JUNE 21- 27, 2017

BE SPECIAL

Ogilvy & Mather

Lowe Lintas

JWTMcCann Erickson

Taproot Dentsu

Mullen LoweFCB Ulka

DDB Mudra

12

34

5

6

7

8

9

10Dentsu

Leo Burnett

AGENCY RECKONERWhile ad-folks soak in the sun, champagne and the best of global creativity at Cannes Lions, we present to you the keenly awaited Brand Equity Agency Reckoner 2016-17: the guide to the country’s most powerful creative bunch

iNSIDEThe Showreel P4

The VVIPs: Who is the most influential person in advertising? P6

The Lowe Spark P7

MindshareMaxusLodestar UMMadison World OMDStarcom Mediavest GroupDentsu MediaMediaComDDB MudramaxPHD

Initiative Media/BPNCaratMECAegis MediaZenithOptimediaHavas MediaMotivatorAllied MediaVizeum Media ServicesMedia Directions

2AGENCY RECKONER 2016-17 A NCY RECKONER 2016 17 AGENA

How We Did It

Agency Reckoner'16India's Leading Agencies

[11-40]

The Brand Equity Agency Reckoner 2016 survey was conducted by Nielsen between February 2017 and April 2017. Following seven segments were covered in survey for evaluation:

1. Top Ad Agencies2. Top Media Agencies3. Top Production Houses4. Top Design Specialist Agencies5. Top Digital Marketing Agencies6. Most Influential Person in Creative

and Media 7. Most Admired Marketer

Who we interviewed In total 171 industry professionals par-ticipated in the survey through online method. 52 were from ad agencies, 20 from media agencies, 58 were marketing and communications professionals from different industries: FMCG, ecommerce, retail, consumer durables, telecom, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, finan-cial services, and 41 were allied market-ing professionals (digital specialists, shopper marketing, promotion, events and design consultants).

Of 171, 34 participants were from top management (CEO, MD, chairman, etc), 59 senior management (SVP, VP, presi-dent, heads etc), 25 middle management (director, AVP etc), 52 managerial level (senior manager, manager, GM, DGM) and 1 from junior level (supervisor etc).

In terms of years of experience: 50 par-ticipants had over 20 years of experi-ence. 76 participants had 11-20 years of experience, 35 participants had 8-10 years of experience and 6 participants had 6-7 years of experience.

What we asked Ad Agency, Media Agency, Production House, Design Specialist Agency and Digital Marketing Agency segments

Respondents were asked to rank up to top 10 agencies considering the agencies work in the past one year. Rank 1 was assigned Best Agency according to the respondent, rank 2 was Second Best, and so on till Rank 10. Though respondents were provided with an exhaustive list of agencies to choose from, they also had the option to nominate any other agency that they felt should be included.

Advertising Agencies were further

evaluated on the following parameters on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means Very Poor and 10 Excellent. An agency known to provide highly crea-

tive and effective solutions An agency known for its a high quality of

execution An agency known to effectively partner

with other elements of the marketing communication mix (like media agen-cies, digital/rural specialists etc)

An agency that offers a broad spectrum of services

An agency known to be proactive An agency known to offer high, demon-

strable ROIFor other segments, respondents were

asked to consider the following parame-ters while nominating top agencies:

Media Agencies An agency known to provide the best

rates & ROI An agency known to effectively partner

with other elements of the marketing communication mix (like ad agencies, digital/content specialists etc)

An agency that offers a broad spectrum of services

An agency known to be proactive

Production House A production house known for its execu-

tion quality A production house known for its innova-

tive approach and films A production house known to provide

‘Value for Money’

Design Specialists A design specialist known

to provide creative & stra-tegic inputs

A design specialist known for its effective use of design to strengthen the brand

A design specialist known for its execu-tion quality

Digital Marketing Agencies A digital marketing agency known to use

the latest technology and be familiar with the latest developments in digital marketing

A digital marketing agency known for its ability to promote brands across digital channels (websites, social media) and using different digital strategies

A digital marketing agency known for its execution quality and ability to partner with other parts of the marketing com-munication mix

Most Influential Person in Creative and Media Respondents were asked to rank up to top 10 (in rank order) the most influen-tial people in Advertising, Media and Production, who have done some of the best work in these areas. Rank 1 means most influential, Rank 5 fifth most influ-ential and so on. Respondents also had the option to nominate another name, apart from the ones provided in the list.

Most Admired MarketerWithout any aid/list, respondents were asked to provide top three brands in rank order (irrespective of industry/cat-egory) that have been marketed so well that they would nominate the marketing team for Most Admired Marketer award. Respondents were asked to consider the following parameters while nominating

the brands: 1) Well defined marketing structure 2) Creativity 3) Consumer

Understanding

How we arrived at the rankingAt first stage, self/ own organi-sation nominations were

ignored in order to ensure unbi-ased assessment. Within each

segment, ‘weighted average rank score’ was calculated. Higher weight-

ed scores indicate higher rank order. For ad agencies on additional four

parameters, weighted average rating score were used to arrive at top 10 agen-cies on respective parameter.

Contract

Wieden + Kennedy

BBDO India

Publicis

FCB Interface

CreativeLand Asia

L & K Saatchi & Saatchi

Grey

Leo Burnett Orchard

Rediffusion YR

RK Swamy BBDO

Happy Mcgarrybowen

Havas Worldwide

Scarecrow

BBH

TBWA India

PerceptH

Enormous

Soho Square

Cheil Worldwide

Saints & Warriors

daCunha Communications

Famous

Thinkstr

Triton

Alok Nanda Communications

Crayons

Infectious

Network

Metal Communications

WYP (What's Your Problem)

Salt

Cartwheel

Cut The Crap

Bates CHI

ITSA

Brave New World

Curry-Nation

Sideways

BMB

TOP 10 DIGITAL AGENCIESWebchutneyInteractive AvenuesOgilvyOneIsobar India22feet Tribal

DigitasLBiFoxyMoronGlitch WatConsultDigital Law & Kenneth

1

1

112

2

123

3

134

4

145

5

156 167 1789 1910

678910

20

TOP 20 MEDIA AGENCIES

TO

1

1

2

2

3

3

4

4

5

5

678910

T

18

11

12

1314

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

4142

43

44

4546

47

48

49

50

June 21 - 27, 2017

THE SHOWREELAGENCY RECKONER 2016-17 A NCY RECKONER 2016 17 AGENA 4

Chiefs of the Top 3 creative and media agencies in the country show us some of their agency's best work and share the highs and lows from the year gone by

O&M (Rank #1)Seagram's Imperial BlueWe've been doing the Men Will Be Men campaign for Imperial Blue for years and it was wonderful to see the campaign continue with three new films.

Star PlusAn extension of the channel's 'Nayi Soch' philosophy, this campaign roped in Aamir Khan and attempt-ed to break the gender stereo-types in our country.

LOWE (Rank #2) MAXUS (Rank #2)

Google Maxus ideated, executed and implemented, for the first time ever on Indian television, a Live Traffic Update Segment, highlight-ing the key features of ‘Google maps’ app & demonstrating the intuitive UI of the app. The idea was to drive the India tech story by educating the audience on adopting technology as an enabler.

PayTM When the demonetization policy was announced, the agency over-night actioned a huge campaign featuring the prime-minister Modi. Time was the most crucial factor the team had to take all necessary approved in less than three hours. It was almost a 'Stop Press' situa-tion but we nailed it successfully.

Sonata ACT Maxus co-created a three-phase campaign to increase awareness of the Sonata’s new safety watch – ACT (App-enabled co-ordinates).

LODESTAR UM (Rank #3)SamsungLaunched on the New Year’s eve, the Samsung Service campaign had the first ever 4 minute ad on TV to create a world record of over 100 million views in around 7 weeks.

AmulAmul is an 'all pervasive, rele-vant for all age groups' brand. We need to manage many com-plexities, micro targeting for over 50 brands, ensuring a youth connect, building trust, enhancing image with interna-tional brands coming in.

Johnson & JohnsonWe have identified micro nuanc-es, needs, and moments of rele-vance for moms, to create unique media assets, knowledge series, search strategy and rele-vant online content to enhance its leadership position.

Highs & LowsThe high point for me was the recently concluded Kyoorius Advertising & Digital Awards. Awards are our way of keeping a check on the quality of our work, judged by our peers.

The low point has been attri-tion. Ogilvy has always been a hotbed of talent for the indus-try to hire from but as more and more opportunities open up for creative talent within and outside our industry, we find it harder and harder to hold on to young talent.

Kunal Jeswani CEO, Ogilvy & Mather India

Highs & LowsWe ended 2016 on a very strong note. Be it revenue growth, cre-ative output and awards or halv-ing our attrition numbers. Thompson, certainly, has got its swagger back.

Amidst many highs, the only dis-satisfaction was having to post-pone some new initiatives on content, design and social.

Tarun Rai CEO, J Walter Thompson

South Asia

Highs & LowsWinning new businesses like the ITC media business, and retaining the existing businesses like Indi-an Premiere League and Pernod Ricard India.

The low points are the number of pitches happening in the industry. In many instances by the end of the pitch, most conversations (and even decisions) tend to be price driven. This undermines the reason of the pitch itself.

Kartik Sharma MD, South Asia, Maxus Asia

Highs & Lows2016 will remain etched in our memory as a remarkable year for Lodestar UM. We won 27 new businesses beside the prestigious J&J business. We won the Media agency of the Year title twice besides winning at Festival of Media Asia and Festival of Media Global.

There was no “low point” for us as such in 2016. We are constant-ly trying to put together strate-gic, cutting-edge media solutions for our clients and that I think that is paying off.

Nandini Dias CEO, Lodestar UM

After watching Lowe Lintas' showreel, you will notice that there is not one agency style that comes through. And that is deliberate because if that were to came through, that would have meant us approaching our varied and multiple brands through one agency lens ; which we never do. Each of them are unique responses to unique and spe-cific brand tasks. Either to build preference or to build affinity or to deliver a larger purpose or to spur a conversa-tion or to change behaviour or to just dramatise a product benefit lucidly and entertain-ingly. But what runs common across this body of work is a honest attempt to present every time, a new and refresh-ing take on the brand, the cate-gory or life itself; such that it affects the brand positively in the market and in the mind.The last bit being absolutely key!

Joseph GeorgeGroup Chairman & CEO, India;

regional president, South & Southeast Asia, Mullen Lowe

Lintas Group

Highs & LowsThe last year has been an incredible journey for Mind-share India. We have swept every leading industry and internal award in 2016, win-ning a total of 255 awards in the year. Winning at global, regional and domestic plat-forms has been a delight. Along with being APAC agency of the year on multiple plat-forms, we also set a record high at the Emvies 2016 with 395 points. For us, there hasn't been a low point, but the fact is that we are hungrier! Mindshare India today is a full-fledged media and marketing services agency that offers expertise in media, strategy, content and digital. It employs the very best talent in the industry, coupled with the latest technology and products that are driven by data. We believe that we have so much more to offer to our clients, as they navigate brand building in a digitally charged, data driven economy and we will constantly drive our best efforts for better results for our clients.

Prasanth Kumar CEO, Mindshare South Asia

J WALTER THOMPSON (Rank #3)Tale of Two cities - #SpiritofBengaluruThis campaign is a true mobile innovation that demonstrates two sides of Bengaluru though a switchable film with two versions of Bengaluru - one blessed by mother nature and the other cursed and torn apart by the woes of human density in a concrete jungle.

#MyDaughterWillThe ‘My Daughter Will’ campaign in partnership with New Delhi based NGO, Haiyya aims to make it socially acceptable for daughters to perform the last rites.

Blood-banking App:Pitched as the world’s first savings account for blood, where one can save one’s own blood, the blood banking app has been designed to simulate phone banking apps both in form and function. An instance of tech-nology meeting real-life problem-solving.

,s to

n h-g

Creative MediaMINDSHARE(Rank #1)

June 21 - 27, 2017

Tanishq: Rivaah

Nike: Da Da Ding

Dove

StarPlus: Nayi Soch

Flipkart: Kids are back

P7Read more on Mullen Lowe Lintas Group

AGENCY RECKONER 2016-17 A NCY RECKONER 2016 17 AGENA 5

DY Works (Rank #3)

Safal: We had a single line brief from Safal (the Fruits and vegeta-bles brand: both frozen and ambi-ent as well as retail outlets across NCR) to increase its profitability. We engaged on the pricing, supply chain, concessionnaire, retail, brand, communication, digital and PR strategies, revamped the retail store and rational-ised the portfolio of Safal packaged products. For the pilot store, our inter-vention led to disruptive growth from 200 kg/day to 650 kg/day.

LANDOR (Rank #2)

Mother Dairy Dahi redesign: Making a traditional brand more contemporary. The work done reinforced the impact of packaging design on sales which rose 23% after the redesign.

S.P. Jain Insitute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) Rebranding : Defin-ing a strong brand positioning (Cour-age.Heart.) and creating a distinct visual identity for an education brand. Cuddle (from Fractal Analytics): New name and identity for a break-through technology product.

BharatQR: A simple yet powerful identity for a new digital initiative by the Govern-ment of India.

Barista: Creating relevance via an entirely new brand experience, for the cafe brand.

McDonald’s India: The ad cele-brates 20 years of a couple’s life and of a brand though a montage of situations.

Airtel Kids film: The ad once again got cutesy kids to behave like grown-ups, making the point. The fun lies in getting kids to be spontaneous and unaffect-ed in front of the camera.

Mortein “Instacard”: Anima-tion, not used too often in advertising, can be fun and help push the envelope in taking the humour far.

EQUINOX(Rank #3)

CORCOISE (Rank #2)Fevicol Govinda: Its spectacle lies in how the cinematography captures the organic 8 tiered human pyramid that sways as it runs through Old Mumbai architecture.

Borosil Larah: Its pokerfaced comedy, understated performances, and a meticulously designed set that com-bines a spectacular restaurant with a grungy congested Bazaar street.

Asian Paints “Raag Malhar”: Its abso-lutely wild soundtrack , it's demented lyr-ics and Ranbir's passionate performance of a lovelorn classical singer is what makes this film special.

NirvanaCorcoiseEquinoxChrome PicturesBang Bang Films

ElephantLandor AssociatesDY WorksFitchUmbrella

Ramesh Deo ProductionsEarly Man FilmCurious Footcandles FilmsMad Films

InterbrandBrand UnionVyas Gianetti Creative

DesignsutraHyphen

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

6

7

89

10

6

7

89

10

TOP 10 PRODUCTION HOUSES TOP 10 DESIGN SPECIALISTS

The Top 3 production-houses share their best work The Top 3 design firms and their chosen workIT'S A WRAP THE FINE LINES

Ram Madhvani Co-Founder, Equinox Films

NIRVANA (Rank #1)

West Bengal Tourism: A campaign that turned out to be a visual delight for the sweetest part of India.

Milo: Sport is the best teacher in life! and Nestle Milo adds a great philosophical dimension to sport.

Live Love Laugh Foundation for depression: A campaign close to my heart: everything makes complete sense when the purpose is to spread an important message.

ELEPHANT (Rank #1)

Fingerlix: The common love for Asterix, got the team at the name, and the caul-dron with the magic potion being stirred up became the inspiration for visual identity of this ready-to-cook brand.

Tata CLiQ: A short, catchy & appropriate name suggesting curated stuff at just a click (click + clique) and an elegant new-age typography. The ‘Q' is designed to look like the magnifying glass and reit-erates the Tata promise of offering only the choicest, curated stuff.

Bennett University: This was a chal-lenging piece as we had to uphold the TOI legacy without actually using its name or visual identity. Considering the primary audience of this brand (university students) would be more familiar with TOI app, we picked the app colour (red) and picked out the shield and two elephants From the TOI emblem. It is a balance of clean con-temporary visual identity with legacy typography.

Prakash Varma Co-Founder & Director,

Nirvana Films

Prasoon Pandey & Cyrus Pagdiwala

Partners, Corcoise Films

(L-R):Partho Guha, Ashwini Deshpande & Ashish DeshpandeElephant Founder-team

Lulu Raghavan CEO Landor

June 21 - 27, 2017

Alpana Parida MD, DY Works

THE VVIPS: VERY VERY INFLUENTIAL PERSONS

AGENCY RECKONER 2016-17 A NCY RECKONER 2016 17 AGENA 6 June 21 - 27, 2017

1

5

7

89 10 11

12

13

Piyush Pandey Ogilvy & Mather

CVL Srinivas GroupM

Agnello Dias Taproot Dentsu

Ashish BhasinDentsu Aegis Network

Arun Iyer Lowe Lintas

Nandini Dias Lodestar UM

Rohit Ohri FCB Group Vikram Sakhuja

Madison World

Senthil Kumar JWT

Their every move shakes up the industry. That's what gets you on to Brand Equity - Agency Reckoner's Most Influential list. Here's a look at advertising's VVIPs.

Madhukar SabnavisOgilvy & Mather

21

22

24

26

28

30

32

34

23

25

27

29

31

33

35

18

Jasmin Sohrabji OMD

Santosh Padhi Taproot Dentsu

Kunal Jeswani Ogilvy & Mather

Srinivasan Swamy RK Swamy BBDO

Madhukar KamathDDB Mudra

Kartik Sharma Maxus

Abhinay Deo Ramesh Deo Productions

Swati Bhattacharya FCB Ulka

Joseph George MullenLowe Lintas Group

CR Mallikarjundas Starcom Mediavest Group

Prakash Verma Nirvana

Praveen Kenneth L&K Saatchi & Saatchi

Partha Sinha McCann Worldgroup

Arun Nanda Rediffusion YR

Sonal DabralDDB Mudra group

4

Sam Balsara Madison World

444444444444444444444444444444444444444

SaS BaBall a a3

Prasoon Joshi McCann Worldgroup

2

15

16Prasanth KumarMindshare

Rajiv Rao Ogilvy & Mather

19

Saurabh VarmaLeo Burnett / Publicis Communications

17

20

Prasoon Pandey Corcoise Films

14

Bobby Pawar Publicis Worldwide

Shashi Sinha,IPG Mediabrands

6 Josy Paul BBDO India

Abhijit Avasthi Sideways

AGENCY RECKONER 2016-17 A NCY RECKONER 2016 17 AGENA 7

BE EDITORIAL: Ravi Balakrishnan, Amit Bapna, Delshad Irani, Shephali Bhatt, Priyanka Nair and Toyoja Upadhyay; DESIGN: Shubhra Dey, Subhash Kundaria and Vilas Pai ILLUSTRATIONS: Anirban Bora, Thinkstock PHOTOGRAPHS: Bharat Chanda and Nitin Sonawane; PRODUCTION: Mumbai

Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 16 Issue No. 25 Published for the Proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400 001 Tel. No. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax- (022)-2273 1144 and printed by him at (1) The Times of India Suburban Press, Akurli Road, Western Express Highway, Kandivili (E), Mumbai 400 101. Tel. No. (022) 28872324, 28872930, Fax- (022) 28874230 (2) The Times of India Print City, Plot No. 4, T.T.C. Industrial Area, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli, Navi Mumbai-400708 and (3) TIMES

PRESS, Plot No. 5A,Road No. 1, IDA Nacharam Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad-500076. Editor: Ravi Balakrishnan(Responsible for selection of news under PRB Act). © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the Publisher is prohibited

BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN MUMBAI

Over the last two decades or so, Lowe Lintas (now the Mullen-Lowe Lintas Group) has steadfastly pedalled in a direction opposite to where the industry is headed.

For instance, Lowe Lintas gave awards a miss through the glory days of ad gongs, when personal and agency reputa-tions were built on trophies. At a time when agencies were trying to surpass Happydent and the Zoozoos in being “whacky”, Lowe Lintas went a more purpose driven route for a number of its key clients — Idea, a slew of Hindustan Unile-ver brands, and Tata Tea. And in a day when consolidated P&Ls are becoming the nor m, the agency quixotically split itself into distinct entities in 2015: Lowe Lintas and Mullen Lintas. It’s emerged unscathed by the departure of its crea-tive leader and most recognisable face, R Balki, and even as agency after agency succumbs to the temptation of having a startup specialist offering, the group already works with some of the coun-try’s biggest startups.

Joseph George, group chairman and CEO, MullenLowe Lintas Group is can-did enough to admit not all of this was planned.

Balki boycotting the Abby in a huff, in 2001, after his agency’s work on Indya.com was unfairly compared to a cam-paign for John Miller was almost certain-ly spontaneous. But the decision to give

awards a wide berth ever since was delib-erate and one that’s

served the agency very well. Through the

last decade though, sev-eral people in other agencies

believed this would result in the creative pipeline to Lowe running dry, consider-ing creatives and now even agencies and holding companies, consider award wins a huge part of their own brand building.

But by staying focused on client objec-tives instead, and not incurring the recurring expense of proactive work and entry fees, the group has built a stronger brand. Certainly stronger than a lot of its competition with their sporadic, half-hearted attempts at cracking the award ‘game’. George admits. “Creative awards are a big distraction and waste of our people’s time and mindspace. The net-work and IPG have never pushed the

agenda down our throat.” The only awards the group cares about are for effectiveness. Even when the creative work picks up a gong or two, it is entered by one of its international offices and the Indian ops don’t even fork out the entry fees, according to George.

There was apparently no planning at all behind the ‘cause-driven’ work. George says, “Me and Balki were having a chat on how to define our output and finally decid-ed we are running a promo on all our ads: with every piece of communication, there’s a thought or two to think about, live with or share.” While industry pun-dits have tut-tutted about the work being formulaic, marketers and consumers are biting and going back for seconds. Some-times its tenor is shrill and self-righteous, but then if you’ve ever trawled through an internet comment section, or even a TV debate, you’d realise that’s India’s default setting for conversation.

The decision to split the agency into two P&Ls was half-talent retention strat-egy and half conflict resolution. George believes, “We moved the cream from Lowe like Shriram Iyer, Virat Tandon, Ekta Relan and Amer Jaleel and made a passionate case to our clients, assuring them that with a freshly motivated team, they’d get great work.” Says Amer Jaleel, chairman and chief creative officer, “It was a very organic internal process. We decided to leave Levers behind since the reason for us existing was to handle conflict and HUL is a lega-cy Lowe business.” Adds Virat Tandon, CEO, Mullen Lintas, “We wanted to cre-ate this from scratch as much as we could.” Today, the agency which started out with 4 business has 24 and includes Bajaj’s No Marks, Gionee, Tata Cliq and Voot among others.

Finally, the group moved consciously towards working with startups. Accord-ing to George the pitch the agency took to these brands was that we handle the No 1, 2 or 3 brands but they didn’t come to us after becoming No 1, 2 or 3.

And so, now the group, long the subject of sniggers, schadenfreude and right-eous indignation about how it “allowed its creative chief to go off making films on agency time”, has a grudging respect from most of its industry peers. When asked informally about which agency is doing well, its name crops up more fre-quently than even its more-feted rival. We suspect even if it didn’t have the respect, grudging or otherwise, the folk at MullenLowe Lintas wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

AmazonHULAirtelPatanjaliP&GPayTMNestleMondelezVodafoneReliance Jio

1234

56789

10

MOST ADMIRED

MARKETERS

On how MullenLowe Lintas zagged as the industry zigged and lived to tell the taleThe Lowe Spark

KV Sridhar aka Pops on the perils of

procrastination, egos

and underestimating the

tides of change.

Agencies, be warned!

In the pursuit of greatness, we often tend to underestimate the value of being small and nim-ble. When it comes to sewing the sail, it is the needle that does it, not the sword.

And that is what is ailing the Corporate Giants today, they’ve just become too big to change. We need to understand that innovations are happening across the world every minute and consumers are willing to transform with them. In this day and age, you can’t hope to wait years to hire employees then train and build skillsets and then start working. You need to constantly adapt at the rate which the technology and con-sumers are changing.

There was a time, when it was okay to have a gap of 3-4 years between conceptualization and

launch of a product. But today, if you wait for a year to launch a new mobile technology, the odds are, it will be two years too late. Google is a classic example of how to change and adapt with time. Starting with a search engine, they are now planning to sell driverless cars. On the other hand, we see the impact of stag-nancy on the balance sheets of some of the soft-drink giants. Their growth is declining and they’re fast losing their top spots, but they are stuck making incremental changes to their strategy, which aren’t enough.

Agencies too graduated from being pure sales oriented com-municators, to leading behav-iour changes in consumption. But nowadays they’ve reduced to merely being creative suppli-ers for multinationals. As the market is moving from TV to web to digital and smartphones the holding companies are try-ing to build tech competencies by buying out smaller inde-pendent agencies, hoping that the mergers would bring them the talent and entrepreneurial culture. But what they do not

consider is, that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Their culture of complex processes and procrastination will never let them be an entrepreneur in spirit. In this quest of function-ing independently and building all expertise in-house, they have grown too big to trans-form and adapt.

Another important trend sur-facing is that the talented indi-viduals no longer dream to be a

part of a big MNC and live some-one else’s dream. They’re will-ing to take risks and use their capabilities for their own ven-tures. Big companies are no longer able to retain talent, attri-

tion is reaching an all-time high and employees are becoming increasingly dissatisfied by the mammoth processes and the never-ending hierarchy.

Look at the most successful new age companies, Uber, AirBNB, Amazon, they own minimal assets. They all have their partners, Amazon has sell-ers, Uber has their fleet part-ners, they trust them to run their business and are collabo-rating with smaller entrepre-neurs to create an efficiently functioning network that con-nects the user and the service provider. Agencies of the future, need the same working model, provide the clients the best possible results by bring-ing together the young minds and sharing talent.

The beautiful thing about col-laboration is the agility and speed of execution and the expe-rience of working directly with independent decision makers. You can create different teams with different capabilities as per the need without having to invest time and money in build-ing a talent pool which is not uti-

lised efficiently. We need to part-ner with the bright, innovative and talented minds without hin-dering their independence.

But, ‘to be able to orchestrate work with several partners one needs to have a large heart and no ego, which is not a character-istic of the Age-old agencies.’

The big picture that we’re all missing is, that you’re never too big to fail. The companies that ruled the world 50 years ago, don’t even exist today. And if we need to survive in the long run, we need to be nimble, agile and lead the race of early adoption.

We need to keep ourselves smaller and learn to team up. Bring together technology, design thinking mindset and digital consumer understand-ing by co-operating with the experts and at the same time let-ting them have their independ-ence. A symbiotic existence of creativity, technology and inno-vation is the way forward if we wish to stay relevant.

Collaborate or Collapse.The author is founder & chief

creative officer, HyperCollective.Views expressed are personal.

Collaborate or CollapseBY INVITATION

AN

IRB

AN

BO

RA

PHOTOS: BHARAT CHANDA

June 21 - 27, 2017

Arun Iyer &Joseph George

(L-R) Virat Tandon,

Amer Jaleel & Shriram Iyer