Smart companies gain market share during difficult times?
Why did you choose advertising as a career?
I went to a business school without having any idea of what I was really interested in. I took up a course in marketing and really liked it. After my first year, I started my career at General Foods before taking up a full-time job as a Product Manager at Clairol (a personal care products division of Procter & Gamble). Later, I was headhunted by O&M and I joined them. I had decided that I will not spend more than two years in O&M. And here I am. I never left O&M. What do you think of the O&M brand then and now? The brand is exactly the same. It’s just that now it is expressed in different ways. I think the core principles that were at the heart of the company when I joined, are still the same, which is remarkable when you think that David Ogilvy started the company 60 years ago. He founded it with a vision to help create an image, build brands and cultivate customer relationships through advertising for global and local brands.
With the economic recession inevitable, how is the global advertising industry gearing up?
It is hard to say at this point. We have been tracking the situation. Marketers feel that nothing is going to get better by itself. What we have noticed is that this particular time, marketers are much more realistic about what they are facing and are, therefore, keen on cutting down their marketing budgets. It has always been seen that smart marketers gain market share during difficult times. We have had a good year so far but in this kind of environment, clients will start looking at whether they can pull back a bit. And we are starting to see it. There is panic now and reassuring the public is a very important role we can play as communicators.
In such turbulent times, do you think traditional advertising will take a back seat and new forms of advertising like digital gain prominence since it’s less expensive?
It is hard to say because I think the advertisers want to believe in the new forms of advertising like digital and online advertising but, at this point in time, they are not yet sure of the outcome of the investments they have already made. My guess is that things like instore advertising and other non traditional media will definitely see increased investments. But it remains to be seen how these investments will pan out in new media. Some companies say that their budgets are fine and are even up, and some others say that they are waiting and watching.
How do you view Indian advertising and India’s creative abilities?
One of the strongest creative agencies in the entire Ogilvy Network is Ogilvy India. India is very creative, imaginative and strong. We are running the worldwide Lenovo account out of Bangalore in India. We did some creative work for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing as Lenovo had a strong presence there. We put together a team of creative people from various places and it was a 29-year-old creative guy from Mumbai who came up with the TV commercial idea called ‘Sumo’. That was applauded by everyone around the world.
So, what are your expectations from O&M India and how do you see it contributing to the global market?
We need them to keep growing the way they have been growing over the years. They provide inspiration because of the quality of creative work they do and I also hope that we get to run more global accounts out of India.
What is the difference between ‘creative’ work made in the West and the ones being made in India?
I don’t think there is any difference at all. The world is waking up to the good quality creative work coming out of India. This is mainly because there is a global standard for creativity and everyone has to live up to it. I do not think India has had any trouble doing that.
The biggest challenge I ever faced was when I was called to take over the advertising business of Ogilvy’s New York-based office in 1991. Until then, I was running Ogilvy’s direct marketing business. The NY office was in a complete mess. They were losing clients, employees were leaving and senior management was being fired. It was really hard for me initially as people there were so demotivated and demoralised. The most important thing that I had to do was to help them restore their faith in themselves and convince them that they could be successful. I handled the situation step by step. We worked on one assignment at a time and that helped us to turn the agency around. But until I was able to turn the agency around, it was a recurring nightmare for me. I would think what if one day when I wake up and go to the office, I have lost all the clients and people. What do I do (alone) then?
How do you think advertising has changed globally?
Globally, advertising is changing with equal or more focus on “360 degree branding”. Earlier, we never had Internet or instant messaging or search technology. But today, there are so many more ways to communicate. The notion of 360 degree branding has made agencies globally realise that the focus cannot be only on television, print and outdoor advertising and (they) have to move beyond it. Apart from TV commercials, we need to create communication for every point of contact with the consumer. Secondly, our view of our own vision as an agency has broadened so that we can deliver value to clients. Agencies have had to become more integrated in the way they work so that when we have to solve a problem for a client, all the important divisions within the agency give their inputs and try to solve the problem together. Finally, the agencies come up with the right solution for the client and execute it individually. Ogilvy India is a fine example of this as they are able to work together with any team as compared to some other offices in the western world.
First and foremost, they are two different markets. One principal difference is that the Chinese have not grown up with brands. Brands are very new to China. When I first decided to go to China 15 years ago, I used to think (all the time) if Chinese people would ever be sensitive to brands because they have grown up on functional product offerings and no choice. So, how do you communicate to them and make them believe in brands? But I realised that the Chinese are very brand-sensitive and they respond to brands like everybody else does. The challenge in China, however, is that the people who think they know the brands do not have a wide experience with them and so are not so distinctive as compared to people who have grown up with brands. Overall, India and China both respond to brands beautifully like the rest of the world.
What are the common issues driving your clients throughout the world?
It’s driving the revenue line—how do we find new ideas to keep the business fresh in a world where there are so many competing brands, and everything is much more complex, and people are so short of time. You need to have a new idea every six months just to keep everything fresh. Our clients face the same people issues that we face. And all this is a real challenge.
What’s the future of advertising?
It certainly is very bright. It is more powerful now than it has ever been. Not because of advertising alone but we all (now) believe what the true power of brands is. That’s why I like to say that O&M is in the business of building brands. And one of the ways of building brands is through advertising, but there are so many other ways, too, to build it as well. So, as we think of our value that way, the potential for advertising in the future is stronger than ever.
You have been ranked by the Fortune magazine among the Most Powerful and Influential Woman in the World of Business many times. How do you feel and what advantages does a woman executive have in managing a huge company like Ogilvy?
I feel great and proud to be on the Fortune list. It does not matter on a day-to-day basis but other people do seem to like it. The first time Fortune did this, I was on the cover and I was surprised to see that people in the agency actually had the copy on their coffee table. My advantage is that I had the good fortune to grow professionally in a company where meritocracy was the norm. In a company which values ideas and creativity, it doesn’t matter where or who they come from, male or female. Being a woman did give me some advantage early on in my career; I was often the only woman in the meeting, and when we were discussing how to sell products bought predominantly by women, like hair shampoo, people inevitably turned to me for my ideas.
What does it take to be a great leader?
Great leaders understand the value of diversity. If you don’t have people who are diverse in their thinking, life experiences, beliefs, then you will operate at a disadvantage and the solutions you come up with will never be as interesting and rich.
