With over two decades of experience in the field of advertising, Joseph George has spent the better part of his career at Lowe Lintas & Partners. So when George took over the reins at Lintas as chief executive in 2011, he knew what he wanted to change. He felt that the brand needed to be fresh, contemporary and future facing. ?I felt that somehow as an agency, we were not that aggressive when it came to getting new business,? he says. That has now changed with Lintas today much bigger and stronger, with 100 business wins this year alone. In this interview with Anushree Chandran of FE BrandWagon, George talks about how he plans to make Lowe Lintas even bigger, the increased focus on consulting and analytics, and the agency?s plans to enter television content production, via Linproductions. Edited excerpts:
What has changed for Lintas since you took over?
In the last three years, we have delivered some of the best work in the industry for Idea Cellular, Micromax, Havells, Fastrack, Axis Bank, Johnson & Johnson and Britannia. So, it is not a coincidence that the period when we put out the best work is also the period when we acquired the maximum number of new businesses. Doing great work on current clients is the best way to get new clients. After a long time, we were Effie agency of the year. A lot of things happened together?great work, marketing effectiveness and the Effie honour. One of the things that we focused on in the last three years was to change the evaluation metrics for clients. The fact is that more than 70% of our clients are market leaders. We have more brands in the top 10, top 50 or top 100 firms. It is a misconception that only big advertisers come to Lowe Lintas. They all came and started from scratch. ?
Are you planning to produce television content for broadcasters via Linproductions?
The intent is certainly there. We are the only agency in the country with an in-house production house. In the last two years, we have produced nearly 60 commercials which includes the most famous of them all – the Tanishq remarriage ad. We want to build complete trust on our ability to deliver television commercials, before we move on to television content. If we can?t do it, we will partner. If we can?t partner, we will buy. That?s a call we have to take, depending on how long we can wait.
What are the other areas that interest you?
Consulting is big for us. We are already consulting for five of our clients. We want this list to go up to 25 in the next two years. We also want to get into analytics. We have already hired three people from the analytics area. We are also in talks with analytics firms for a possible partnership since we don?t know this game as yet.
Are there any Interpublic Group global companies that may make their way into India?
There will be announcements in due course. For the first time ever, IPG had its board meeting in India recently. This is a demonstration of not just its interest, but its belief that India will be a critical market. Lowe Lintas is the largest IPG brand here. Then there is McCann and Draftfcb and IPG Mediabrands. IPG is obviously helping us in our mergers and acquisitions. Interactive Avenues is an IPG acquisition of last year. My long term plan is to be full service and therefore the acquisitions. We will consider anything and everything that makes my offering strong, robust and differentiated and allows me to charge a premium over other agencies.
Why did you decide to re-brand second agency Pickle as Linen?
The fact is that we have a new team and a new set of clients at Pickle. We wanted the name to reflect the new philosophy of the agency. It is contemporary, light and nimble and fashionable. It is adaptive and not loud, and in your face. The new way of working already kicked in last year for Pickle. It grew in healthy double digits. It is not that we are going to start something new with the name change. The fact is that we got a great momentum going on and a lot more new announcements are about to come, which will make the name change tangible.?
As a second or third agency, it must be tough living in the big brother?s shadow?
It is a real problem. You cannot circumvent that problem unless you have a culture of your own — a certain type and kind of work that is different from the big brother. Which is why, the name change was important for Pickle. The biggest struggle for a second agency is to build its own culture and have strong brands and people. For the larger agencies, it is silly to not have more than one brand. From a market growth point of view, it makes sense to have strong second, third and fourth brands. We have Karishma in the south and Quadrant. And this will be my other thrust going forward. I need these three brands to be a lot larger, fuller and sexier than they are right now. In about a few months from now, we should have something on that.
Will you reconsider your decision not to participate in Indian advertising awards such as the Goafest??
We will not reconsider our decision. Any awards show worth its salt should ask itself the following two questions. Why was this piece of advertising created? How did it fare in the market place? We better have some well-articulated strong answers to these questions. Which is why, conceptually, principally and philosophically, we believe in effectiveness awards. All effectiveness awards have a 50% weightage of creative. So please don?t try and con us by saying that these are the creative awards and these are the strategy awards and the twain shall not meet.