MxMIndia

Tag: Bharat Dabholkar

  • Veteran adman and theatreperson Bharat Dabholkar on why it’s right to call Bal Thackeray a Brand and whether the Shiv Sena chief allowed freedom of speech in advertising and the arts

    Jaldi 5 with Bharat Dabholkar: Thackeray was unique… he was a Brand

    In his long career as an adman, playwright and theatrperson, Bharat Dabholkar has interacted much with Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, including sharing some lighter moments. MxMIndia asked the veteran adman for his views on Mr Thackeray and why he thinks it’s appropriate to call him a Brand

     

    01. Your comments on the sea of humanity and outpouring to pay their last respects to Bal Thackeray.

     It’s a demonstration of the kind of sway the man held over people in Mumbai and Maharashtra. This is not some sponsored rally. On one hand, this is a tribute to his charisma. And it is also the picture of Shiv Sena, who from every nook and corner are very well-organised. From what I heard, there are over 20 lakh people and they are behaving in disciplined and orderly manner. It is great tribute to him. And it is a personal love of people for him.

     

    02. We heard a few people on television discussions refer to him as a Brand. Would it be right to dub Bal Thackeray as that… a Brand?

    Yes. H was a brand because he was only politician that I have met who was very outspoken and simple. Even his speeches were not very literary. He was very straightforward. He spoke the way things should be spoken. This is what made him a unique brand. A brand has to be unique otherwise it is just a product.

     

    03. Mr Thackeray had a view on the Arts and life. Do you recall any observations or run-ins he may have had over any ads?

    No. He was very respectful of any creative art whether it was music. He might have said something about a writer or so but according to my knowledge, I do not remember him saying something about an ad.

     

    04. As an editorial cartoonist, do you think he was a propagator of freedom of speech in the Arts?

    He practised that as a cartoonist. And his newspaper and magazine also carries that. And he would have to be like that for the comments and observations he had about his opponents and politics, they had to have a background that allowed him to say all these things. He was a propagator of freedom of speech since as a cartoonist or a journalist, he needed that.

     

    05. Your personal experiences or anecdotes that you remember.

    I have known him for many years and have had many interactions with him. but one that I remember is the way we used to celebrate his bypass surgery. It used to be celebrated as ‘Punar Janam Diwas’. It used to be very small get-together with a few close friends. And politics or so was never discussed, it was basically fun and games and cracking jokes.

     

    In one such meeting, I told him a joke and he laughed a lot. Then, after dinner as I was leaving, his Man Friday Mr Thapa, came and said, ‘Sa’ab is calling you’. So I went inside again, and Mr Thackeray said ,’Bharat, you told me that joke, tell that to me again.’  So I told him again. And he asked for my permission to use it in his speeches.

     

    I found it very endearing that normally people do not ask for permissions to re-use jokes. But he actually called me back and asked for my permission to use that joke. He was a polite guy in person.

     

    Can you share that joke?

    It was about a guy who is Congressman and goes to another Congressmen’s house. And he is talking to his little boy about how Congress family is doing. And the boy said, “Uncle, everybody in our family is a Congressman. My father is, my mother is, and I am a Congressman. Our cat is Congressman, and she has just got three kittens who are all Congressman.” The man was very happy to hear this, and after a month he visited the kid’s house and asked again, ‘How is the Congress cat and kitten doing?’ The kid replied, “Uncle, everybody is a Congressman but the kittens have joined Shiv Saina since their eyes have opened.”

     

    Interviewed by Ananya Saha

     

  • Adperson Anil Kapoor, Bharat Dabholkar and Rahul da Cunha on the man who created superbrand Amul

    Verghese Kurien: Great vision, Dream client

     

    By Bharat Dabholkar

     

    No better client, no better professional
    By Anil KapoorChairman Emeritus, DraftFCB+Ulka

     

    Dr Kurien was one of the greatest human beings I’ve worked with. You couldn’t find a better client, a better professional. When we were being briefed for what became Amul: The Taste of India, he said “Amul is an iconic Indian brand. Rather than doing advertising on the products, let’s do this and the rest will follow.”

     

    Based on the brief, we took the script and music to him and it was approved immediately. He was a proud Indian who always wanted original Indian advertising. After that, even as they launched a number of other products they never had to do separate advertising.

     

    It was always Amul: The Taste of India. Dr Kurien used to say, “If I have a good product and good advertising, it will sell by itself.”

     

    That’s why Amul is such an iconic brand. In the food industry where brands are constantly coming up with schemes, it has never relied on any schemes to dealers or consumers.

     

    Everything moved; they’ve never dumped. He gave the agency a total free hand and never changed so much as a comma or full stop in the copy.

     

    Once when we were presenting a campaign, a gentleman turned around and started to make suggestions. This was not Dr Kurien’s style at all. ‘

     

    He turned around and told the man, “If you call an architect and then make changes, if the roof falls, would you blame the architect or yourself?”

     

    (As told to Ravi Balakrishnan)

     
    He gave each man his own space
    By Rahul daCunhaCEO, daCunha Communications

     

    My father Sylvester daCunha created the Amul butter campaign in the 1960s. He took it to Dr Kurien and explained its unique qualities: the creation of the girl, the need to run it on outdoor hoardings, the topical nature of the campaign. It needed a certain frequency to be created and therefore the trust that they could go ahead without the client approval.

     

    These were the incredible trust guidelines that Dr Kurien set down — a great example of a client saying ‘You are good at what you do so just go ahead.’ He backed the campaign in spite of it not having any of the clichés of food product advertising since what he created at Amul was off the beaten track.

     

    My interactions with him were more as a child and not so much as a client. By the time I came on board, he’d pretty much delegated the campaign to his team. But the core team has not changed and in many ways, that’s what makes the Amul model so unique. The current marketing team and managing director have worked with Dr Kurien and so it’s just a question of carrying the campaign on. In their favour, many clients change campaigns only when they don’t get good feedback or the sales have been dropping; neither of which has happened with Amul.

     

    Dr Kurien did support us though: there was one hoarding, where the person it was about got quite upset; I won’t get into who the person is. I was quite stressed. This person thought it would be clever to sue Dr Kurien. Which was the worst thing to do since he had dealt with a lot more than one man suing him.

     

    He was quite happy with our work; happy that a campaign he’d given a green signal to back in the 1960s could continue. I interviewed him for the book Amul’s India and he says a very interesting thing: “I realise how wise a decision it was to give complete freedom to the ad agency to do their job in a professional way. I never interfered with their work and the result is before you. They have done an exemplary job.”

     

    When you see a man like this and then see the levels of corruption that exist today you wonder, where are our leaders? Where are the visionaries of today? Here was a man who built a brand and a movement that’s been reproduced in so many unions. We use words like ‘a great man’ very loosely these days; he actually was one.

     

    (As told to Ravi Balakrishnan)

     

    Source:The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

     

    I have worked for almost 15 years on Amul and I have interacted professionally with Verghese Kurien. He was a dream client to work with and simply an amazing person. At the outset, he had set the premise of our working relationship, where he clearly said he didn’t want to see what we were doing as he didn’t want to interfere in our work. He said he didn’t know advertising and that is the reason he had got us, so he didn’t want to change or rewrite anything that we wrote. This was such a change from clients who would always want to give their inputs even if they didn’t know anything about the way advertising works.

     

    I have always maintained that the success of Amul advertising lies in the hand of Mr Kurien and his approach. His immense trust in the agency and their creative potential is so gratifying, and that was what made us push to do good work. If the onus lies fully on you to create something and you get total freedom to create that brand I think it only leads to more responsibility and makes one conscious of the efforts one is making, because it had better be brilliant and match the confidence that the client has shown.

     

    I have visited him a few times in Anand and what he has created is a dream out of nowhere. His vision is unmatched, whether it is about creating a world class campus at Anand or in his vision of creating milk powder from buffalo milk instead of cow which was the norm. He rewrote rules and was an innovative thinker. He had a fabulous lot of lieutenants who supported him and whom he supported in these innovations. Like when we launched Nutramul he tasted it and said make chocolate out of it too, so he was inspirational too.

     

    For his advertising agencies, he knew that he had chosen the right people and trusted them immensely. The confidence he showed in a copywriter tells much about his personality.

     

    Another thing I shall always remember about him was that he was always very punctual and never late for meetings. If he had given a time to his agency he would never make them wait unlike many who deliberately would make an agency wait. He respected the agency and not just see them as supplier of creative product. This was a rare personality.

     

    He was an honest entrepreneur. I remember once we were to launch Amul milk shake and we came up with our research that said chocolate and strawberry were the most popular flavours. He immediately said that chocolate milk shake was possible because of the chocolate powder Nutramul but strawberry he said was a seasonal product and he refused to put essence as it would be cheating consumers. He put his foot down on the strawberry flavor instead opted for elaichi which was more readily available.

     

    Also I remember when Amul launched its tetra pack he hated the design. Once when we went to meet him, he asked, are you still using the horrible pack? But he never interfered and asked us to redesign having known that even if he didn’t like it the pack worked in the market.

    I feel fortunate to have met someone like Mr Kurien and to have had a client like him.

     

    – As told to Tuhina Anand
    Image credit: amul.com

     

  • Last week's acquisition of BBH by Publicis has led many to question whether agencies should stay independent or scale up with a network

    Stay solo or scale up with a biggie?

     

    By Tuhina Anand with inputs from Shruti Pushkarna

     

    Creative hotshops have always co-existed with the bigger networks and every now and then one hears of a celebrated hotshop being taken over by a network. Publicis Groupe, which already had a stake in BBH, has now taken 100 per cent stake in the agency. Considering that BBH is among the most celebrated creative boutiques, the development makes one think that the lifespan of an independent has become short and for them to scale, being part of a network has become a necessity.

     

    Bharat Dabholkar, who collaborated his agency Zen Advertising with Publicis Groupe in 1999, is very clear that the only way to scale up is to merge with a network. He said: “When we started, we were servicing homegrown brands; but we realized that with global brands coming in, we had a handicap in getting them on board. By being part of the network, we immediately got access to big, international brands. I think it’s a personal choice, if you are happy servicing a handful of clients, then you can remain independent; but if you have ambitions of growing your outfit, then the way ahead is to merge with a network.”

     

    Also read:

    Anil Thakraney: BBH must remain the black sheep

    “I have also felt that when a client is small in size or have just started with their marketing activities, they will come to a small agency but after having tasted success with grown ambitions, they ditch the small agency and would want a bigger agency on board. They still might continue to work with small agency, but that usually is on few projects,” he added.

     

    Giving an understanding of the situation, a well-known financial advisor to media groups said: “First of all, it depends on how well the creative hotshop is doing. My view is that if it’s doing well and wants to scale up, the only way to do that is to align with some network. And the network will align only if you are doing well. If you are just a creative whiz who’s not doing well, nobody will go after you. They will go after you only if you can bring something to the table. I think one has to also look at the age profile of the creative guys. If you are young, then you can afford to be in the saddle of a creative hotshop for a long time without considering the possible money that you can make because you can afford to wait. If you are in the mid 40s, then it’s time to sell it whenever you are at your peak. So that’s an important consideration, what stage are you in.”

     

    The scale a network offers is one way that helps the creative hotshops. The second is the access to full-time retainers with most of the bigger clients. The advisor echoes what Mr Dabholkar said: “Whatever you see or hear of bigger clients working with smaller agencies, it’s not a permanent relationship and it goes from campaign to campaign. So when you have that scale, you might end up being the only agency on the roster. So that’s an advantage. Also you need to look at networks which don’t have a great reputation in India, they would like to go after these agencies. For instance, Ogilvy would not like to go after anybody because they have a good reputation here. Whereas for a Omnicom, which is internationally well-known for its creative body of work, there’s nobody here in India. So the networks also look at it from that perspective, because it will be an image booster for that group in India.”

     

    But then what about losing one’s independence? After all in most cases the reason the creative people to start their own outfit is the independence that comes with it as opposed to being with bigger agencies. Mr Dabholkar clarified: “As for losing our independent streak being a part of network, my experience was different. Publicis was a delightful network to work with, as it was understood that we had an entrepreneurial streak so they didn’t interfere in our day to day functioning. However, the big help came in terms of sharing knowledge and supporting us with key inputs on businesses.”

     

    Sajan Raj Kurup

    Mr Dabholkar set up a small agency in Tanzania which has seen positive growth. He is not averse to collaborating this agency to a Network; however he feels that latter would not be interested at this point of time as they wouldn’t see much value in that part of the world in terms of advertising. However, he says that such collaboration helps the people who have worked, as it widens their horizon and opens new windows of opportunity.

     

    So it is clear that to scale up sooner or later, either selling of stake or some kind of collaboration is required. However, Raj Kurup who started CreativeLand Asia is very clear that he wouldn’t want to sell because he clearly believes in the India growth story, though he is open to partnering on his own terms. He is looking at expanding footprint and opening office in London. CLA already has a regional office in Singapore.

     

    Even Scarecrow Communications that was set up two years back is clear that they have enough going on their own and wouldn’t want to sell stake but are open to collaborating with partners that will help them in maximizing their potential.

     

    Naresh Gupta

    Naresh Gupta, Managing Partner, Bang in the Middle, who along with partners has got on this entrepreneurial venture recently, said: “There is a future for independents, and a big one at that. Yes BBH got acquired, and some more may get over a period of time, but that for me is the process of evolution. BBH did path breaking work, made a name for itself, and as brand will still stand for the same black sheep thinking even if it’s a part of a network. I see the same thing to happen here.

     

    Independents will be the new force. They are nimble, they don’t have previous baggage, they will take greater risk, be more lateral in terms of business model, and be a challenge to the large networks.

     

    The larger networks at some stage will always be interested in the independents precisely for the values of thinking different and taking risks. Till the large networks protect those values, it may not even be a bad thing.”

     

    Prasanth Mohanachandran

    Clearly there are both merits and demerits of aligning with bigger players. Prasanth Mohanachandran, Founder Director, AgencyDigi, said: “A network always has one advantage – of scale. The other advantage they have is, when it comes to multinational brands, most of the brand decisions are not taken in India but in other parts of the globe. When independents come into play, learning is going to be tough because it’s actually two companies talking. The good part about independents is that it is easier for them to think beyond conventional framework. Network agencies think through a set framework, there is a standard process for creative ideation. Also, in independents, egos are smaller.”

     

    Mr Mohanachandran feels that while scale is important, when it comes to talking to different markets, it might be difficult to take an idea across to different international markets. “If you play cleverly there are ways around it. If you have like-minded partners, it is easy to work with independents. They have the power to take an idea across the globe, someday it will happen, but it’s still few years away.  In a network of course, there is a larger pool of experience behind running an organization. There are more people, in a network you don’t have to worry about too many things so that’s always a benefit,” he added.

     

    So ultimately, it’s a personal choice. You can remain small and thrive or you can have ambitions to scale up where merging with a network seems a better option. Naved Akhtar and Freddy Birdy have been among the most celebrated duo in advertising who quit and started their own agency in 2003, are very clear that they want to remain independent.

     

    Naved Akhtar

    Naved Akhtar, who quit after spending close to 25 years in mainline advertising, said: “For us it was a question of what we want to do with our life. You can grow and keep running endlessly but we wanted to do our own thing, remain independent and enjoy a quality life. We deliberately don’t want to expand but remain small. We have some big clients like ITC and we are comfortable working with them and never felt that our size was an impediment in delivering.”

     

    Clearly, there is no clear answer to advertising agencies aligning with large networks. To each it’s own, we guess.