It is easy to make noise, but much tougher to sustain relevance: Govind Pandey of TBWA India

New Delhi: "Making noise is easy, but staying relevant across diverse audiences is the real challenge," said Govind Pandey, CEO, TBWA\India, in a candid chat with BestMediaInfo.com as he shared his insights on the marketing playbook of new-age brands like Zomato and Swiggy.

Pandey astutely observed that their impact is more about "impulse commerce" than setting a new benchmark for marketing. While acknowledging their mastery of cultural currency and real-time engagement, he cautioned against chasing short-term trends over building robust brand strategies. 

Weighing in on the rise of indie agencies like tgthr, Talented, and Enormous, which are giving network agencies a run for their money, Pandey acknowledged the strengths of both. He emphasised the need for network giants like TBWA to embrace the agility and cultural sharpness of indies while leveraging their own scale and global influence to stay ahead.

Pandey gave an interesting parallel between the founder-led spirit of indies and what he calls "Re-Founders" within TBWA - individuals who operate with the mindset of an owner, deeply invested in the agency's success. 

"A re-founder is a mindset, a way of being," Pandey explained. "You may not have your name on the door, but you feel like it is your own agency." He sees the key to success in combining this "Re-Founder" spirit with the advantages of a network, achieving a potent blend of "integrated scale with independent creativity."

Pandey reflected on the agency's performance during this period, revealing how they've not only navigated the changing tides but achieved their best year in a decade.  

Pandey delved into TBWA\India's "playbook," a strategy built on culture, disruption, Backslash research, and experience design, which has propelled their success. 

"If you ask us for our secret sauce," Pandey stated, "We help brands have a meaning system that is growing in culture. As this culture grows, their business grows disproportionately too."

Excerpts: 

2024 was not a very exciting year in terms of advertising spends by brands. How did TBWA\India perform during this period? How has the agency maintained its position as a disruptor in the Indian market?

The industry has been in the middle of a generational transition alongside a paradigm shift in marketing. And last year felt like an inflection point in this upheaval. Seen in this light, we at TBWA India, have had a great 2024. In fact, it has been our best year ever in the last decade. We had significant new business wins and some deep organic growth from our existing clients.

Cut back to 2016, TBWA\India’s disadvantage then (or an advantage, seen from another perspective!) was that we started pretty much from scratch. And it was not even a clean slate. We had to do some significant repair work to establish the stability of the agency in India. 

Since then, we have been on this journey of building a new kind of agency. Since the old rules were not an option, we shaped ourselves as a lab for multiple experiments and initiatives. Initially, these were just a means to survive in tumultuous times. From there, we have used this approach to thrive in uncertainty. We understood early that the only way to create the new is to listen deeply, be responsive to the market, and try out lots of things. 

Retrospectively, we created some sort of a playbook to grow and create a space for ourselves in these crazy times. And 2024 feels like a watershed moment for this playbook. We can talk more about this playbook some other time, but it essentially boils down to accelerating learning, experimentation and interactions.

The primary building block of this playbook is Culture. Our effort at TBWA India has been to design a generative culture. A culture that is not manifested in beanbags and good coffee. But culture as an essential enabler of winning among clients and consumers. We call ourselves Pirates. We are at our best when we harmonise irreverence and humility. We believe in Disruption enabled by uncommon humanity. With core behaviours of resourcefulness, curiosity, grit, deep engagement and passion, we are constantly reaffirming an internal culture that’s empowering and experimentative.

The second building block is Disruption. In India, we have defined Disruption in terms of giving Fresh Starts to brands. We work best with market leaders who feel tired of the consumer, challengers who are themselves tired of incrementality, or brands looking for a fresh reboot from first principles. In other words, we are constantly looking to partner with new businesses and brands who are looking for a higher share of tomorrow. Such brands do not want to play by the rules of the category. Instead, they are looking for a fresh view to be in a category of one. They wish to be more aligned towards the way the world is changing and become the brands of tomorrow. 

The third building block is Backslash. Backslash is an ongoing cultural research project that tracks what’s emerging in our culture. This understanding helps us place brands on cultural vectors that are growing among our consumers. If you ask us for our secret sauce, simply put, we help brands have a meaning system that is growing in culture. As this culture grows, their business grows disproportionately too.

Along with the above three, the fourth building block of the TBWA India playbook is our intentionality around Experience Design. We try and look at every interaction with a brand as an opportunity and consciously go beyond traditional channels. As the apertures through which the consumers experience the brand change, the shape and form of our creative ideas are changing. A small signal of this intentionality is in the designation of the Chief Creative Experience Officer, a designation not found in any other agency in town.  

All this comes together powerfully in our Disruption Consulting practice, which is primarily tasked with fundamentally solving business problems interestingly (rather than specific communication or advertising problems which are dealt with by the larger agency).  Within consulting, we have created specific expertise around corporate culture, design, B2B, financial brands, and the automotive sector apart from regular brand strategy projects.

Our primary mandate is to become the ‘Disruption Company’ in India. While there is so much more to be done, we are well on our way on this journey.

Do you foresee advertising spending improving in 2025? What factors do you think will drive growth for the advertising industry? What challenges lie ahead?

Advertising spending will continue to grow in 2025 in India, alongside the growth of the consumption economy, fuelled by key events like elections, sports, and the ongoing digital expansion. While there are Inflationary pressures and uncertainty around the world right now, we are cautiously optimistic about the year ahead. 

While the absolute growth of the industry would be positive, increasingly the focus in client conversations is not just how much to spend, but how effectively we connect with our consumers. Most clients are now paying attention to using creativity to enhance the media efficiency of their investments in different channels.

Alongside growth and effectiveness, agencies are also thinking of ways to thrive in low-spend markets. We are diversifying ourselves beyond creative campaigns and advertising work into delivering measurable results and enhanced value to our clients.

The past few years have been marked by consolidation within the advertising industry. How is this trend influencing the quality and nature of the work being produced, both positively and negatively?

Let me start with a disclaimer. I feel at a disadvantage in answering this question since we neither have the benefit of hindsight nor the vantage point of a long-term perspective on consolidation.

Broadly, the hope is that consolidation would enable scale to offer end-to-end solutions backed by robust data and tech platforms. In opposition to this hope, there are fears around homogenisation and stifled creativity as agencies prioritise operational efficiency over bold ideas. 

Alongside, it is also a time to take a hard look at the industry structurally, business-model-wise.  As a creative business, we need to disrupt ourselves especially with AI becoming a serious reality in life and business. In response, many transitions need to happen swiftly. Agencies need to shift from being service providers to growth partners, demonstrating clear ROI for clients through integrated offerings of creativity, technology, and strategy.

My sense is that this wave of external and internal forces will compel agencies to take a harder look at their own business models, their own brands, their own specialism and expertise, and ultimately, their unique reasons for existence.

There will be agencies that will go upstream and play a growth and effectiveness game, while some other agencies will go downstream and play an efficiency game. Such migration will need candid honesty about the agency’s business model. It will need the agency to be authentic to itself and the world rather than attempt to be everything to everyone. 

But there are some fundamental truths of our business, at least the part of the business that I am familiar with. I believe the front end of the creative business will always be great people with ideas that solve business problems. I believe that the need for creative autonomy will only grow within larger structures, for no other reason than to ensure that creativity doesn’t get buried under operational efficiency. And, of course, this will be complemented by a back-end suite of capabilities that solve for scale, which will gradually be shared for increased efficiency.

In an era dominated by memes, brand banters, viral content, OOH stunts, and other such tactics, how can brands ensure they focus on creating enduring, ‘big ideas’? Do you think content like ‘Ganji Chudail’ can actually help in building brands, or does it harm the overall brand perception?

I believe in “bothism”. 

Big ideas are the real disruptors. They aren’t optional or replaceable. Campaigns rooted in big ideas are more likely to generate long-term brand equity and solve business problems. Big ideas create lasting emotional connections, as seen in campaigns like Dove’s “Real Beauty” or Apple’s “Think Different”.

Equally, I believe that today’s brands need to be always on. They need to have a point of view on what is going on in the world. The more opportunities people have to engage with a brand, the chances are the relationship with that brand will be deeper and its more likely to be evoked when the consumption moment occurs. It should be possible for a brand to have a ‘branded’ real-time interaction with their audiences on topical subjects. Such ‘branded-ness’ is critical and must be informed by the Brand Platform in the voice of the brand. 

I don’t believe in chasing short-term mindless popularity contests at any cost. Memes and stunts are valuable, but if they not only just ladder up to a larger purpose but in their own ways reinforce their value and relevance.

Indie agencies like Talented, tgthr, Enormous, and Moonshot are delivering standout campaigns for big brands. Are these agencies giving significant competition to network ad agencies? What’s working in their favour, particularly given the past trend of fewer breakthrough campaigns for large brands?

In any business, even more so in our business, it’s important to preserve the “organism” in the “organisation”. An impersonal scaffolding of hierarchy and technology does not create culture and creativity. All good agencies, irrespective of whether they are independent or a network agency, preserve their organismic instinct of responsiveness and creation.

This may be easier for Independents because the founder executive is actively driving the work. The creative output is deeply personal to them. Such work has the imprint of their own personality. 

But then all good work is deeply personal. So personal that its appeal is universal. 

At TBWA, we care a lot about this. We obviously do not have our original founders working any more. So, we consciously recruit ‘Re-Founders’. A re-founder is a mindset, a way of being. You may not have your name on the door, but you feel like it is your own agency. More importantly, as a re-founder, you care for the work as if it is your name on the door.

Indies have some natural strengths. They are agile, culturally attuned, more willing to take creative risks, and have an aptitude for authentic storytelling. Indies also feel simpler and faster. Thanks to their founder-in-residence, they have a clearer brand which provides clarity around why clients should approach them. 

I am the first to admit that we need to learn from them and be independent in spirit. Equally, I wish to have the advantage of a network agency which has scale, future-facing capabilities and a global ability to provide integrated solutions. 

In essence, integrated scale combined with independent creativity is a strong competitive advantage when done right.

Are brands like Zomato, Blinkit, and Zepto truly setting the benchmark for marketing, or is their popularity largely driven by echo chambers? How do you view their impact on legacy brands struggling to keep up?

There is a nuance that should not be missed. Zepto, Blinkit, Zomato, Nykaa etc. are not as much a branding conversation. Instead, they are an impulse commerce engine. In this sense, they are not setting any new benchmark in marketing. But they definitely are instantly fulfilling cravings and refills and solving impulse conversion. So, if you notice carefully, these players have created new momentum for certain categories like sweets, chocolates, personal care etc. primarily.

But yes, there is a lot that can be learnt from these digitally native brands. They have set the benchmark for cultural currency through agility and real-time engagement. They lead audience engagement through hyperlocal strategies, humour, and relatable storytelling. It's generalising but classical brands do find it tougher to balance traditional approaches with experimental, real-time marketing. They can definitely learn to be more agile and deploy modern storytelling techniques. 

But it is easy to make noise. It is much tougher to sustain relevance across diverse audiences. This requires a robust brand strategy, not just clever stunts. One must be able to make that distinction. To use the baby and bathwater analogy, classic brands should remain on the path of creating meaningful, long-term connections with consumers while throwing out the bathwater of conservatism in cultural relevance. 

While AI is becoming integral to marketing and advertising, are there specific stages in the creative process where generative AI should not be deployed?

There is a lot being said about Artificial Intelligence. 

The consensus seems to be that, at least for the foreseeable future, strategy development, concept ideation, and brand storytelling remain areas where human creativity will outshine AI as they require humanness with emotional nuance. 

AI would automate low-value tasks to free up time for human creativity. AI will help increase efficiency in a lot of homework and some areas in content generation for repetitive tasks e.g., resizing visuals, keyword optimisation etc.

My feeling also is that, instead of being a replacement, AI will be an amplifier of creativity. It would augment human creativity. It will help agencies unlock new possibilities. But the soul of a great campaign will always come from human intuition. Reliance on AI here would defeat the very purpose of differentiation and lead to homogenised campaigns, lacking the unpredictability and ingenuity of the human soul.

In summary, AI is transforming how we personalise and optimise campaigns. But AI cannot replicate the cultural and emotional depth of human creativity. 

How can the advertising industry make itself more appealing to young talent? Should Gen Z employees be approached and managed differently in the workplace? How can ad agencies ensure they are effectively engaged and motivated?

This is the most important challenge in front of the industry today. What do we do to ensure that we attract the Next Generation of Creators?

I think mentorship, flexibility, and meaningful work are some of the ways to engage young talent, alongside creating a culture that celebrates creativity over process. 

More importantly, advertising must reclaim its place as a destination for ambitious young talent. Agencies must offer growth, purpose, flexibility, innovation and a canvas for expression. The next wave of talent is looking for places where their creativity can make a real-world impact. Agencies must prove that this is the best place to make things that matter, things that change the world—even just a little bit.