Bates 141 India, the wholly owned communications hot shop of WPP in Asia, has been in the news recently. The agency has been hiring some of the best creative people in the industry as it makes up for lost time and gets ready for new challenges.
Among the key people, Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar has joined as national creative director, Bates 141 India and will be taking charge later this month. Kaizad Pardiwalla, recently appointed as executive vice-president, Bates 141 will be heading the Mumbai office. Vaasu Gavarasana, executive vice-president, Bates 141 will be heading the Delhi office. Sambit Mohanty is the new executive creative director in the Delhi office.
Ever since the agency lost some of its key people–Subhash Kamath, Rajeev Raja and others –to competition, Bates 141 endured a lean phase talent-wise. All that is now changing. Despite WPP?s strict diktat regarding hiring of people following the economic meltdown Bates 141 in India has hired around 25-30 people, most of whom are in the senior management cadre.
And inspite of this constant churn, the agency bagged some of its biggest businesses including Virgin Mobile, Fiat India, TVS and others during this period, thus maintaining a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21% between 2006 and 2009.
Says Sonal Dabral, chairman, Bates 141 – India and regional executive creative director – Bates Asia, ?Some people left because they had their own plans and many who left were part of the plan – part of the rebuilding process that started in 2008. And we have now completed our first phase of this process. While we were looking to fill in a number of key positions we were careful about the right fit. We wanted people who were similarly hungry and passionate and had the same vision like us.?
The hiring spree is gaining momentum. ?We will be soon adding three more creative directors in our Mumbai office as we completely want to revamp our creative team out of Mumbai. I would say whoever is joining – is joining for the rights reasons and whoever is leaving – is leaving for the wrong reasons,? said Sandeep Pathak, CEO, Bates 141 India who was elevated to this position in January 2009 following the exit of former CEO Subhash Kamath.
?Our product is creative and we need ideas that build brands and therefore everything including hiring of people gets dictated by this single vision. There were gaps in the old Bates 141 which we have now covered,? agreed Dabral.
With Gavarasana and Mohanty at the Delhi office, Bates 141 is looking at some big changes there. ?We still have the challenge of rebuilding the Delhi office and that is the market where we have made maximum number of changes,? says Pathak.? Delhi is an important market for us. For Bates, Delhi used to be the largest office and it used to handle Nokia.?
?We have to get Delhi back to its glory days and I believe it?s just one campaign or one business away from achieving that. We are still invited for prestigious and big pitches happening in the city,? says Pathak. He is hopeful that the new team will be successful in winning new accounts. Says Pathak, ?We were recently involved in the Spice handset pitch. But we lost out to Ogilvy. Such things will happen. Even Mumbai was in a similar state but once Virgin Mobiles, Fiat and TVS came in, it?s a different office today.?
Clients have been happy with Bates 141?s work. ?Bates 141 was selected through a pitch process and what gave them an edge over the others was their strong strategic thinking. Over the last 18 months they have partnered us well and it has been a very crucial period since we launched a number of brands including Fiat Linea. All the campaigns are conceptualized and designed by them and pretty much to our satisfaction. In fact, the Linea campaign has won a number of awards,? said Tarun Khanna, head marketing, Fiat India. ?I think their biggest strength is their strategic thinking and the ability to recognize the issue and problems that is being faced by the brand, and resolving them through the marketing campaigns and not just delivering ad campaigns.?
Currently, Mumbai is the biggest money churner and accounts for nearly 40% of the total revenues of the agency. ?Since 2007 when I joined, to 2008, we had doubled the size of the agency. Between March 2007 and December 2008 the agency had grown 300%. Following that my role now is to look at how much we have grown nationally,? says Pathak.
Bates 141 has also recently forayed into Bangladesh and now the agency?s business in the eastern part will be consolidated with this new market. ?There are two reasons. One is eastern region as a market offers you limited growth opportunities. Cigarettes companies have gone into dark markets and there are few very industries in West Bengal. And yet we have this huge repertoire of Bengali language skills,? says Pathak. Interestingly, Kolkata is still the third largest office for Bates in the country and has won the Agency of the Year award for six years in a row.
?Bangaladesh offers this huge market. The whole country is going through a renaissance of sorts. There is a huge consuming class which is emerging. Global brands including Samsung, Nokia are getting there. And we are doing work for a couple of clients already in Bangladesh including Marico?s Parachute hair oil and Camelia soap, which we were handling via Kolkata. We realized that there was a good case for us to be there,? says Pathak. The agency is hoping to win three more accounts in Bangladesh in the technology, infrastructure and soft drinks sector.
The Bangladesh-eastern India collaboration is just the first of other inter-country interactions the agency is working on. ?Going forward?, Dabral says, ?I would like to bring inter-country changes as I feel ideas can come from anywhere.? Elaborating on this, he says that a Bates team sitting in India has already contributed for Indonesia or a team sitting in China has already contributed for India. ?The more catalysts we put into the cauldron the better ideas come out. And I would like to steer the entire agency towards this kind of interaction.?
However, Bates 141 does not deny the challenges that lie ahead. ?When we look at India, TV and print are still the most efficient mediums. But life is changing and it?s changing very fast,? says Dabral. ?Therefore the challenge for agencies will be whether they are caught napping thinking the size of the change is miniscule. Or they are preparing themselves to change with the changing times. We have already started putting the seeds within the system so that we have ?ideas persons? who are media neutral.?