'Willingness to try new things on the rise among ad agencies due to younger demographics': BBDO boss

BBDO Boss Josy Paul provided valuable insights on the new advertising world in an interview with BT TV's Siddharth Zarabi at Goafest 2023. Here are the edited excerpts:

How's the action in the media advertising creative fraternity at this time of the year?

I think there's a greater sweat there than right now in the Goa weather. Yeah, there's a lot of action, and I'm sure a lot of aggression as well.

Is it the advertiser who's sweating because of some signs of economic weakness?

I don't think it's coming from a negative place. It's coming from this need to quickly get into the action and seize things.

What are the opportunities that people are looking to seize at this time of the year? We don't have to explain how business and life and society changed over the last two years, starting with Covid. Then all kinds of of economic troubles, the Ukraine War and everything else.

So, I think there is a sudden sense of freedom of being a little more normal or whatever you call the new normal. And before anything else happens, there's a need to sort of seize of what is normal right now.

And what is normal right now?

What is normal is that people are seeking communication in a new way, and the mind is extremely open, and there's a sense that there can be rising sales or people's inclination to buy stuff, or even if you're not buying things, buy into an ideology or, more importantly, to listen to all these things.

Are you saying that people or buyers are willing to experiment and experience new platforms rather than just track media?

Yes, because as the demographics get younger, the willingness to try new things has increased. So we are finding, even if it comes to media and communication, we are finding greater conversations around our work than ever before, which I think is a sign of that.

You once had famously said that you create acts and you don't create ads in a post-digital world. Like you said, younger people are digital natives, they are born within the post-digital worlds and they think within that. How would you reinterpret this? Would you use a different tagline instead of create acts and not ads?

I think it has become even more relevant because if you look at the world around us, more and more communication is doing its action first and then talking about it. Because I think consumers, especially younger consumers, are saying, show me, don't tell me. And they wanna see proof, you know, it's like somebody says let me see if you really love me. Don't promise, show me the engagement ring. So the engagement ring is like the act, right? So, young people are saying, show me your action to show that you really mean your words, and which is why you find more and more brands or more and more companies going out and doing things.

Can you give any example for our viewers to understand this?

So, in 2015 we had done a campaign called "Touch the Pickle", which was an action- oriented campaign for this brand Whisper, which is a sanitary napkin. And here's a brand that created a platform where women could come and challenge period taboos that were not relevant anymore. And so when we created that platform for action, the way women came forward to discuss was quite amazing and in a new world, there's a lot more happening, I think.

In this new world, do you see, demand or a requirement for more women-centric advertising?

Well, we are seeing that, right? It's not something that I need to say. A lot of new sort of advertising and communication that is really sort of supporting and encouraging women to do new things, whether it's getting out of the kitchen and finding their own identity or many other things. So it's not something that is new. It's been going on for a while now.

When you started off as an entrepreneur around 15 years back, and I was reading that you basically started in a car, the world was different, and the world is very different now. What does it take to create a smart brand, a winning brand, both in the Indian context and overseas, in the digital age?

So, firstly, I must say that, I may have started the company in India but it's a worldwide company. BBDO is a global network. And I was given the opportunity to set it up in India, and I started it out in a car because I didn't want to do what I'd done before. And I said, if I can have nine months of pregnancy for myself, then I can understand what's going on in the world. So I sat in coffee shops, listening to people, understanding where the world is going, and that's how we rearranged the way that we worked. And then immediately after that, the first campaign was a campaign called "Women Against Lazy Stubble" for Gillette. Gillette was thinking we'd come with a film, a 30-second film, but we didn't come with a 30-second film. We came up with a very interactive idea that created a movement where women said, yeah, we agree, we love clean-shaven men. 77% women said they prefer clean-shaven men. And that took off that platform, "Women Against Lazy Stubble" became a massive campaign and won the world's first creative effectiveness award , for PNG Global because the growth was incredible.

Are the ads about men's grooming kit allowing you to shape beards, keep them trimmed equally effective?

I think clean is clean is a feeling. So, if it's well kept, I'm sure that's part of clean.

Coming to attention spans. You said 30 seconds, there would be people who would say that today, on any social platform, the first four seconds are make or break. You agree?

Yeah. So, that's an important finding. And you know, global players have been talking about that, but we are also finding the opposite is true. We've just done a film for Ariel called "Share The Load", which is a very touching story of a father who realised that he's been doing something wrong. And it's a four-minute film and it's got over 125 million views and people aren't skipping it. So, we are finding that if it truly connects with you, and it's something that is part of your life for people like me, they tend to hang onto it.

Overall, what is the shift in the advertising landscape looking like? There is this argument, which you must have also heard as a creative person that in India print is also surviving. Television is also thriving. Digital is also there, although some people question ROI. So, how would you answer that question?

I think that's a great question. I think India is a land of coexistence. And mediums are actually helping each other. And we finding that something here amplifies somewhere else. So, when we did, for example, a front-page print ad for WhatsApp, we saw that it was actually going digitally viral because somebody just grabbed a photo of it and it, it moves across mediums. So, the beauty of the symbiotic relationship is true, especially in India where I think, not just in media, but in life, we coexist, in a very interesting way.

This kind of behaviour that we just spoke about, which is the other country that most closely resembles with us in this regard?

I think the US does. The US does because of its multi-ethnicity and it seems to have the same sort of behaviour, whether it's about the military, whether it's about sports, whether it's about nationalism, whether it's about melting pot of opportunities, all these things. I feel the US tends to have a lot of similarities. And we are only saying this because that's as much media as we can get for us to understand. Maybe there are smaller parts of the world where there is a similar sort of behaviour, but it's not coming through to us yet.