Recently crowned Creative Agency of the Year at the Abby Awards, Enormous has proven that independent agencies can challenge large network agencies if not on scale, then on their creative throughput. Ashish Khazanchi, managing partner at Enormous, talks to Christina Moniz about the changing ad ecosystem and why business pitches are not beneficial to the industry. Excerpts:
What would you ascribe your huge win at the Abby Awards to?
We never looked at awards as the goal. They are the by-product of our work. We may be an independent agency but we have reached a certain scale. We are about 115-120 people across Mumbai and Delhi, but our people punch way above their weight. It really comes down to the kind of talent we’ve got and the work we have done with our clients. We have been able to put together a solid team across creative, planning, account management and other functions. Having said that, it would be wrong to say that we have suddenly begun winning awards this year. If you look at our performance at award platforms such as the Effies, Kyoorius and the Abbys, we have consistently been in the top four or five agencies in the last few years.
Aside from us, agencies such as Tilt Brand Solutions and The Womb are rivalling the network agencies in terms of size.
Creative agencies are navigating tough times between network consolidation and the influence of AI. How are you adapting?
There are only two outcomes of something disruptive like AI—it either destroys you or it forces you to reinvent. While we cannot say how the ecosystem will look in the next few years, we keep adapting with new tools and technology. What I don’t understand is this doomsday narrative around AI. At the start of my career, Hindustan Unilever was perhaps the only brand that had the budgets to spend on TV advertising. Today, you may see a two-year old start-up invest in creating a video asset even if it cannot spend on TV advertising. The need for content has exploded and that content will come from ad agencies and production houses. It is time for agencies to value their art and recognise what they can do for brands.
The agency won around nine businesses in a six-month period last year without a business pitch. What is drawing brands towards Enormous?
We have not had a new business strategy for the past 11-odd years that we’ve been in existence. I believe that business pitches are a terrible way for brands to identify the right agency partners. The best way to enlist an agency is to examine its body of work and the consistency with which it has crafted campaigns. Agencies need to build strong reputations for brands to come to them, and that is a time-consuming process, especially for independent agencies. We didn’t get here overnight. Some of our clients have been with us for nearly eight or nine years now. This kind of trust helps us do better work.
Have you actively stopped pitching for new businesses?
We have always believed in delivering good work, which will have inbound business inquiries rather than us going out and creating new opportunities. We would rather have our work do the talking. This is where I believe that independent creative agencies have an edge over larger firms. Most indie agencies have built skill sets across disciplines and are not boutique firms. They are nimble and there is less bureaucracy compared with large global networks. Finally,
we are not driven by commerce or revenue. If one is chasing the right kind of thing, the numbers will eventually take care of themselves. Good work takes time and when much of that time is spent on chasing new business, the final product suffers.