Tag / strategy

by Ajinkya Pawar

“Insights” as revelations of hidden optionalities

As the world moves faster and drags the advertising industry along with it, the concept of ‘insight’, which resolutely stood at the centre of the advertising industry for long, is appearing blurred.

Often, we find ourselves in meeting rooms sharing a scratch of the head, “what’s an insight, anyways?”. Here’s my take.

What is an insight?

Firstly, when we talk about insights, we are talking with the purpose of effective inception – an ‘a ha’ moment to convince someone of something. (Unlike insight in literature or art where the only subjectivity that matters is that of the creators. And therefore, advertising is not art.)
It is purposive.
It seeks a response/ influence.
It requires an ‘other’ to incept in.
An insight that cannot trigger response is not useful.

Secondly, insight is relative. What is insightful to me might not be insightful for you. What is insightful for me now might not be insightful for me when I am older.

Thirdly, insight illuminates the beyond. People don’t find what they know, insightful. So, the playground of insight starts beyond their knowledge, their feelings, their experiences.  

Simply put, I find something insightful if it was something that I didn’t know before.
I find something exhilarating if I had not experienced it before.
I feel I have grown, only after experiencing something, often a failure, that makes me reassess my previously held beliefs.

Insights push the boundaries of knowledge, feeling, being.

To create an ‘a ha’ moment, we need to drive the person right beyond the edge of his knowledge, his beliefs, his perspectives.

So, it is not enough to know what your consumer knows, feels, believes in. We need to know what the limits of those ideas in their mind and heart are. We need a humanist perspective to expand their boundaries of tolerance, beliefs, knowledge (which is relevant to the brand in question).

Insights as the revelation of a hidden option

A precise purpose of the ‘insight’ then is to convince the consumer to push their boundary; to step beyond their normal; to step beyond their range of feelings. An insight makes an option accessible, that they didn’t know of, or couldn’t access, or didn’t think they deserve it.

An insight is an invitation and encouragement to expand the boundaries of our lives. It propels us to seize an opportunity hidden to us for so long.

by Ajinkya Pawar

Optionality Framework: A Brand Strategy Framework for a World in Flux.

Note: This article adapts NN Taleb’s idea about ‘optionality’ from his excellent book ‘ Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder‘; and uses research from Richard Bulliet’s book The Camel and the Wheel.

Camel or a car?

Can you imagine a day when everyone around you stops using automobiles and instead starts riding camel? It turns out there’s a precedence for such a shift.

If you were in the Middle East sometime between the 6th to 4th century BC you would have seen chariots in the army, seen long paved roads in major cities, seen traders using pack-animal carriages to haul goods.
The wheel moved the world around. Even then. Until it stopped.

If you were to time travel a few centuries ahead, anytime between the 3rd century AD to 18th century, you would have been surprised by the near-total disappearance of wheeled carriages from the region, in favour of camels.

Baffling isn’t it.

The fact that wheels, the epitome of ‘disruptive innovations’, fell out of favour in certain contexts, makes you wonder about the awesome forces that precipitated that shift.

Why did the wheel fall out of favour?

In comparison to camels, wheels were fragile (then) – prone to breaking down, couldn’t ford through shallow rivers, couldn’t traverse deserts, were slower (when attached to other pack animals.), were far less efficient (needed the deadweight of the wagon), needed special infrastructure of roads, and needed one person per carriage whereas a single person could shepherd up to six camels!

But camels existed in the 6th century BC too. Why then people preferred wheels before but not after? Clearly, efficiency was necessary but not a sufficient condition to instigate change.

The transformative agent was surprising – the invention of the North Arabian saddle.

This saddle turned the cargo-carrying ship of the desert, the camel, into a battleship. The more secure saddle allowed the camel rider to use swords and pikes and positioned the rider much higher up, which gave a great advantage in battle.

This ‘optionality’ of camel, its ability to turn into a dependable technology for the battleground, changed the balance of power.* Let me take a moment here to elaborate on the concept of optionality. Optionality is the freedom to readily take advantage of an emerging situation, afforded by the fact that you have multiple options. As against having no choice and being left to get squeezed by fate’s pincers. Functionally, a saddle is just a seat. But by being more secure, created the possibility for the rider to do something else besides sitting on it. That option was not available to them earlier.

A useful metaphor is that of platform and APIs. Here the camel is a platform, and the saddle is an application that fulfils the certain requirement. In this context, the ability of the platform to host APIs is critical. If a platform can’t host APIs, the platform is useless. Camel won because it could host the saddle.

Camel nomads gained control of caravan routes. This, in turn, allowed for more social and economic integration of camel nomads with the settled societies and so, camels proliferated.

What can we learn from this story?

  1. Robust wins against fragile.
    Camel was more robust compared to the wheel.
  2. Optionality that improves the ability to compete matters more.
    Consider wheel as a ‘platform’ – the base technology over which, you can build added functionality. Compared to the camel, the wheel is more versatile. One could create carriages with varying specifications, attach a varying number of animals and so on. In comparison, camel as a platform is potentially less versatile.
    A wheel then had more ‘optionality’. Yet, the camel’s ‘API’ of saddle won out because it enhanced the rider’s ability to swiftly attack or defend, more capably. Thus, optionality that improves performance matters more than optionality that improves versatility alone.
  3. Inversely, lack of optionality that improves ability to compete, is fatal.
    Optionality is the freedom of having choices when confronted with novel situations. Inversely, lack of it is servitude to fate, being caught completely unaware and unprepared to emergent situations.  
  4. Advantage is relative and temporary.
    Camel is not better than a Humvee or a drone. No advantage is absolute. As technology changes, so does the nature of competition and source of advantage. 
  5. A change that gives an asymmetric advantage, dominates.
    Camel with the saddle was markedly better than the wheel in battle. But it ended up replacing the wheel everywhere else too (except for pottery wheels). This is because of the phenomenon of a ‘positive feedback loop’.  As more people realised the advantage of a camel over a wheel, more adopted it. As such the adoption is not linear but accelerates with the expanding reach of the idea.
  6. The new default.
    Asymmetric scaling leads to new ‘default’ as other options recede to obsolescence.
  7. Change comes from the edges.
    Change comes from those who have less to lose, more to gain.
    In the fight for supremacy between Camel nomads and city traders, camel nomads had more to gain, less to lose. Vice versa for the traders trying to protect their goods in caravan.
  8. Power matters.
    The quest to gain power animates all changes.
  9. Distinctive awareness about what changes, what doesn’t is helpful.
    To win, one must be able to distinguish an advantageous choice from a disadvantageous one. That discernibility requires the understanding of the dynamics of economic and social power and a keen sense of its shift.
    In this case, the need for transportation did not change. However, trade dynamics were changing with the Arab conquest in the region.
    The rise in overland trade between southern and northern Arabia during the time was a major factor that increased the importance of camels.
    Wheel’s technological transformation was a millennium away, into the future. The saddle technology was transforming the present-day dynamics of then.
  10. Efficiency is necessary but not sufficient to precipitate shift.

Why is this story relevant now?

Humans think linearly. Reality is anything but. This story illustrates this. Did we ever imagine a millennia-long gap between wheel use in human history? It warns us to not take visions of progress/ growth for granted.
Secondly, this story is about change. It illustrates the principles of systemic change, ably. This is relevant now because we are now living in an age where change is only accelerating. Civilisational changes that happened over millennia, happen now in years.

Implicit in our strategic thinking is an assumption of stability, of linear change. That is why strategy often feels ‘theoretical’, a euphemism for being not useful or not true.

For a world in constant flux, we need a strategy that appreciates the dynamics of change.

Brand strategy framework made for a world in flux.

The surest way to fail in a rapidly changing world is to depend on strategies that assume stability & linear change. Brands that focus on efficiency and not on optionality, are bound to get blindsided with change and suffer ruin.

To survive, one must ensure of never getting cornered. To thrive, one must be able to identify and then seize an advantageous opportunity to its full potential. This simple principle is at the core of the optionality framework.

This perspective helps us separate noise from the signal. It enables us to see the big picture while being firmly grounded in the realities of here and now. It forces us to focus on activities that really matter – the ones that help gain asymmetric advantage and avoid ruin. The brand strategy framework informed with this perspective is firmly rooted in business realities and yet supercharges the brand with imagination and empathy.

Here are six questions that can guide brands towards growth, relevance, and resilience.

1. What is our ‘platform’? What APIs can we house on this platform?

2. What is changing? What is unchanging?  
Is the change transitory or systemic?

3. What optionality does our competitor have that can threaten our existence? Watch the edges for threats/ opportunities.

4. Which options can give us an asymmetric advantage?

5. How are power dynamics shifting in our category? How can we benefit from it?

6. How can we become the default options in the lives of our consumers?

Let’s explore each of these questions briefly to understand how to use this framework.

  1. Define our platform and APIs.
    a. Platform    :
    For the purpose of this framework, I define platform as the core of the business – the organisational capabilities, properties, assets, offerings, its relationships – that define the scope of its present and potential future activities. For a firm’s existence to make sense, the whole must be bigger than its parts. It’s ability to host APIs is a measure of this ability. If it can enable new capabilities with emerging situations, it’s a platform worth building. For instance, for Maruti Suzuki, its factories, its dealerships, its online presence, its workforce, its history, its brand – all add up to a whole which enables mobility for millions, employs thousands and plays a pivotal role in nation-building.
    b. APIs:
    In this context, APIs are the synergistic added functionalities that the firm can deliver, given its core platform. An excellent example of this is Maruti Suzuki’s adaptation of their factories into ventilator production units during the Covid emergency.
    APIs are products of the optionality that the platform enables. Maruti Suzuki’s peculiar platform, which included its infrastructure and its culture, drove it to turn its factories into ventilator production units.
  2. Be aware of the changing and the unchanging.
    The unchanging: The need for mobility, the prestige associated with ownership.
    The changing: Rising concerns about pollution and overcrowding, increasing dependence and shortage of semiconductors, IoT & app-based gig economy, rise of subscription-based economies, Open-sourced Tesla’s patents, and so on.
    Climate change is systemic, hence the need for zero-emission mobility. App-based taxi services as threat to ownership of cars, might not be as big a risk, with profitability remaining elusive to aggregator apps even after a decade.
     
  3. Prepare against optionality that threatens our existence.
    Perhaps Tesla and other e-vehicle brands’ entry in India and the government’s regulatory push for electric vehicles poses an existential threat to Maruti Suzuki.
    Another source of danger is improving public transport infrastructure.
    To counter this threat, it should explore options to produce e-vehicles which are as good if not better than the best available today in the world. Secondly, it may also explore the choice of producing mass transit vehicles.
  4. Define and leverage options that give us an asymmetric advantage.
    This is the key question. Having a solid thesis here can unlock a strategic shift in a brand’s fortunes.
    Here’s my attempt at it. Maruti Suzuki enjoys a strong brand perception as being an Indian family’s trusted car. For the brand, Indianness and familial bonds are quite important. So, here’s an idea.
    We know that most families are now nucleated – separated by distance but united by traditions and bonds. Families share things & experiences.
    What if we create a family-centric car subscription service that all family members can use through a single subscription. Wherever the family members might be, Maruti Suzuki can personalise their mobility, ensure safety and connectedness and economize travel. A proposition like this can be immensely valuable and unlock new revenue streams for the company.
  5. Align with power dynamics.
    In the realm of brands, real power is in building coalition with customers, partners, and employees. Maruti Suzuki needs allies among the eco-conscious & value-conscious consumer base. It needs to strategically build passionate communities that would champion the brand’s cause.
  6. Become the default.
    In a world flooded with attention-leaching distractions, being the default choice for a sizeable chunk of the consumer set is essential for a brand to survive. In this case, as Maruti Suzuki enters the e-vehicle space, it has the advantage of being a market leader with the widest network in the country. It can use this to supply superior services/ provide proprietary charging tech etc., to lock in consumers. (Though, it would be better for the world for it to adopt open standards.)
    What brand APIs, experiences, propositions can help build a strong relationship and ensure that the consumer consistently chooses the brand? What possibility are we uniquely unlocking for our consumers? For Maruti Suzuki, it could mean campaigns and features about family safety, or it could mean subscription services or integrated online journeys.

This framework allows us to imagine and ideate for a wide enough range of activities while focusing on the big picture. Used intelligently, it helps align corporate, brand, and communications strategy seamlessly. It is simple and concise enough to be understood by a wide-ranging set of stakeholders. Yet, it is robust and aware of the actual complexities of business, so the exercise doesn’t devolve into an esoteric ritual that doesn’t inform actual actions.          

I hope it helps you unlock disruptive growth for your brand. Feel free to critique and suggest improvements to it. I will keep improving on the idea.

TL; DR

Concepts to know:

1. Optionality – Optionality is the freedom to readily take advantage of an emerging situation, afforded by the fact that you have multiple options. As against having no choice and being left to get squeezed by fate’s pincers.

2. Feedback loop – In most natural systems, the output of the system affects the functioning of the system itself. There are two kinds of feedback loops – reinforcing and balancing. Reinforcing loops amplify and fuel change. (e.g., viral content online) Balancing loops, in contrast, keep equilibrium. (e.g., temperature of tea reverts to room temperature.)

3. Platform – Core organisational capabilities, priorities, properties that define their purpose and activities.

4. APIs – APIs are the synergistic added functionalities that the firm’s platform enables.

Principles for a world in flux:

  1. Robust wins against fragile.
  2. Optionality that improves the ability to compete matters more.
  3. Inversely, lack of optionality to improve the ability to compete, is fatal.
  4. A change that gives an asymmetric advantage, dominates.
  5. Ergo, the existence of defaults. Be the default.
  6. Advantage is relative and temporary.
  7. Change comes from the edges.
  8. Power matters.
  9. Distinctive awareness about what changes, what doesn’t is necessary.
  10. Efficiency is necessary but not sufficient.

The framework:

  1. Define our platform & APIs.
  2. Be aware of the changing and the unchanging. Is the change transitory or systemic?
  3. Prepare against optionality that threatens our existence.
  4. Define and leverage options that give us an asymmetric advantage.
  5. Align with power dynamics.
  6. Become the default.

[1] Bulliet, R. W. (1990). The Camel and the Wheel. Columbia University Press.

* I owe this article to NN Taleb. His excellent book, ‘Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder’, changed the way I see the world. It was only a matter of time before I applied his concepts to brand strategy. While I will explain the concept of optionality soon enough, I highly recommend reading his book to understand it better.

by Ajinkya Pawar

Evolving for times of Crises

Covid-19 has knocked the wind out of the global machine that humanity lives in. It has shattered our illusions of stability, our belief in global capitalism (about time), our hopes of certain growth forever.

It is not just a pandemic. It is a huge question mark that stands tall in front of humanity. What’s the meaning of life? What matters? and most importantly, what should we do?

The global machine – capitalism, globalism – runs on the grease of specialism: that I be a specialist brand strategist, that someone else be a specialist health worker and so on. In times of crisis though, this very grease is becoming the gunk that’s contributing to the machine falling apart.

Crises are times when an overwhelming force requires to be countered by overwhelming efforts from the part of united humanity.

Against divisiveness, towards unity

So firstly, we can’t counter these overwhelming forces effectively if we can’t ‘unite’ effectively. A machine that runs on the principles of divisive exploitation is bound to falter and possibly disintegrate in such a situation. Global Capitalism is based on constant replacement of labour with cheaper labour. It is based on inability of people moving as quick as the money does. It is based on exploitation profit principle which perpetuates and amplifies inequality. It is based on divisive politics that pits one community against another.

Under such conditions, humanity can’t unite. The exploited class will remain suspicious of the ruling class. Toilet roll brawls, disbelief fueled corona-parties happen, religious gatherings happen, demonisation of minority happens… the global capitalism had sown the seed of dissent in its very DNA. So there goes unity.

The anti-dote to global capitalism too is seeded in it’s DNA – platform economy. Facebook, amazon etc have shown what platforms can do. Unfortunately, these platforms are right now running with capital mindset of greedy fucktards. But the truth is – platform economy’s logical endpoint is a new form of socialism. A new kind of economy where most essential things can and should be free for most. I have written more about it here. We must work towards this possibility if humanity is to survive and thrive.

Against specialism, towards adaptability

Secondly, the issue of specialism. Specialism is great for maximizing efficiencies, scaling, reducing cost etc. It’s a must for scaling effectively. As such, its a must for global capitalism. But it’s also making us vulnerable to destabilizing catastrophes.

Like Swiss, South Korean and Israeli citizen, who are trained to take up arms in times of emergency (which meant war for them), global humanity must also have a strategy to build capabilities in every global citizen and communities to respond to health crises/ biological warfare/ riots/ wars/ famines etc.

Govt/ corporates/ power centers essentially must build capabilities among their citizen to adapt to emerging situations if the power that be want to maintain their power structures (stability and status quo).

RAPID EMERGENCE

In a complex and Dynamic system such as the global humanity, we can’t rely and wait for institutions to strategise and respond. Global communities must be empowered to unify, take informed decisions and respond quickly. For a health emergency a substantial proportion of people should be trained to respond with nurse/ care/ logistics skills. For wars, an overlapping set of people in substantial numbers should be trained to organise, mobilise, evacuate, arm and respond if necessary. For natural disasaters, similarly another overlapping set of people should be capable of rapidly transforming into first responders, medics, cooks, truck drivers etc.

The essential principle to survive and thrive in the new globalised world is to,

  1. Build Platforms as Commons
  2. Build Capabilities among citizenry to respond rapidly for emergencies

by Ajinkya Pawar

Slow down to break the stride of bullshit surfers

Surfing Notions

Is candy no longer an impulse purchase?
Is the world still on the ‘liberal progressive’ journey?
Will Amazon/ Facebook ‘surely’ cede control to regulators?
Will they fight misinformation honestly?

From the trivial to the profound, I find myself in the midst of rushed debates where beautiful questions are raised and then summarily decapitated with bland certainties informed with nothing but an overactive ego propped up by a scrap of a half-baked notion. People in power build straw arguments on the back of one ill-informed notion after another.

Surely, candies are not impulse anymore because people are asking for leader brand by name. ergo….
Surely, people of the world still want freedom, liberty, equality. (they better be. my whole worldview depends on it. if they don’t, who am I? what would I do with my fractured beliefs?) Also, How else to justify the progressive brand shtick? Also, how else to win at gold tinged bubbles named Cannes/ Effies?
Surely, the big tech will cede control. (I don’t even want to imagine the alternative. The owners are heroes, someone that I could have been. I can’t imagine them as villains or worse as simple humans capable of pettiness, narcissism or greed.)

Meaning drowned under the deluge of notions

Questions are such beautiful things. They are an invitation to explore, to understand, to meditate. They tease us to dig deeper, to dive in the richer complexity of the world.

Instead, questions are increasingly treated as simply the setup for a punchline.

This is a profound shift. It is the curse of the information age. The deluge of information is so profound that we can survive only by surfing it, not diving in it. The victim of this is meaning. meaning doesn’t matter anymore. what matters is appearance of meaning.

Information theory X Modern day management

Successful Managers embody this. They confidently keep spouting intelligent sounding bullshit that they can get away with. In Trumpian times, the secret of success is to overwhelm the others with bullshit, the constant stream of bullshit rendering the logic / truth seeker impotent. It is the DDOS attack on consciousness. Overwhelm, confuse, slash and burn.

Bullshit is always faster than truth. Truth emerges only slowly, deliberately. Bullshit is not taxed with effort or intelligence. all it requires is confidence and ability to surf over one straw-man argument/ logic/ fact to next.

Slowing down

As the responsible one, as the people who actually get shit done, it is important to slow down, to break the stride of the bullshit surfer.

It is important to throw the lasso of reason on the question raised and hold onto it.
Why is Candy no longer an impulse purchase? or did you mean that they are impulse purchases but brand matters? so some kind of mints solve a problem (post-smoking masking) while some don’t? or has there been some fundamental shift in the way human desires are triggered?…
So world is actually much more complex now with the rise of right-wing politics? the David of progressive politics versus the Goliath of racism/sexism/…ism is the right narrative to build? So the statement is a political wish, not a fact?
So why would the big tech cede control? is it in their interest? has there been any historical precedent of people ceding control willingly? what forces have been successful in ensuring that powerful cede control to the less powerful?

If we are persistent enough (and polite enough) with our questions, maybe we can unearth the real questions to answer.

As a planner, it means to physically slow down the meetings, hold clients longer until sensible questions and answers emerge.

As a planner that means to say no to unimportant projects that keep you needlessly busy. Need to free up that RAM.

It means to point out bullshit from where ever it might be emanating from – senior management/ clients/ fellow planners/ creatives… and politely help them arrive at a sensible goal to chase.

by Ajinkya Pawar

The business of transformation

WPP is now a ”creative transformation” company.

I am cautiously optimistic about this facelift. I hope there is more to come. And that WPP will go beyond the facelift and the simplification. fingers crossed.

But…

After Ogilvy‘s ‘refounding’ and Publicis’ marcel attempt and now WPP’s structural simplification & brand identity ‘reveal’, it feels as if the creative industry is in serious short supply of imagination & ambition.

I guess, it will be worthwhile to understand WHY these agencies feel the need to change.

Tumbling down the priority list

Firstly, mass communications’ relevance to fuel business growth is in decline. Digital has opened up newer ways of creating products and reaching, engaging and servicing consumers. So businesses now have far more levers to crank growth, whereas in past it had just a few – mass communications being the most ‘scalable’. Now distribution, service and even products are scalable.
So the obvious implication for advertising agencies is to –
a. Accept the reality  that brand building remains important, but it is one among many things that a company needs to do. So premiumise our services, increase the value of creative offerings. After all, branding might not be essential to everyone, but it still remains essential to many. But we are not doing that.
b. Or accept the elevation of other service partners at the table. Consequently accept the declining share of client’s growth spends. And go find ways to ‘scale‘, reach more clients.
c. Or, grow capabilities to service newer needs of business growth.

The key thing here is to commit to a path – either of these three. If we try to straggle two paths, we are bound to falter. WPP, Publicis and the rest seem to be trying to straddle.
In this light, the ‘creative transformation’ doesn’t signal a strategy at all. It simply feels like an articulation to assuage fears of irrelevance. It is not committing to any one path. It is more of the same old. It is simply reducing silos, but still functioning with silos. It doesn’t understand true integration of capabilities. They seem to operate with the logic that to gain a capability, we need to simply add a department. But they have no point of view on enabling people with different capabilities to work together, learn together. This remains a crucial problem to solve. 

The incremental evolution perhaps is in the right direction, but not big enough, not fast enough. WPP, Publicis and most other creative agencies are bound to be turned into second tier vendors in the new economy, unless they fundamentally change the way they work.

Theater of precision

Secondly, digital tools create the theater of precision. Data gets sliced, diced, bundled, anonymized, aggregated, dimensionalised, granulated, distilled, contextualised… and so on. Much of it is useful, much of it isn’t. For now though, data enjoys the hype among CxOs that advertising enjoyed in the last century. Advertising relished in the indeterminate and chaotic nature of human creativity, while data gives a false sense of certainty and precision. In absence of scientific temperament, a theater of rationality is stealing the show. Advertising industry’s reluctance to engage with scientific processes meaningfully has given rise to a generation of clients who feel that the industry is opportunist at best, incapable-of-reason at worst.

The advertising industry needs to rationally dismantle both, the theater of precision and the theater of mystic creativity. It needs to stop acting as an opportunist salesman that uses complexity and mysticism to its advantage. The time is up for that. Scientific temperament can help gain confidence & value.

So my question is, how exactly does ‘creative transformation’ take place? what is the thesis? what is the scalable process here to deliver this transformation? Is there a precedent to this approach? How do we know that this strategy is superior to others in helping clients grow?

Instead of starting with a brand identity & design exercise, I believe WPP should have started with a rational approach to define a new way of working together, a new way of being more consistent with driving results.

Start: The industry needs to focus on their ability to create real value for businesses seeking growth.
Stop: Focusing on justifying our existence, articulating our way into relevance, feeding the parasites.

by Ajinkya Pawar

The sudoku problem and the delusion of conservative ad men

This is in response to Mr. Rory sutherland’s article about targeting in advertising. Read that article before reading this one.
______________________________

“By deluding everyone that the whole of advertising is reducible to “the efficient and inexpensive delivery of targeted messages” through the extensive use of data and algorithms, two companies have gained a multi-billion-dollar rent-seeking monopoly over the majority of advertising activity.”

– The extraordinarily persuasive Mr. Rory Sutherland in his campaignlive article.

Bang on. But right after identifying the problem correctly, he then completely misses the big picture.

1. Platforms are relevant beyond advertising. Agencies aren’t.
Yes, facebook and google create the illusion of measurable effectiveness of comms through targeting, even as it turns out, it is just as much a gamble as traditional media was. But Mr. Rory doesn’t comprehend the broader utility of these technological giants. They aren’t simply channels of communications. They are default platform of commerce, knowledge & social connections. They inform not just marketing but supply chain strategies, go-to-market strategies and even new product development. These platforms are fundamentally shaping the new era of business growth. The ‘sudoku’ like big picture consciousness needs to take this into account. It needs to take into account the fact that these platforms are fundamentally changing the way we work, we behave, we interact and we live.
So, my first moment of ‘wtf’ came when Mr. Rory thought that the multi-billion dollar rent-seeking was just about ‘advertising activity’. Either he needs to appreciate the far broader footprint of that ‘activity’ where creative agencies don’t compete or he should look for reasons within the creative industry for why we aren’t getting a share of any of that activity.
I don’t particularly like the tech giants myself. But advertising industry is no innocent minnow either. It has always been a morally grey industry. So for its statesman to target the tech industry while absolving itself of its failing fortunes, felt a bit weak. The sense one gets is “we don’t need to change, you should. we are not muddled in our heads, you are.”  Which is horseshit ofcourse.

2. False duality of Targeting/ Creativity:
I wholehearted agree that obsessing about targeting is problematic, not just strategically but even morally and hopefully eventually legally.  But with metaphors of sudoku and door man, he ends up creating a false sense  of comprehensiveness with targeting & creativity. Indeed he talks about sudoku – the big picture consciousness needed to solve the problem, but doesn’t take into account the big picture of advertising operations. We are way too busy advising businesses about their transformation to notice the need for our own transformation.

He essentially creates a false duality about targeting & Creativity. Advertising comprises of far more acts than that of creative messaging and targeting. As a matter of fact, technology’s relevance for advertising is precisely outside of these two acts – servicing, client feedback, HR, research, basic analysis even creative inspiration … all these tasks that support creativity can be improved with technology. And they can improve only by ‘breaking-down-to-manageable-parts’ approach. The sudoku metaphor, though very enticing feels wrong. The sudoku metaphor is relevant for big picture strategy or pure acts of creativity. But no other process beyond it. and there are far too many processes beyond these two processes in advertising.

3. The untold story about the doorman: So in Rory Sutherland’s piece, tech company automates the door and boom – end of the hotel. But in reality, there is a story after that. Unlike our industry, tech industry is notoriously good at improving with feedback. They are famously ‘forever in beta’. They would recognise the error, and plan ahead. perhaps by creating  gadget for the doorman to greet different patrons in different language. Perhaps, by creating a entry chamber that is even more secure and pleasurable to enter into. The possible improvements are endless with creative thinking.
What I am trying to get at is… tech will improve the processes that it can improve until no improvements are needed. And unless agencies get on with the ‘arms race of feedback led improvements’, we are doomed to get thrown out by the doorman like he would a bum.

4. Tech’s role in advertising:
Do clients want us to be more nimble, more responsive? how can it happen without tech?
Digital media is creating a Just-in-time and plug and play mentality for solutions. can we deliver solutions JIT and PnP without tech?
Agencies service just the largest corporates in the world. we can’t profitably service SMEs. Is that the world we want to be in where the biggest get unfair advantages of our talent? Can technology help agencies in servicing at scale?
Most of our time goes in idiotic tasks such as filling time sheets, arranging meetings, reworking forever due to bad feedback… Each of these tasks can be improved with tech.
We are using tech to reduce productivity actually – Take for instance the process of installing a font currently – raise a ticket, wait for technician, who installs it. the first two steps are completely unnecessary. but we do it, because we don’t take tech led improvement in processes seriously, even as we idolize Apple.
Most importantly, effectiveness of campaigns is still akin to picking a lottery ticket. There is no scientific algorithm to achieve right effectiveness. Similar to the problem faced by stock-brokers. But people like Mandlebrot have been suggesting scientific and a different approach to that problem. Maybe, there is much to learn for us from that approach. (Stochastic and as such programmable to an extent. but not anytime soon.

5. ‘Creativity’ has been agencies’ excuse for long to get away with their privileged complacency. Advertising agencies are too expensive,  unreliable and inaccessible. Tech will disrupt advertising agencies soon enough, because industry leaders echo Rory’s myopia.

And here’s the blueprint for that disruption – Agency as a platform.

by Ajinkya Pawar

The Mad World of Monopolies Over Brains

Microsoft bought semantic machines.

Google, FB etc keep buying smart companies all the time.

A handful of global companies keep buying smart companies before they can get a product out to the market.They are essentially creating monopolistic moats over not just cutting edge intellectual property, but also the intellectuals – the men and women capable of creating/ leveraging new technologies.

So many startups now start with the end in mind, the vaulted ‘exit’. What happens when all the technological advancements get concentrated in fewer and fewer hands? The only anti-dote to Marx’s dystopia of ever accumulating capital was the intellectual capital that allowed anyone to give it a go with limited risk and succeed. Is that anti-dote of intellectual capabilities relevant any more?

Any body can learn to code, etc. But can everyone access the infrastructure and the necessary accelerating feedback loops to improve as fast as these few companies can? That pace of accelerating innovations is the new Capital for 21st century.

If we don’t want an increasingly unequal world, we will need to view this capacity to rapidly innovate as a capital that needs to be seen similarly to other capital assets – land, machinery, channels of access to consumers.

Which means, it is time for regulations. We can’t let ever fewer investors and companies to corner the ability to rapidly innovate.

This is essential. Unlike 15 years ago, when a zukerberg could code out of his dorm and build an empire. Now another zukerberg could code just as well, but if his idea & code is any good, it will either get copied by these juggernauts or get bought early on. Look at how FB is copying snapchat to its death. It is not a level playing field anymore. A successful digital company now will require a war chest of billions. There are investors ready to fund these war chests. But the problem is, that these investors are same few folks from California (and one notable Japanese guy).

There is no Nigerian, no Indian, no Brazilian, no Greek, no Swedish….(and a 190 countries later) person among those few people who control the new engine of human innovations.

A side effect of this narrow competition is the poverty of ideas that the best minds are working on – google glasses, automated vehicles, AI assistants … are these the biggest challenges for the humanity? As Climate change, growing inequality and rising xenophobia tear the world apart, should the people who can create the infrastructure of the new world be spending their times on elitist pursuits?

It is not difficult to copy them and become the new age capitalist. However they have created a high-entry barrier by turning it into a mad game of bluff. Their tactic is to value companies at ridiculous valuations. The valuation is divorced from reality and based solely on the potential of possible monopolistic leverage. Naturally, most sensible people, stay away from this capricious game.

These people are feverishly gambling with the intellectual capacity of humanity. It is a mad mad world. They need to be stopped if we want a better world.

by Ajinkya Pawar

Essential Mutations for the 21st Century Brands

1. Rise of the walls

21st century weather report

The world is reeling under the hate wave of right wing xenophobia, binaries of ‘Us vs. Them‘. The hate wave is projected to continue and expand as people turn their back on ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, which had yielded unequal fruits for the globalised citizens of the 20th Century. While the globalisation opened up the barriers for free-flow of money across the world, the flow of people has been artificially impeded creating great pressures at the arbitrary borders. The potential energy arising from the stalled flow is bound to turn into kinetic energy, overpowering the borders – eventually. That possibility of bursting of dam obviously scares people on either side.
Uncertain times, uncertain times.

In times of uncertainty, people seek certainty –the privileged seek Certainty of ‘walls’ to save their way of life. The underprivileged ‘others’ seek certainty of the better life on the other side of the wall. Hence, we have Trump’s wall, refugee crisis across the globe and right-wingers gaining political power.

Netherlands, India, Australia, Nigeria, Philippines… xenophobic demagogues are gaining political power everywhere. Are we collectively getting more selfish? Or is there something else beneath our collective psyches that needs recognition?

The new Modernism: From globalist to Nativist

For the purpose of this essay, understand ‘Modernism’ as essentially blinkered optimism and ‘Post modernism’ as the recognition of futility of Modernism’s idealism. So most –isms (Capitalism, Socialisms, Casteism, Communism or even Taliban’s vision of Islam or even art movements such as Dadaism, Constructivism) that imagine a simplistic utopia, that propagate a simplistic worldview are essentially modernist imaginations. Modernism is about believing that utopia is within reach and that ‘only if these things change, the world will be perfect and harmonious’. Those who want walls are also modernists in that sense – they believe that closing their worlds to others would solve their problems.

Post-modernism is about recognizing the tragedy of modernism – that the world is simply way too complicated for any utopias to come to fruition. Dissolution of Soviet Union, Quantum Physics, LGBTQ pride parades, Crypto-currencies, Tech Billionaires eschewing suits, memes… Events like these puncture worldviews of modernists. ‘Sacrilege’/ ‘Blasphemy’/ ‘Traitor’ they yell. The edifice of certainty comes crumbling down. Nothing hurts as much as disavowal of a dearly held worldview – the source of one’s identity, the coordinate of one’s perceived reality.

When the pace of change becomes unbearable and humanity needs a carpet to dust away its confusions and dissonance under, modernist rail against the symbols of authority, symbols of status-quo in an attempt to ‘reset’. They hope to start over to ‘do it right this time’. Hence, Americans want to make America great ‘again’ and Chinese & Indians want to ‘regain’ old glory.

What does this have to do with brands?

The cultural role of brands is now fundamentally changed. It is an important shift that marketers must understand. In the last century, global brands were at the forefront of propagating western values of individualism, freedom to enjoy & dreams of building personal wealth, accessing evermore-exclusive lifestyles. The globalist philosophy of brands marginalised national, cultural, tribal identities & associations. There was one ideal lifestyle, one ‘-ism’ shaping the global culture most stridently– that of individualistic consumption over everything else. Slavoj Zizek qualifies this cultural force engineered by brands as the ‘obligation to enjoy’.

However, people are reacting to that imposition now. Some by questioning their consumptive choices, some by questioning the globalist legacy of brands and some by outsourcing their consumptive choices to search engines/ suggestion engines/ Alexa.

Let me illustrate this with two recent historical events.

From the Berlin wall to Trump’s wall

November 1989 – The Berlin wall was brought down by the will of people.

November 2016 – Americans elected a real estate developer as their president for his promise to build a ‘beautiful wall’ at the southern border of USA.

What had changed between November 1989 and November 2016?

In the 80s, East Berliners craved for the choices that the West Berliners had – to own stuff, to travel, to listen to music, to use deodorants, to smoke cigarettes. A thirst for freedom to choose one’s own destiny brought down the Berlin wall in November 1989. Eventually, the freedom to choose destinies was conflated with the freedom to choose brands. Bbrands used that confusion to their advantage.

27 years since, the realisation is setting in – choosing brands of your choice is not the same as choosing your destiny. A recession and a few maxed out credit cards later, a typical consumer is beginning to realise that the very act of consumption is ensnaring him/her in a vicious cycle of debt, instead of setting him/ her free.

It was implied with overwhelming branding, that the consumer would succeed, would be happier due to his brand choices. Instead, it only helped him project his success and happiness at the cost of actually gaining success & happiness. Without actual success, the credit card loans caught up with him. Without actual happiness accruing from individualist brands, he was left in want of social relationships, a cultural identity. He was left feeling powerless – he had to suffer in the recession and then the bad economy, even as he was doing what was expected of him. That resentment was amplified by accelerating inequality.

Since we cannot accept our own powerlessness, we direct our blame at ‘others’ – South Americans, Africans, Muslims… It is psychologically easier to find a scapegoat, rather than confront our own powerlessness against the real tyrants. Hence, people elected a real estate developer promising to build a ‘beautiful wall’ at the southern border of USA.

Implications for brands

  1. The role of brands in our culture is changed. Brands are not beacons of progressive ideals of individualistic freedom and fraternity anymore.

In a walled-in world wanting out, brands were symbols of freedom, of free globalist identities.
In a wall-less world wanting in, brands are addictive identity crutches that must be pared down, in favour of collectivist identities.  
This is the reason for meteoric rise of brands like Patanjali in India (which is positioned on Indian heritage and traditional know-how) or rise of agitations against global brands (such as these ones in China).

  1. There is no single ideal that can be universally understood as ‘progressive’. Is wearing a burkha patriarchal or is it a will-full choice? Are revolutions always desirable or not? Is science always progressive or should we be worried about its advances? (For instance with GM foods). Does individual’s rights matter more than nation state’s priorities? The right answer is – it depends! There are no absolutes. Contexts matter. Hence, brands need to be cautious about their stances.
  2. Local relevance: In the pre-liberalised world, accessing an ‘imported’ Dove moisturiser in South Asian countries was in itself an adventure, an occasion to celebrate and talk about. Never mind the product was not made for the skin type or the weather. One was happy to be able to access an international quality brand. That is not true anymore.
    The profusion of brand choices means that people are used to accessing brands that are more sharply relevant to them. There is no incentive now to go for a global brand that does not answer the local, contextual need.
  3. Cultural currency: The internet was supposed to open the world. Instead, it has created ‘filter bubbles’ – echo chambers for people who exchange local cultural memes at warp speeds. In such a world, language, ideas, cultural heroes, stories mutate and gain layers of meaning on an hourly basis. To be relevant to different cultures, different ‘bubbles’, one must be immersed in it. You cannot skim it; you must devote a part of you to it. That necessitates a fundamentally decentralised and spontaneous way of working.
  4. Rise of the need for ‘Authenticity’:
    A wall-less world is a free-fall world where there is no concrete identity, no concrete reality. For example, ‘If you are defined by your profession alone, how are you different from the hundreds doing the same job across the globe?’ ‘If you are a global citizen, where do you exactly vote?’
    Hence, in an uncertain world, we need the buoys of brands to shore up our identities. For example – ‘I might be a replaceable software engineer, but I am an irreplaceable Indian who likes classical music’. It is easier to build a seemingly authentic identity by wearing a FabIndia kurta (a traditional shirt from South Asia) and to ‘like’ a local artist on Facebook.

A walled world is concrete world, not just of concrete walls but also of supposedly ‘real’ culture – with predefined customs, biases, beliefs, rituals and heroes. It is a more comforting world with lesser cognitive tax of building identities by simply subscribing to an existing one, instead of building identities independently.

2. Rise of platforms

Brands in a world of mediated choices

1989: From freedom to choose

To

2017: Unlimited scroll of choices accessed through few platforms

Prof. Byron’s influential book ‘How Brands Grow’ suggests that advertising should build and reinforce associated memory structures. But the nature of these very memory structures is changing now. A Columbia University study found that Google and other search engines are literally changing the way our brains process and retain information.
We forget things that we are confident we can find on internet.
Brands are on internet.
Ergo… Google, Amazon, TripAdvisor become the primary portals of brand discovery. Now you do not need to remember brands, the search engine and the suggestion engines would do that for you.

This dependence on internet to remember things is an illustration of a concept called transactive memories, where one depends on others to recall a memory. This is in contrast to independent memories, which rely on one person providing complete recall. The interdependence to remember, to consider, to prioritise has accelerated with platforms. We are dependent on others’ reviews, others’ opinions and platforms’ ability to serve these to us. For instance, you will not straight away go to Dove’s website to buy its moisturiser. Most probably, you would search for the best moisturiser for your skin type for your local weather on Google or Amazon.com. Based on consumer reviews and suggesting engine, you would choose a brand to buy.

This has profound implications for brands as more and more people shift their memories & decision making online.

The strategic perspective towards building brands must change accordingly. The goal of branding then is not necessarily to build ‘memory structures’ of individuals, but rather to make it easy for the brand to be recalled by the transactive memory of the hive-mind of platform-users combine.

There is an important nuance to understand here. Brands can still build ‘memory structures’, but that is not ‘essential’ anymore to grow. What is essential is to be ‘available’ for the hive mind to find you and like you. The profound shift is that of addressing the ‘memory structure’ of a collective instead of the ‘memory structure’ of an individual. This perspective, if understood well, can give tremendous competitive edge to marketers.  For instance, imagine the savings on ‘not doing commercials for Superbowl and instead putting that money in improving product access, product experience, encouraging consumer to review it or instigating a cultural conversation in the platform-users hive.

Platform brands & brands sold on Platforms

There are essentially two kinds of brands – platform brands and brands that are sold through these platforms. In the new economic ordering, there can exist a limited number of platforms, but almost an unlimited number of ‘long tail’ brands (precarious, unless governments regulate online platforms). Understand what you want to be and adapt accordingly.

Becoming the next platform is very different from winning in the long tail.

To succeed as a platform,

  1. One must understand that it is a race for monopoly. It might be a specialised platform, but for that particular purpose/ consumer set/ needs targeted, there can exist only one platform in the long term.
  2. The growth strategy is about building a network of users and leveraging the ‘network effect’. Network effect is the phenomenon of some services to become more valuable as the number of its users increases. For platform, this is universally true. With each new user, the platform gets better data, improves its service and enhances its relevance. Therefore, to succeed, it is imperative to recruit the biggest segment of users and to incentivise them to stay in that platform.
  3. Platform brands succeed when they create egalitarian access to valuable exchanges that were not possible earlier. Hence, the focus of the brand has to be on making such exchanges possible and communicating the value of it.

To win in the long tail,

  1. People key in their queries, as against asking an attendant to help or seeking a brand directly. This is true even in some retail shops these days as the attendant key in keywords on consumer’s behalf). This behaviour shapes the nature of brands that would come on top. It is in the nature of keywords to be linear and additive – People get more and more specific until their needs are met. To acquire a consumer before he has to get specific, brands need to build ‘memory structures for the hive of platform-users’ for the specific need it uniquely fulfils.
  2. This incentivises brands to be specialists – the sour tasting chips, the scented toilet papers etc. Be a specialist.
  3. There is a limit to growth for ‘a’ brand. The flip side of this level of segmenting and specialisation is the limit to the size of addressable segments. The brands would necessarily be not large or global.
  4. The key branding considerations for a brand are how to become easier for the consumer to find it, use it, and recommend it?

The essential mutation

There is no escaping change. In a world of resurgent nativist identities, global brands need native mutations. Brands must audit their local relevance and the authenticity of their engagement with culture. Secondly, technology is changing the nature of exchanges between consumers and brands. To succeed in this new reality, they have to appreciate and leverage the fundamentally different market dynamics of platforms.

by Ajinkya Pawar

Advertising industry’s new ‘Pivot’

No planet for old businesses

Exhibit 1:

On 16 June 2017, Amazon.com Inc. announced that it is acquiring Whole Foods Market Inc., for $13.7 billion in an all-cash transaction.
By the end of that day, Walmart, Kroger, Target & Costco had lost their market caps by 5.8%, 7.1%, 9.1% and 15.7% respectively.
On the eighth day of the announcement, Amazon’s market cap had increased by $18.9 billion.

In a sense, not only did investors reward Amazon by funding the acquisition, they also punished the competitors of Whole Foods for not being acquired by Amazon.
The situation is such that as soon as Amazon enters any category, leaders in that category lose market valuations almost instantaneously. That is the promise/ threat of platforms like Amazon.

Exhibit 2:

“In 2017, almost 80% of every incremental ad dollar spent globally will accrue to digital. In their domestic market of the US, Google and Facebook are capturing more than 100% of this growth, up from 85% in 2015.” So read the 2017 Redburn Report titled, ‘Ad Agencies Marginalised.’
“More than 100%…”

If someone captures a share of more than a 100%, it means that that share came at someone else’s expense. Certainly, many digital advertising companies and ad exchanges saw decline in share of digital ad spends. Advertising agency holding companies too bore the brunt of Google and Facebook’s growth. 2017 perhaps has been the worst performing year for WPP since the recession of 2008-09. For the latest quarter Q3, the firm reported a 2% drop in organic growth.

Essentially, growth is almost a zero sum game now in which platforms are winning. This is in stark contrast to the nature of growth in the last century, where globalization created avenues for many to grow: It was not a zero sum game then. The monopolistic ‘Platforms’ are stealing lunch of legacy businesses – ours too.

Platforms are winning in today’s zero-sum game of growth. The monopolistic Platforms are stealing our lunch.

What are platforms?

A platform is essentially an enabling infrastructure/ environment that,

  1. Gives freedom to connect with others
  2. Enables valuable exchanges which were not possible outside of the platform
  3. Enables external applications/services to be built on top of it, (APIs)

Platforms like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Uber are enjoying unprecedented growth and consequently unprecedented investor interest, because they allow that egalitarian access to valuable exchanges that were not possible otherwise. By their very nature, the exchanges become more useful, more valuable with expansion of user base. Amazon is able to fine-tune its suggestion because it has access to purchase history data of billions of its customers across the globe. People use Facebook because all their friends use Facebook. This phenomenon, of increase in usefulness and consequently the value of a service with increase in the number of users, is called ‘network effect’.

The sinister consequence of the network effect is the potential of monopolies. The logic of Platform growth inevitably leads to hollowing out of existing market structures. The logical conclusion of Platform economy is a world of monopolies rising upon the ashes of old businesses.

Shift in client priorities

From ad spends to spends for innovations in product, supply chain or marketing.

As if the threat/ opportunity of ‘Platforms’ was not enough, companies these days also have to wrap their heads around 3D printing, Blockchain technology, CRISPR/Cas9 and so on. These are amazing technologies promising revolutionary changes. These technologies present new opportunities that we never knew existed before.  However, many legacy businesses are ill equipped to respond to them.

Thankfully, a whole industry has sprung up to cater to these needs – needs of business transformation in the face of existential threats posed by new technologies. Traditional consultancies have adapted to offer new expertise to clients. Specialist big data analysis agencies are helping companies make sense of their consumers. There is even an AI (Artificial Intelligence) agency now, that helps create ‘intelligent agents’ for brands. Market is demanding newer mutations of agencies like these, mutations that help them navigate the brave new world of the new economy.

Market is demanding newer mutations of agencies; mutations that help them navigate the brave new world of the new economy.

The question that we must ask ourselves is – do advertising agencies matter as much in these testing times? On one hand, the budget allocated by clients for marketing is under pressure. On the other, technological investments, specialist hires and consultancies are claiming an increasing share of the budget. Will this twin phenomenon erode the value of our services? Will the share apportioned to advertising shrink further?

Advertising agencies, if they remain what they are, will secede their privileged partnership status to digital transformation agencies, to business consultants and to platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

One obvious yet terribly difficult-to-pull-off implication of this is – to become an advertising platform. I have discussed this in detail earlier. The reality though is, not everyone can win in that race to become a platform. For the majority of marketing services agencies to survive and thrive, we need a ‘specialist’ strategy, not a generalist one. Here is why.

Age of specialists

Creative agencies are made up of a unique set of people: People who can think laterally, think big, think informally. Apart from a few top tech companies, not many companies have the asset of free thinkers who are not stifled by hierarchies and suppositions. As such, creative agencies are uniquely positioned to create new solutions for brand growth, beyond branding ideas.

For marketers trying to make sense of a fast changing world, agencies need to adapt to remain the priority partners they turn to for help. Can the planner’s customer centricity help companies improve their business plans? Can the creative talent’s mastery over conceptualization propel a client brand’s product and service design?

Why not to be a generalist?

Advertising agencies help clients ‘position’ their products as distinctly relevant. But we forget to apply those lessons to ourselves.

Google and Amazon is fundamentally rewiring our brains – even our clients. The ‘search’ and ‘suggested’ result mentality means that for every emerging need, the client searches for services he/she needs with sharper definition. She is more likely to send out a specific query out in the world – either digitally or among peers – ‘Who is the best at product design in our category?’, ‘Who can help me assess Blockchain’s potential to disrupt our category?’

What results she might get? Would people respond with a generalist agency’s name even if they have the capabilities? Will a generalist be on ‘Top-Of-Mind’ for such queries?

Well, many private agencies can choose to continue doing what they do, with likeminded clients catering to traditional consumer segments. But that set of marketers is shrinking, the addressable opportunity is getting smaller. That means making peace with low growth.

However, for publicly traded advertising holding companies, coming years could be the years of transformation – either willingly or engineered by activist investors who demand growth.

Hence, it is increasingly likely for large advertising players to ‘Pivot’ to go for the biggest emerging opportunities.

What is ‘Pivot’?

The purpose of a pivot is typically to go after a bigger & sustainable growth opportunity in the market that can ensure companies’ prospects for near future. You do so by changing the direction of your enterprise if the need be, while staying grounded in your core competency.
Firstly, it requires reassessment of your old business in the context of emerging opportunities/ threats. The reassessment should ideally throw up useful insights about your clients, your product/ service relevance or the way you work. Consequently, you quickly test possible improvements to your service. When you hit on something that works, you scale it up and go to town with it.
You might end up changing something about the way you do your business, while keeping some aspect of the business constant. For example, it might entail shifting to new markets/ consumer segments/ new clients. It might entail prioritizing a different sales channel or to gain new capabilities. It might even mean reinterpreting a consumer need and creating a completely new offering.

At its core, it is about changing with an ear to ground. An ear to the ground tells us of seismic shifts in advertising industry with issues of trust (Pritchard, 2017), profitability, and marginalization (Bianca Dallal, 2017) posing threat to advertising industry’s prospects. Common sense tells us that something needs to give – something must change.

It is about time advertising agency business models change for the better.

The pivots of advertising agencies

At its most fundamental level, advertising agencies exist to help marketers grow (Purpose). They do so NOT by helping make the product/ service better, nor by helping reach more consumers. They do so by helping create consumer demand with distinctly persuasive communications. (Competency) The perspective to understand here is that of two variables: Core competency and Purpose of existence. Hence, to evolve, agencies can either look at radically reassessing their competencies or their purpose.

To evolve, agencies can either look at radically reassessing their competencies or their purpose.

Pivot 1. Core competency:

a.      Marketing services agencies:

Typically, creative agencies’ core competency is in their access to creative & strategy talent. W+K, Droga5 or Ogilvy are well known for their creative rock stars. Yet another agency might be built on the strength of decades old client-agency relationships. A media agency might boast about the scale of media spends that it controls and can influence. A research agency might have proprietary methods of inquiry or access to qualitative data.

The logic of pivot tells us that – for advertising agencies, there is an opportunity to pivot with their creative talent. What is the biggest business growth opportunity for the kind of talent they have? Beyond ‘advertising’ what high-value products/ services can this talent create?
Similarly, a research agency might look at its proprietary tool and reevaluate its potential. How can they augment the value of their intelligence the most? Would tabulation of existing qualitative studies help build an intelligent map of consumer behaviors? Who might be interested in such products? If ‘Big Data’ is the new oil, why are research agencies not making their big data usable at scale?

Here is an example of Pivot thinking applied to creative agency business.

The “If You Build it, They Will Come” agency:

This pivot is about keeping company’s people and their abilities at its heart and purpose. It seeks not to build radically new capabilities or hire radically disruptive talent. Instead, it seeks to find the biggest opportunities that the existing teams can deliver on, with greatest amount of satisfaction for the team.
For a creative agency, that means identifying the distinct talents of its teams and then finding the biggest possible commercial opportunities for them, may it be in advertising or beyond.
Creative talent remains the biggest asset of any creative agency. Yet, there is a growing sense of being overworked and underappreciated among the creative teams. There is a sense of ‘missed opportunity’ among people who see others creative people garnering fame and fortune with digital content. YouTube stars, Vice, Refinery29 and so on, have shown that there are bigger avenues for creative expression that could be financially rewarding too. There is a market for every conceivable creative style, expression, idea, app, activity or content. The creative team’s dilemma is – whether they will be better off with a career in advertising or in new age digital companies or by going solo with content creation, curation or aggregation?
Each creative person grapples with these choices. It would be in the agency’s interest to see the potential of its people before the people themselves do. If their team is passionate about a certain kind of creativity, find the biggest market for that creativity. This logic perhaps would not have been very sound 20 years ago. The surest way to make money with creative expressions and ideas was with advertising alone. However, today, a creative person can do much more with his/ her ideas.

If one looks at an idea objectively beyond the context of its birth, it looks much grander. Here is a thought experiment to prove my point.
Think of the last idea you had for a client’s campaign (or if you do not work in advertising, consider ‘what were they thinking?’ for any of your favorite commercial). Now think a logical conclusion to that idea divorced from the brand. Put that idea onto another stage/ context/ medium – see how it expands. If it is a good idea, it will always fill up the volume of your imagination – more than any brand can do justice to the idea.
For example, divorced from Dove, imagine the biggest expressions for the idea of ‘real beauty’. Can it be a movement? Who would like to contribute to it? Which brands would like to associate with it? Would the idea find place in the women’s marches? Would it lobby against skin whitening creams among policy makers? Would it run community centers? What would be the business plan, revenue model for the fullest expression of this idea?

If it is a good idea, it will always fill up the volume of your imagination – more than any brand can do justice to the idea.

Imagine an agency that has a set of issues/ themes/ ideas that it works on instead of set of clients. Will it be more interesting for the creative talent? Could it be more profitable? I believe it can be.

Ideas can translate to bigger things if you let them run free. The digital world has brought down the cost of realizing ideas drastically. It has given us the tools to translate and mutate ideas in infinite ways. Creative shops must make it part of their credo, to not let any good idea go to waste and to bring to life only the biggest expression of it.

The tragedy for many creative people is to see their magnificent ideas not reaching their full potential, being rendered impotent for a smaller cause, smaller venue. Instead, this new agency would recognize the bigness of ideas and put their efforts and capital in realizing those big ideas. The belief being – If You Build it, They Will Come.

b. Holding companies:

Unlike consultancies whose competency is in housing domain experts, holding companies do not have palpably distinct competency any more. A holding company is as good as the companies it has in its portfolio. The value of a holding company used to be in its ability to help portfolio companies to scale. However, it seems to have exhausted its scaling potential, evidenced by lack of organic growth.
Holding companies are trying a few things to improve their value. WPP is hedging its bets on ‘Horizontality’; Publicis is attempting to create an AI enabled personal assistant for its employees called ‘Marcel’. However, unfortunately, both attempts lack vision and conviction.
In an interview for ‘Strategy + Business’ in 2016, PwC Principal Deborah Bothun asks Sir Martin Sorrell, “How far can you take that?”, referring to Horizontality – the effort to get people from different WPP companies to work together for certain clients. Sir Marin Sorrell responds, “Not far enough.”
If the idea cannot be scaled across the company, is it even strategically relevant? At best, it seems to be a tactic to keep key clients happy.
Marcel too seems to be born of a narrow vision; it simply is an internal talent-sourcing tool. Wit AI, and the data that Publicis already has, it can be much more – but there simply is no evident will to create something groundbreaking.
Currently, the business incentives for a holding company are structured in such a way that they cannot radically change their course. However, many of their operating companies can.

Pivot 2. The purpose

In this pivot, we remain true to our purpose of helping client businesses grow. What changes is the ways in which we help them grow. The competencies become variable here. This means for this pivot to work, we must be radically adept at bringing in expertise for most growth needs of the client. If the client requires blockchain expertise, the agency must be capable and willing to provide that expertise. The key focus here is to become the de-facto growth partner of your client.

The “specialized business growth drivers” agency:

This pivot keeps the client base, the market, as constant and re-evaluates its options to seize the biggest opportunities in that market. Therefore, if your client base still feels that their biggest priorities are advertising/ branding to fuel their growth, continue doing the same. However, if your client base feels that their biggest priorities for growth are about leveraging emerging digital platforms or managing reputation in the age of instant outrage, adapt and train your teams to fulfil these needs well. The days for generalist agencies that could do everything for a client moderately well are numbered. Today, marketers need sharper, targeted expertise, which they can get most efficiently by looking at smaller, more specialized ‘vendors’. There is good money to be made servicing these myriad business growth needs. Specialize in driving growth for a certain kind of clientele with a set of competency they prioritize.

New age, new agencies

It is about time that agencies wake up to the reality of working in the digital world. It is not the time to be afraid and to be defensive. It is time to make bold new steps, to ‘fail fast’ and to ‘pivot’. It is time to start new adventures. The technological and societal revolutions are not threats, but opportunities for growth. It is time to grow magnificently with these new opportunities. Grow by either sharply adapting to emerging client needs or by investing in ideas you believe in. It is a brave new world, ready for the best of our ideas.