Advertising in India in 2013 looked a lot like the complicated character of Don Draper, the charismatic lead of Mad Men, an American TV show based on the iconic advertising agencies of Madison Avenue, NYC in the 1960s. Like Draper’s suave creative character—unruffled in public but in turmoil in private—the industry enjoyed many moments of greatness in the public eye in the past year, but the successes were too often diluted by insider issues like creative controversies, corporate take-overs and talent churn in the top agencies. Here’s looking back at both the good and bad bits of 2013.
Advertising shows compassion
One dominant trend was social advertising. Whether it was Tanishq lighting a candle for single mothers or Google telling stories of people reunited after Partition or the VSafe mobile app that promotes safety and safeguards women who are alone, agencies and their clients pushed the ‘care’ button on consumers. Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative chief of Ogilvy & Mather’s India and South Asia business, says: “In 2013, more advertising took to issues. Normal advertising showed its social side while keeping the brand positioning relevant.”
Prasoon Joshi, executive chairman and CEO of McCann Worldgroup, agrees: “This was the year when socially significant advertising took off in India.” He points to a body of work done by his agency this year. “We did campaigns for the finance ministry on taxing wealth held in Swiss bank accounts, the acclaimed Athithi Devo Bhavo campaign for Ministry of Tourism’s Incredible India initiative as well as one on malnutrition.” But not everybody is drinking the compassion Kool-aid. Agnello Dias, creative head of Taproot, which was bought over by Japanese major Dentsu in late 2012, is more cynical. He says: “The socially conscious theme has replaced the blatant peddling of products. What we saw this year was product advertising disguised as socially relevant advertising.”
Dawn of Digital Advertising
Whether or not Indian ads became more socially relevant on content, digital was everyone’s delivery mantra. Unilever India’s campaign for Lifebuoy is a great example of just such a success story. Titled “Help a Child reach 5,” the campaign’s YouTube film got over 18 million views. Even the follow up ad featuring actor Kajol was viewed over 1.5 million times. Arvind Sharma, president of Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and former chief of Leo Burnett India, says: “In an otherwise relatively slow year for advertising agencies, digital revenues was the star and continued to grow at over 30 per cent annually.” A broad section of clients now appreciate that digital communication is not just one thing. “There are so many components, like website design, search engine optimization, display advertising, social media, video and e-mail marketing. These are all distinct knowledge areas that are being used by clients. And this trend is here to stay,” he adds.
This explains why O&M acquired Hyderabad’s 140-strong Pennywise Solutions, a digital technology and production company, while Dentsu took over Gurgaon’s digital marketing services firm Webchutney. The action is not limited to small digital agencies, says O&M’s Dharam Walia. “Big agencies too developed big digital ideas with story-telling at heart,” he says.
According to Sharma, the investments made by venture capital and private equity firms in e-commerce a couple of years ago showed up this year in terms of big budget campaigns by e-commerce players. The campaigns are aimed at overcoming Indian’s aversion to online shopping. “In a couple of years, we could see a big inflection point in this area,” he adds.
Industry Squabbles
Like Don Draper, the ad industry in India has had to accept some harsh truths about professionalism and transparency. The Goa
Fest, long positioned as India’s answer to Cannes, came into focus as controversies erupted about fake award entries. As the head of a multinational ad agency recalls: “A lot of print ads were made just for the sake of winning awards. Tata Salt was one such case where the ad was done without the client’s sign off and then withdrawn by the agency at the last minute.”
The digital awards jury chairman Raj Kurup of Creativeland walked out of the awards on account of the fake entries. O&M and Lowe set up their own competing awards to reward their staff, and O&M’s Pandey said his agency would participate in awards at industry level only when they were “credible”. McCann’s Joshi rues the industry missteps. “Industry awards are very significant. McCann has its own award show but we have not publicized it. There is a big difference between internal and industry awards.”
The Big Churn
There was significant churn at senior levels. Spatial Access’ founder and chairperson Meenakshi Menon (Madhvani) says she “Can’t remember the last time I saw so much movement in the industry.” Ms Menon has a point: The line at the exit long was long in 2013.
Industry veteran Arvind Sharma left the helm of Leo Burnett and was replaced by Saurabh Varma, the agency’s chief strategy officer for Asia Pacific; Tarun Chauhan, managing partner of JWT, put in his papers while its chief creative officer Bobby Pawar quit to join Publicis in a similar role. D Rajappa left Rediffusion Y&R after a long innings as president while CVL Srinivas quit Starcom. After eight months of coming on board, Sam Ahmed, vice-chairman and chief creative officer, Rediffusion-Y&R, also decided to quit.
AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
Globally, there are only two conglomerates left. The merger of Paris-based Publicis and the New York-based Omnicom Group has created the largest grouping of advertising agencies in the world. In size, the merged group has dethroned Martin Sorrell’s WPP worldwide but, in India, it continues to dominate. Taproot CEO Umesh Shrikhande says all this activity points to an “extended era of moderate growth for the industry.” Don Draper would agree.