rooms’ makes all the difference. Such ideas may come out as a result of a creative brief, brainstorm or just the creative team stumbling upon an idea. Proof that even in seemingly tough categories where all the possible variations of a theme have been exhausted, it is still possible to be different.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

It’s been over a week since I got the BSNL 3G SIM Card to work on the iPad. So has it really been the ‘magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price’, as advertised? The price part first- since I got it in India through a US-visiting friend of friend, I was OK in the price front. Some of the prices quoted for the same product on eBay India border on the ridiculous (by the way, there is an iPhone 4 listed for 82K over at eBay India!). However, even at a decent price, be prepared for expenses.

What are the drawbacks?

Connectivity: there is enough to do with an iPad when it’s offline (no, not use it as a tray) – read books, play the piano, draw or paint, play games, watch or listen to a podcast, listen to music…and so on. What makes it an even better deal is constant connectivity. I have a wifi connection at home and the BSNL 3G SIM card is pretty good wherever it works. But it is not seamless while on the road and breaks into Edge mode in some places – especially the suburbs. In Mumbai, I got 3G coverage only from the airport to Bandra and got Edge coverage in Nariman Point. So when you want to show off the IMDB app to Apple skeptics, it could turn into an unspectacular event.

Micro SIM: Getting the regular SIM card to work on the iPad is a task in itself. There are tutorials available online but cutting a SIM is not for the faint hearted. I bought a micro SIM cutter on the web and had it shipped. So unless you are willing to risk cutting up a SIM or paying money for a micro SIM cutter maybe it’s wise to wait for an official India launch.

Data usage: Some of the stuff, like magazines, weigh in at over 300MB an issue. Ditto for some apps like The Guinness Book of World Records. Some apps like The Guardian Eyewitness, download content only if you are on a Wi-Fi connection as it consumes huge bandwidth.

Average cost of App: the good iPad-optimized apps cost a little bit more than the average iPhone app. While some are over-priced (hoping to cash in on the novelty factor of iPad, I guess) the essential ones - Newsrack, selling at $4.99 or Word Magic (I have a little daughter) selling at $0.99 – are worth every penny.

Has it affected usage of other devices? Thanks to the iPad, time spent on my Macbook has come down. It’s a pleasure browsing news sites, checking mail, watching podcasts, videos and playing around with the apps. Most of the apps look gorgeous – check out the 1000 Ultimate Experiences ($3.99 – iTunes link) by Lonely Planet (452MB!) to see what I mean:

All said, I can’t replace my Macbook with an iPad just as yet. Work like creating & editing documents, writing a blog post with lots of links, and downloading videos or simply being able to be online without an interruption require me to access a full-fledged laptop still. Writing a post on WordPress for iPad and linking a sentence to a hyperlink means quitting the WordPress app, finding the link on Safari and then pasting it over at WP. Pretty cumbersome. While I can create presentations through the Keynote app ($9.99), the lack of a file system whereby you can access old files/references means one has to rely on a laptop of desktop.

So what need does the iPad fill? Since India specific content is not huge yet and I don’t have videos or movies purchased on iTunes as yet, it pretty much is only for browsing internet content. The apps make the user experience even better. As has been said by several tech gurus earlier, it is kind of evolving it’s own market, it’s own usage. It is a computing accompaniment? My wife would change it to computing companion, though.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

On a day trip to Mumbai last week, I saw a hoarding for a Mystery Shampoo, asking people to send an SMS and guess the brand. I thought it was Vivel, by ITC. I then saw another hoarding down the road – a retort from Dove claiming there was no mystery and they were the No.1. I came to know that the original ad was from Pantene thanks to the subsequent print ads. Apparently it was more than just an outdooor & print campaign and included several activation programs. I got to know of the social media play, thanks to this great read by @beastoftraal: The Televisionization of Social Media.

Images sourced from: Brand Recall

To  me, it appears that:

(a) the teaser campaign and activation was on for a tad too long a period – just enough time for a smart competitor to seize the opportunity

(b) the social media usage of the brand, especially the obvious plugs from celebrities seems a bit amateurish & forced

(c) when you are a global brand, your ‘successes’ in other parts of the world are studied closely (a search for ‘mystery shampoo’ on Google could take you to a 2008 promotion in the US for Pantene) and counter measures anticipated by your competitor.

When I checked on Twitter, some thought that what Dove did was ‘cheap’ especially after ‘Real Women‘ and all that. But most said that Dove benefited the most. Check out ‘Why I would love to work with HUL‘ and ‘HUL’s last minute surprise foxes P&G‘.

On the social media part, I am reminded of the need for brands to have ‘newsworthiness’ of to use social media well. Yes, being chosen by over 80% of women as the best shampoo has some newsworthiness but is it powerful enough to carry on a conversation? It merely becomes an announcement on micro blogs – add celeb tweets to it and it becomes a one-way message. While shampoo is a high involvement category (I disagree with @beastoftraal on it being low involvement) will it evoke such an interest in online media so as to have sustained brand conversations? I doubt it. The brand’s Twitter timeline has evolved to provide tips, which is atleast better than forking out brand messages.

FMCG marketing, especially in categories where it is difficult to generate ‘new news’ is a tough ball game and P&G are masters of it. Their integrated efforts for brands – especially the ones in the digital space – Being Girl, Old Spice, P&G Mums (for the Winter Olympics) have been fantastic. With this one, I guess they blinked in the teaser stage and let Dove hog the mind space thereafter.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.