Time for Renaissance in Indian Advertising

The Indian advertising community plays host at the Adasia 2003 conference, a mega event to be held at Jaipur on November 11 - 14, featuring 1500 or more delegates from 17 countries and 24 speakers, who include the golden greats from within the world of advertising and marketing and outside it. Sergio Zyman and CK Prahalad , Jack Trout and Rajat Gupta, to name just a few. The sessions that are billed sound exciting too - "breaking the rules" who, "rewriting the rules", "Shaping the future of communication", "building great brands".

With the positive energy that such a stupendous show is bound to generate, this is perhaps a good time for the Indian advertising industry to reflect on whether and how to bring about a much needed renaissance, which will re-establish it as an important social and business force. Does it need a renaissance? Whenever you ask the advertising industry anywhere in the world to respond to the usual allegations that it is a frivolous business, harmful to society especially poor societies, adds cost to businesses, the benefits of which are hard to measure, the reply is that advertising plays a larger role in mirroring the values and aspirations of a society, in its avatar as social communication, is one of the important shapers of public opinion, and is truly a key partner in driving business growth because it has its pulse on the most important constituency - the consumer. By these yardsticks, I will hazard a hypothesis that the advertising industry in India has not actually lived up to its larger role. Bad timing to have given up on such a role - at a time in the nation's life when everything is forcefully churning and changing, and both corporate history and cultural-social-demographic history is being made.

I say this based on a set of 'sins of omission' - "nothing wrong, per se, but is everything as right as it can be"? At the broadest level, if a cultural analyst came from Mars - or even England or America - and did what cultural analysts do to understand a culture, which is to study advertising discourse, what will they find? A lot of stuff relating to new lifestyles of the upper class urban Indian, and very little on values and attitudes. A lot relating to individual psychological drivers of behaviour (again of a small sliver of Indian society), and very little relating to sociological or cultural drivers of behaviour. Working with just the lifestyle and the psychological axes is the easy and most visible strand to grasp. But depth and relevance of advertising comes from all three aspects of behaviour and all three drivers of behaviour. So even as a faithful reflector of what is going on in this country, commercial advertising does not quite cut it. The larger happenings in the political national discourse is not reflected anywhere (not that I would hold up the DAVP 'India Shining' campaign as an example of best practice. It really sounds like the minister's brief set in nice type face). And the whole larger context of India and its changing equations with the rest of the world , and the changing self image of the country is not reflected. In short, the "naya bharat ki buland tasveer' has stayed a memorable tag line but not a guiding principle for communication.

Brands are supposed to be markers of an era - they belong, as one advertising man said, to the canvas of life, not the confines of a narrow market place. Yet I am not sure that we have seen enough brands, refurbished or new, which are markers of a new transitioning India. "Yeh Dil Maange More" has perhaps done that best of all in capturing the spirit of a new era of young India. The young Kargil hero, late Captain Vikram Batra, rushed after the retreating Pakistanis shouting that line - but one can't help wondering, is Pepsi the iconic brand that belongs to the canvas of new India, or has the tag line got a life of its own, divorced from the brand? Brands don't just have to be rooted in the rosy and the good. They could be born out of the frustrations and tensions of a society is feeling, and be the partner in alleviating them, or in helping people cope. None of the financial services brands, even, seem to have done that.

Now for the other role of the advertising industry - to partner its clients and help them drive growth. As business needs from advertising agencies have got more complex, and clients are looking for a pro active partnership, the agencies seem to have retreated into themselves and into a "you ask, we will deliver" ethos; the flip side of which, of course, is the 'if you don't know what to ask for, it isn't our business to give it to you". The fact is that there are a whole lot of sectors which are building brands and using advertising for the very first time, where management doesn't know what it doesn't know about advertising and brand building. And really has no idea of even what his bill of rights with respect to his agency are. I notice that clients often call outside consultants for help on issues that advertising agency should be in control of - whether in the area of communication or brand strategy or market analysis or continuous consumer insight gathering processes, or just advising on competitive responses. Why are they giving up the advisor power, and settling for mere vendor status, I often wonder? Is it that their ownership structure does not encourage financial and time investment in knowledge building and client hand holding, both essential ingredients to succeed in such businesses? My favourite example of the new breed of clients is that of a brilliant engineer CEO who said to his agency "I am used to bench marking everything with competition or with best practice - I don't know whether this creative is good or bad - what can you benchmark it with?" The agency did not rise to the challenge of putting a process in place which would empower the CEO to feel more confident buying the creative product. They just said benchmarking creative was not possible, and had never been done.

The good news is that like the rest of Indian business, the advertising industry has slashed cost, shed flab, moved from individual entrepreneur driven to professionally managed. But now, the era of bean counting as the main activity of business has got to end, and the era of knowledge and passion driven advertising services that create value, has to begin. Indian advertising has the most amazing world class talent - evident from how Indians are being sought after by agencies and advertising boards the world over. The renaissance therefore probably requires more an infusion of will than of skill.