Aim to simplify TBWA’s model to ‘disruption consulting’ & ‘experience design’: Govind Pandey

Delhi: “We wish to simplify our model to ‘Disruption Consulting’ and ‘Experience Design’ as we go forward,” said Govind Pandey, CEO, TBWA India, in an exclusive conversation with BestMediaInfo.com. 

While OpenAI's Sam Altman says that AI will handle 95% of marketing work done by agencies and creatives, Pandey believes that AI will only replace mediocrity. 

He added, “There is an opportunity for smart practitioners to take advantage of what AI can do. All of us should spend an hour everyday learning and working on AI enabled tools to do what we do faster. One should let AI do what AI can possibly do so that we can focus on what only humans can do.” 

With the proliferation of data, complexity of advertising has only increased. Pandey pointed out, “Just because we know what our customer had for lunch and who they follow on Instagram, does not mean you know how to inspire them or make them remember you.”

“That can only come from somewhere messy, human, and instinctual. Data that does not result in insight is just a waste of cloud space. We need full mosaic thinking rather than full funnel thinking for non-linear customer journeys,” he commented.

In the interview, he spoke about managing the cost of running agency business, attrition at traditional ad agencies, his journey in advertising and much more.

Excerpts: 

What’s new at TBWA\India? According to you, which is the next growth area for TBWA\India?  

We wish to simplify our model to Disruption Consulting and Experience Design as we go forward. For us, consulting will be at the front end, problem solving - business growth, discontinuous demand generation, brand strategy. And modern Experience Design across touchpoints, including comms, products and services held together by a Disruption Platform. We are investing in various capabilities like Cultural Intelligence, Design, Social, Data, etc. in the service of these. Finally our growth is a function of the outcomes and partnerships  we are able to create for our clients.

How has coming under the purview of Omnicom Advertising Services benefited TBWA\India?

All coalitions are about helping a group achieve what can’t be achieved individually. Omnicom provides the hardware muscle to truly allow us to have immense impact in the market for our clients. Together we can partner clients that need a much larger canvas, skill sets and scale.

Reflecting on your eight-year journey at TBWA\India, what key insights and learnings have you gained during this time?

I will call the last eight years as a journey of re-founding an agency. 

Back in 2016, when this core team came in, the TBWA brand was struggling. In an oversupplied industry with many agencies, why choose TBWA was an existential question. But TBWA was and is a great brand globally. The opportunity to build an Indian TBWA was really exciting . 

Disruption is TBWA’s operating system. Fundamentally, it helps us develop a great relationship with change. Rather than getting threatened by it or avoiding it , one actively embraces it to unearth emerging opportunities. The agency's traditional model is struggling . Media is changing. The consumers are changing. The kind of response that the clients are looking for from an agency is changing. With Covid-19 years thrown in between, it created a kind of discontinuous shift in consumer behaviour. Acceleration of adoption of technology, e-commerce, OTT, the rate of change has just been crazy. So the old playbook just does not work. One cannot operate by memory. You learn more by experimentation than expertise gained in the past. One learns to respond to a situation as it is emerging.  

Under such circumstances, one has to be really choosy about what is your core and what you build inside the house and what you collaborate with outsiders. We created many products like CEED that  morphed into Inside, an internal culture and employee branding product globally. We made Growthster, a product for start-ups. We also innovated on services like DXD (a design unit), Bolt (production), and Disruption Consulting for Problem-Solving through Story Design. 

We went wherever the clients came from as long as we could bring ‘creativity’ to solve a business problem. We morphed into a design lab, boutique, think tank, training school, whatever was needed for that problem. 

I have re-learned that when you are razor focussed on the outputs, the outcomes will happen. While on this journey, we managed to get a Cannes Grand Prix by designing a language based on limited eye movements. We also helped parents become counselors and help their kids become more emotion-literate. In essence, we pivoted to experience design and utility design over just telling a message. 

In all this, the biggest learning for me has been that people and culture are absolutely the first building blocks. Building a motivated and committed team is the difference between success and failure. Ups and downs are inevitable. But it is your humanity on the downs that dictates the energy on the ups.

Last year, TBWA\India replaced the Chief Creative Officer’s role with the Chief Experience Officer designation in order to deliver disruptive brand experience solutions for its clients. Please share with us some of the agency’s brand experience-led work.

CCExO is a disruption of the old CCO title. But more than a title change, it’s recognition of how the world has changed. Today’s successful and modern brands are being built on experiences rather than just communications. We want to be a Disruptive brand experience company. Versatility in creativity helps us play across advertising, products and services and relationships. Brands' place in culture is increasingly being created through experiences, mirroring the movement and life of our audience and our clients’ customers. The job is only half done if we stop at traditional comms.  

Please share the different means by which TBWA in India is deploying AI in creative work. In the age of GenAI, what timeless principles should ad executives uphold from the industry's past?

The principles of great brand building will always remain at the centre of all we do. TBWA’s paradigm for AI is to empower creativity. We are using the cultural intelligence of Backslash as the heart of our strategic engine. Apart from using AI to generate dynamic audience analysis, brand opportunity maps, and Disruption Roadmaps, TBWA’s AI is getting trained on the heritage of impactful Disruption Platforms, and our proprietary cultural Edges. It’s also being tried out as a Beta for streamlining RFI and storyboarding etc. At an Omnicom level, there are of course serious collaborations with Microsoft, Google etc. There are many exciting things possible on Omni, our intelligence infrastructure, enabled through AI. 

Sam Altman says that AI will handle 95% of marketing work done by agencies and creatives. Who knows? I think AI will only replace mediocrity. There is an opportunity for smart practitioners to take advantage of what AI can do. All of us should spend an hour everyday learning and working on AI enabled tools to do what we do faster. One should let AI do what AI can possibly do so that we can focus on what only humans can do. 

Advertising has become more complicated. There is more data and research than ever before. But just because we know what our customer had for lunch and who they follow on Instagram, does not mean you know how to inspire them or make them remember you. That can only come from somewhere messy, human, and instinctual. 

When will we get to see the next ‘big idea’ idea led work coming from the house of TBWA\India? A piece of work that makes everyone talk about it, has massive business impact, and makes others jealous?

The pursuit of ideas that disrupt and generate fame and effectiveness for our clients is what gets us out of bed day after day. There are quite a few campaigns in production right now that we expect will do precisely that. We are looking towards an exciting next 3 to 4 months. Watch this space.

The trend of senior leadership people quitting traditional agency setups and turning independent is on the rise. On top of it, here is a dearth of new talent joining ad agencies. Does this bother you about the future of the Indian creative ad industry? On the other hand, what keeps you optimistic about the future of the ad industry?

I feel there is always a pendulum swing between Efficiency and Effectiveness conversation.  And long term future demand building and capturing the demand already in the market. They are both needed and have always co-existed. But the flavour of conversation keeps changing. 

This demise of the creative ad industry has been predicted every year for the last couple of decades now. If at all, the demand for idea agencies is on an upswing. Clients are understanding the limits of only optimising budgets. They appreciate the value of a disruptive idea in helping them create value and grow their business. 

At the same time, one can’t be simplistic about it. Things are changing. Consumers access a brand through multiple apertures. The future of our business, as has been the past of it, will be creativity. It will take different forms and shapes. And we must be able to do that and enjoy that.

How are you tackling the challenge of reducing agency remuneration? Does it lead to doing more running work and not that many great projects to meet the revenue targets? How do you go about it?

There is hyper-competition in the industry. Difference between an idea and an idea is difficult to discern. Increasingly there is projectisation of the work. Pricing pressures compromise the rigour and that leads to a downward spiral. A fair agency compensation helps create best business outcomes. And thankfully there are also clients who are partnering us and demanding more of us and rewarding us for that. I deeply believe in the value of partnerships in terms of contribution to the brand and business over time. Even today great agency-client relationships create the best brief and best effectiveness. A sharp and nuanced brief reduces the iterations and the cost of a project without compromising the outcome. Of course there are places where technology can help efficiency and cost of doing business can be managed . 

How can ad agencies compete with content creators/influencers of the world? Do you think they’ve eaten into the creative agency’s share in the brand’s adex pie?

I do not think ad agencies compete with content creators/influencers. I see them as another media channel that the brand engages to connect deeply with its consumers and audiences. Well-chosen influencers and their content may create a sense of authentic connection at that moment in the culture and a sense of representation of the idealised customer. Even they need the premise of a well-defined brand idea canvas to play with. When this idea is not there, more brand managers are realising the futility of influencer investments. Brand management is an intentional intervention to build a consistent set of associations. Random gimmicks may help create short term excitement but not a brand.

Please share with me some of your interesting observations and knowledge that you’ve gained in your career and beyond what we’ve already discussed.

●    Well, the wine in new bottles is still wine. 

●    A physical offline 360 of the 1990’s has become a digital online 360 of the 2020’s. I see creative and media playing together creates so much more value.

●    As consumer attention is getting fragmented and reduced, the challenge to become even more relevant and even more interesting is higher than ever before. 

●    Full mosaic thinking rather than full funnel thinking for non-linear customer journeys.

●    Strategy and creativity are one and the same thing. Strategy needs to be creative. Creative needs to be strategic. We do disservice to the brand by looking at them differently. 

●    Byron Sharp has utility only on leader brands in commodity categories. Otherwise you are much better off following Jean Marie Dru ( with due apologies ). 

●    If you are in the quest of a great brand solution, rich open fluid conversations with a few engaged articulate intelligent consumers is worth much more than a quantitative survey of thousands. 

●    Data that does not result in insight is just a waste of cloud space. 

●    Great brands solve a real consumer problem. The secret sauce for brand magic is to get to this consumer problem. 

●    Big ideas are in life, world and culture. Not in things.

I will end with one of my favourite quotes from a painter/sculptor, Jasper Johns: One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work.