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This article begins w it h a s p oi ler to the latest sea-son of Game of T h r o n e s . A n d strangely enough, it ’s germane to
the story. “We are all like Cersei, the Lannister queen,” says Ajay Kakar, chief marketing officer, Aditya Birla Group – financial services. The “all” he’s refer-ring to, is the bulk of marketers, vaguely aware of the various per-ils that lurk in digital marketing like brand safety, ad fraud and viewability, but unwilling or un-
able to take any preventive action. Extending his Game of Thronessimile, Kakar says, “The queen does not believe it even when she sees an actual White Walker. But what we know as viewers, and the central kingdoms don’t know, is the White Walkers have blown down the Ice Wall and are entering the kingdoms.”
It’s quite an appropriate description. Most Indian marketers don’t care to put a number to the money lost or damage done due to these problems. Kakar confesses
he doesn’t know whether its 1% or 99%. Rajesh Kumar Jindal, head of audience, industry and digital marketing - SAP Asia Pacific & Japan, suspects the figures for fraud in India are likely to be
higher than the global av-erage, considering it is “probably the last large
market with a shift to smart-phones and significantly growing competition among digital adver-tisers and e-commerce compa-nies, fuelled by venture funding.” And it’s not just India — a recent study by the World Federation of Advertisers indicated 36% of its members surveyed didn’t know
to what extent they are exposed to ad fraud.
There are three categories — mass marketers blissfully un-aware of these issues; marketers like Kakar who have heard about them but are not entirely sure of how or whether they are affected and finally behemoths like P&G who’ve been affected and are taking action. P&G famously an-nounced a cut back of $140 million in digital ads through the last quarter, on the back of concerns about brand safety and ad fraud, only to see a rise in sales.
>Continued on Page 4
How can marketers stave off the White Walker-like invasion of ad fraud, brand safety and viewability in digital marketing? By Ravi Balakrishnan
A brief glimpse at the main problems in the
digital domain and the money at stake
INSIDEBE
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WILL HEALERS LIBERATE LIBERTY?
India’s oldest shoemaker trains its guns on the premium
market with ‘Healers’
LAUGH, CLICK & BANKFederal Bank banking on humour
TOP OF THE POPSSnapshots from the launch of 30 Second Thrillers by ad man
KV Sridhar aka Pops
INDIVIDUALLY, I’M NOT SURE IF I HAVE THE EDUCATION OR THE CLOUT TO
ENFORCE CHECKS AND BALANCESAJAY KAKAR, ADITYA BIRLA GROUP - FINANCIAL SERVICES
THE TRIPLE THREATS
BBrand Safety
Advertisements showing up against inappropriate or offensive content, deemed
damaging to the brand
Ad Fraud and The Damage Done
2016
$7.2 bn (Association of National Advertisers)
2017
$16.4bn (The &Partnership and Adloox)
By 2025
$50 bn p.a (A conservative estimate from the World Federation of Advertisers)
By 2025
$150 bn p.a (An estimate by the WFA if counter measures are not in place)
Digital Harmageddon
16.2%
MOBILE APP INSTALL FRAUD
IN INDIA
(TUNE)
32%
ESTIMATED MOBILE AD FRAUD
IN INDIA
(TUNE)
AAd fraud
Defined by the WFA as “an activity where impressions,
clicks, actions or data events are falsely reported to criminally earn revenue, or for other purposes of deception or malice.” Popularly understood as ads served to a non-human audience of bots
VViewabilityAn ad served to but not
seen by its intended target audience
IMA
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HU
BH
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DEY
THE LADY WITH A MIDAS TOUCHSchneider’s Chris Leong on making an ‘invisible’ electrical company a household name
The Last Mad Men of Madison Avenue
THE SECRET BEHIND
CHU CHU TV’S GLOBAL SUCCESSOn 3
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India’s oldest shoemaker trains its guns on the premium market with ‘Healers’. By Rajiv Singh
For Anupam Bansal, the shoe star ted pinching four years back. Liberty, the oldest Indian shoe brand founded in 1954, was well past its
prime. The likes of Batas, Relaxos and Khadims were already well-entrenched in the value-for-money segment, and most of them had even undergone a spunky makeover to ap-peal to millennials.
Far from being an asset because of its experience, the old brand, Bansal recalls, was fast turning out to be a li-ability. Having Bollywood celebrity
Hritik Roshan as its brand ambas-sador too didn’t bring back the mojo. Bansal, the executive director of Liberty, realised the need to reboot. A grand plan was put in place, a team set up to rejuvenate the company and the missing piece in the Liberty puzzle was solved.
Liberty is rolling out a new sub-brand Healers, which marks its foray into the premium category of foot-wear, with shoes starting from ̀ 3,000 and going up to ̀ 10,000. It will set up separate showrooms for Healers, won’t use the tag of the mother brand to push the range and will focus on premium shopping malls to target consumers.
“If Patanjali can take on FMCG giants like Unilever, why can’t we take on MNC rivals?” asks Bansal, as he hunts for strategic locations to display Healers. For instance, Saharaganj Mall in Lucknow where its showroom is sandwiched between Hush Puppies and Clarks. “The idea
is to position Healers as an aspira-tional brand,” he says.
Stagnating revenue and wafer-thin profit margins, reckon marketing ex-perts, made it imperative for Liberty to opt for a makeover. With the compa-ny just managing to double its revenue in a decade, from `222.70 crore in March-ended 2007 to ̀ 497.86 crore this March-ended fiscal, persisting with the same brand would not h ave made much difference.
Liberty was yet another shoe brand like Sreeleathers, Relaxos and Batas that was mostly bought out of habit, comfort and need. “The shoe never pinched the pocket,” says Ashita Aggarwal, head of marketing at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research. While
not being aspirational helped Liberty play the lower end of the price pyra-mid, roping in celebrities like Hritik Roshan expanded its mass appeal.
T he shoemaker now, avers Aggarwal, is doing what Maruti did
with Nexa: getting rid of the mother brand, separate showrooms and a different feel. Nexa was not only priced aspirational, the feel, look, and even name matched the overall premium-ness. Aggarwal, however, is quick to add a flip side of the new product:
Healers gives the brand a ‘medicated’ feel. The new brand, she maintains, has covered only two aspects of pre-miumness: pricing and high quality.
Brand strategist Harish Bijoor too feels that the name is not in
sync with the pre-mium brand position-ing. While conced-ing that it is a wise move to liberate the new brand from the Liberty stable, Bijoor feels an upmarket name wou ld have been more apt. The potential challenge for Healers, reckons Bijoor, is the mother brand itself. Even if one doesn’t talk about Liberty, trade and re-tailers might create the linkage through word of mouth. “This would be not a great
linkage to rely upon for a premium offering,” he says. This imagery of being a mass product is difficult to erase for brands that have adver-tised themselves into a corner of brand proficiency and efficiency that breathes mass market from every pore. “Liberty must insulate Healers from its ruboff,” he adds.
Bansal, for his part, defends the move to have a name which might not click with the millennials but makes sense to millions of working profes-sional between the age group of 25 and 40. “Healers targets this group with its style, comfort and price,” he says, adding that the company is also work-ing on rolling out a separate brand for the youngsters which will have a peppy feel and name.
The biggest challenge for Healers, reckons Bansal, is not to repeat the cardinal mistake which Liberty com-mitted: depending solely on channel partners and retailers. The company has already invested ̀ 25 crore in set-ting up the new brand and plans to invest more in establishing multiple showrooms.
“From just being a shoe for us-ers, we want to become their soul-mate,” he says, adding that Liberty has set the target of becoming a `1,000-crore brand by 2020. Healers, he asserts, will be a gamechanger by liberating the company from a staid brand imagery.
If its ambitiuous plans work, Bansal will end up giving his ri-vals a run for their money. But if they don’t — consider, this segment is dominated by global giants like Adidas, Reebok, Nike and Skechers — Liberty itself could end up need-ing a dose of healing.
“People are not looking for originality. They just want to see if it connects with them or if it’s entertaining.”
— R Balki, filmmaker, ex adman
MADE FOR INDIA 2
SIDETAKEThe ‘Apple of China’ to reveal new phone one day before the iPhone 8 launch
IF PATANJALI CAN TAKE ON FMCG GIANTS LIKE UNILEVER, WHY CAN’T WE TAKE ON MNC RIVALS?
Liberty’s Anupam Bansal
Top Of The Pops
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PHOTOS: BHARAT CHANDA
Veteran ad-man K.V Sridhar – better known in the industry as ‘Pops’ – recently launched his book ’30 Second Thrillers’ at a glittering ceremony in Mumbai. The event had attendance from ad-men and women from across networks, an unusual and a commendable feat for the advertising industry
Autograph Please: KV
Sridhar (Pops) at the book-
launch event
Pop the wisdom: with the veteran ad-man Alyque Padamsee
Bear-hug mode: with Piyush Pandey
The stage creaking under the heavyweight(s) at the book launch: (L-R): Josy Paul (BBDO), Arun Iyer (Lowe Lintas), Ashish Khazanchi (Enormous), Kailash Surendranath (ad fi lmmaker), Piyush Pandey (Ogilvy), Ram Madhvani (Equinox Films), Agnello Dias (Taproot), Prasoon Joshi (McCann Worldgroup), Prasoon Pandey (Corcoise Films), Prakash Varma (Nirvana Films), KS Chakravarthy (Tidal7), Kartik Iyer (Happy), Amit Sharma (Chrome Pictures), Gauri Shinde (director), Nitesh Tiwari (ad-man turned director), R Balki (ad-man turned director), Shriram Iyer (Mullen Lintas), Parshu Narayanan (Left Hook)
On September 12, Apple is due to formally announce the eagerly anticipated iPhone 8 — a high-end device with an almost edge-to-edge screen.One day before, on September 11, another high-end device with an almost edge-to-edge screen will launch — from Xiaomi, a tech startup sometimes re-ferred to as the “Apple of China.”As previously reported by The Verge, The Chinese electronics firm is gearing up to formally reveal the Mi Mix 2. A designer has already shared a “conceptual product design” video, while a managing director has teased its design in a tweet.Xiaomi, once the most valuable startup in the world, has previously built phones that are similar in design to Apple’s — so much so that Apple design chief Jony Ive once accused the company and others like it of “theft.” Its CEO has also adopted a Steve Jobs-esque demeanor, borrowing his outfit and signature “one more thing” line.But in recent years, Xiaomi’s products have been more differentiated — and the firm has even poked fun at Apple in presentations, making unflattering comparisons between its products and Apple’s alleg-edly inferior offerings.
Source: Business Insider
Will Healers Liberate Liberty?
“Creativity was better when agencies were independent and not pressured by the networks.”
Alyque Padamsee
“Me and my brother have been childhood fans of Mr Bachchan and even had his posters in our room. From there to directing him for the KBC brand fi lms: it’s been quite a journey.”
Nitesh Tiwari
“We didn’t recognize the kid from Bal Ganesh who was in the Flipkart ad. He showed up without his trunk”
Kartik Iyer
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From sporadic doses of celebs (Deepika Padukone for Axis Bank and Amitabh Bachchan for ICICI Bank) to long form t r y-me - out f i l ms
by new-age banks like IDFC and DBS, bank advertising has been rather frisky in both frequency and rendition. Federal Bank’s comeback campaign - after al-most 3 years – is hoping to move the needle from a strong regional play to a larger footprint.
Not Just ‘Kerala’s Local Bank’ The perception of Federal Bank being a regional entity bothers Shyam Srinivasan - managing director & CEO. “Over 50% of our 1252 branches — 670 of them, are outside Kerala,” he says. The bank claims to have grown at around 26% last year, seven to eight times the market. “Financially we have done better than the top 90% of Indian banks”, says Srinivasan. With a reported market capi-talisation of `22,000 crore, it is amongst the Top 10 banks in the country. “We have just nudged into the 1% of India’s market-share this year and we want the remaining 99% to know us,” says Srinivasan. And that’s why a high decibel campaign. When In Doubt, ResearchResearch indicated that while the brand has a lot of equity in Kerala and other states of South India, a key challenge was awareness in the rest of the country. Also an oppor-tunity since there was no specific imagery associated with the bank. Another associated finding was the need to increase ‘consideration’ for Federal Bank, addressed by show-
casing some flagship products and services, shares Ajay Menon, vice president, Ogilvy & Mather, Federal Bank’s creative agency. To this end, five services were picked from the 25 plus on offer, which would mean the most to average customers.
Banking On Humour And A HeroThe task of the five film campaign was to position Federal Bank as a new-age bank amongst a younger
audience and reflect the brand’s positioning ‘why settle for less’. Shares Kiran Antony, ECD, Ogilvy Mumbai, “We wanted every film to have a certain look and feel to stand out in the sea of ‘bank advertising’, and also help create an overall personality. In addition, the films are silent, thus transcending the prickly language barrier. A self-confessed obsessive cricket fan, Srinivasan got the agency to create a jingle ala IPL.
Says Nikhil Rao, director, Jamic Films, the common protagonist in all the films (played by Vicky Kaushal of acclaimed films ‘Masaan’ and ‘Raman Raghav’) is moulded on the lines of Mr Bean meets Johhny Bravo, pitching humour inherent in these characters.
The Balance SheetThe overall marketing spend is around ̀ 50 crores. The media plan
includes OOH, social media, em-ployee branding and activation. To amplify the buzz, the bank recently carried out an extensive BTL cam-paign via Mumbai’s dabbawallas.
Click Bait In the sea of parity, a relatively late entrant like Federal Bank can’t afford to increase the base by tra-ditional means alone. Challenger brands have to identify a niche, agrees Srinivasan, and Federal Bank’s chosen one is being digital at the core. One such product is the selfie account which lets the customer click a photo to start an account instead of visiting the branch and filling up physical forms. Federal Bank was the first to offer this service in the country, shares Jithesh PV, deputy VP and head digital centre of excellence, Federal Bank. Over half a million have signed up so far for FedBook. Interestingly when launched a few years back, FedBook Selfie was seen as ahead of its time. Today with demonetisation and the push for digital banking, Selfie has be-come a very contemporary product in the banking space as well.
But Does It Get The Job Done?Bank advertising is cluttered both in terms of players and prod-ucts. Financial services offerings are perceived as complicated and standard across brands. In such a scenario, it becomes the respon-sibility of advertising and mar-keting to demystify the category, according to Sevantika Bhandari, CMO, DHFL and this campaign in her view breaks the clutter in both creative and execution. After all banking is a very POV-led cat-egory and for a player to get even a foot in the door is a big task here. Sanjay Tripathy, co-founder & CEO, Agilio has a counterpoint. While the campaign has used humour well, he is uncertain if it will provide the desired results as it is falling short of telling the audience why they should change their bank or look at the products, anew. Which makes us wonder if Federal will laugh or cry all the way to the bank.
BY DELSHAD IRANI | MUMBAI
Kids’ YouTube channel, Chu Chu TV’s most popular video to date is ‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’. It’s got about 1.5 billion views and is Google-owned YouTube’s 44th most watched video in the world. But there’s an-other Johny on YouTube who is sneakily eating sugar and just 387 million people have seen him so far.
When Chennai-based Chu Chu TV released this ver-sion of the popular nursery rhyme, it received some of the worst reactions the channel’s co-founder Vinoth Chandar ever read. Parents, mostly from the US, which is Chu Chu TV’s primary mar-ket, were horrified when they saw Johny, his siblings and Papa share the same bed. Chandar tells us he can’t even repeat some of what the view-ers had to say. It was a matter of cultural difference. “I mean, my wife, my two kids and I, all sleep in the same bed,” he says, still a little shaken by the reactions to the video. Nevertheless, without skipping a second, Chandar and his co-founders -
BM Krishnan, Subbiramanian TS, Ajith Togo and Suresh Bhoopathy - went back to the drawing board and gave the little sugar-addict his own private bedroom.
From the beginning, the creators of Chu Chu TV have taken on board every piece of constructive criticism from view-ers – parents and pre-schoolers (includ-ing the founders’ kids), who are the chan-
nel’s target audience. “Chu Chu TV is one of the first in the space to actively engage with parents,” says Aman Dayal, content part-nerships, YouTube Kids & Learning, Sout h & Sout h East Asia at Google. In fact, based on one par-ent ’s re -quest on
its Facebook page, the channel even created a Chu Chu TV theme birthday party for her child.
Constant reviewing of its own content and
engagement with parents, the gatekeep-ers, is what took Chu Chu TV from an ob-scure private channel started by a father (Chandar) to amuse his toddler (a little girl he fondly calls “Chu Chu”) to one of YouTube’s biggest success stories inter-nationally. And it got there with just 161 videos uploaded since 2013.
Over the past five years, the Chu Chu team, Chandar and the channel’s creative
head Krishnan, all hard-core “IT guys” who found a second career as children’s song writers and animators, took tra-ditional favourites (most of them have rather dark origins like wars, slavery and plagues) and rewrote them to reflect a positive outlook and a new world order. In Chu Chu TV’s version of the controver-sial classic ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ there
are white and brown sheep.
‘Chubby Cheeks’, Chu Chu TV’s maiden video that got over 300,000 views in just two weeks, was rewritten to emphasise the importance of a lovable personality over fair and rosy cheeks. In the reboot of a numbers video a line about a toy gun was dropped after complaints poured in from parents in some western markets. The original video is still on air though because Asian parents seem not to mind a weapon popping up here and there in a pre-school rhyme. These updated nurs-
ery rhymes are all delivered in bright, colourful 2D animation set to almost Bollywood-style “dhinchak” music, as YouTube’s Dayal thought when he first
saw Chu Chu TV videos. The kids love it and parents love any-
thing that constructively occupies their offspring long enough to finish a few chores and watch some Narcos or GoT.
Chu Chu TV certainly hasn’t toiled in vain. It ranks No1 in APAC and No2 worldwide in family entertainment and pre-school education catego-ry (based on number of
subscribers). In India, only T-series andentertainment channel SET India havemore subscribers. In the list of the Top100 most subscribed YouTube channels worldwide (2017), Chu Chu TV sits at 37.Almost 80% of the channel’s 14+ million subscribers are outside the country. ButIndia has emerged as No2 after the US.
Dayal also credits the founders’ knowl-edge of digital, how to build audiences on YouTube and do good quality meta-data, for Chu Chu TV’s unprecedentedglobal success. But we all know who the real hero is. Chu Chu or Harshita is now6 years old and often reminds her father, where the credit really lies. Chandargladly obliges his daughter, even thoughshe’s moved on from nursery rhymes. Now Chu Chu is into Barbie videosand cakes thanks to one of YouTube’shighest-paid personalities, RosannaPansino, a 32-year-old celebrity chef whoteaches kids how to bake.
“Number one, cash is king. Number two, communicate. Number three, buy or bury the competition.”
- Jack Welch, former CEO, GE
GLOCAL BUZZ 3
Laugh, Click & BankFederal Bank has hit the market with everything from funny ads to bank accounts via selfie. Sound strategy or bandwagon hopping? By Amit Bapna and Ravi Balakrishnan
How Chris Leong married business and brand to turn Schneider from an ‘invisible’ electrical company to a household name
BY RAJIV SINGH | DELHI
In January 2012, when Chris Leong inter-viewed at Schneider, she was unsure about her ‘fit’ into the new role as senior vice president for strategy and innovation. The reason: her lack of exposure to B2B firms. After heading marketing at Nokia for over six years, and with previous stints at Ogilvy, Bates and Grey, she was more familiar with consumer brands and not companies. Schneider was a big company, a global B2B energy management and automation giant.
But what Leong lacked in domain exper-tise, she made up for with forthrightness. “I am not an engineer, don’t understand B2B and know anything about the electrical business,” she bluntly told her interviewing CEO. To her surprise, the CEO too recipro-cated in kind: Schneider had loads of engi-neers, so it didn’t need more. The company also had enough people who’d mastered B2B, so another with that skillset was not required; and it was good if one lacked an understanding of switches and gears.
Cut to 2017. In little under six years, Leong has transformed Schneider from an invisi-ble company behind walls and in basements to a brand which is more than a switch, sock-et and circuit breaker.
“Schneider Electric is where the home comes to life,” reckons Leong, who was in India early last week to take stock of the busi-ness. She is clear, she doesn’t want Schneider to be a distributor or manufacturer of elec-trical pins, but be a meaningful enabler and catalyst for the home. “Where you share laughter, memories, pain, where you cel-ebrate and bring your first baby home,” she says, giving an emotional spin to an electri-cal company which till a few years ago, made sense only to engineers and electricians.
Leong’s role is to add the emotive aspect: to bring the brand from the basement to the living room, and amplify the work in a visible and meaningful manner. “That’s all. I am not here to create a brand that does not exist,” she asserts, adding that bringing to the forefront the amazing val-ues of a brand that nobody saw was one of her primary targets.
For somebody who was appointed global chief marketing officer in March 2015, Leong started with not only challenging the conventional notion of marketing but by dis-rupting the traditional corporate structure.
“I killed this thing called ‘corporate cam-paign.’ I killed the department, I killed the term,” Leong says excitedly, adding that she coined new words that could be easily un-derstood by her colleagues who didn’t have a marketing and branding background. A simplified term came into being: ‘brand business,’ a marriage between brand and business. The idea was quite simple: let brand and business feed on each other. Any branding that helped in the growth of busi-ness and vice versa was something which was easy for techies as well as mar-keting folk to digest. “There was not going to be separate brand and business campaigns,” she says. If what was done on the brand didn’t help the business grow, it was not worth pursuing.
So for the first time, a kid was shown eating cookie in a Schneider ad. The idea was to convey the message that if a company is into manufacturing of perishable food, then it needs to t h i n k of p r o d u c -
The Lady With a Midas Touch
tivity efficiency in terms of factory, plants and machines. “This is where Schneider comes in,” she explains. Everything done on the business, she lets on, must be ex-pressed through the brand voice otherwise it becomes a commodity. The idea also was to apply the engineering mindset to the mar-keting playbook.
The second term introduced by Leong was also a mix of sales and branding: Brand Order. The underlying message again was straightforward: if people understand what the brand does and fall in love with it, then it should get manifested in terms of or-der or business. A ‘brand ticker’ was rolled out that tracked over 250 million social ac-counts and tried to figure out Schneider’s share of voice as well as how much its rivals like Siemens and GE were scoring. “We have 75 million people visiting our website every year, and over 3 million social media followers,” she adds.
At a time when it is rare, in fact rarest of rare, for a chief marketing officer to have a deep understanding of digital, branding and
marketing, Leong stands out as ex-ceptional. Heading digital transforma-tion at Schneider, she is quite con-cerned to make sure she doesn’t lose her human touch. “Marketing has changed a lot,” she says. The clas-sical marketing of frequency and per second flip in a 30 second commer-cial has undergone sea change. Even
the Unilevers of the world have changed their brand book. Leong, as a CMO, too has changed. She has been closely working with the chief design officer to make products look sexier. “It needs to be pretty enough to be a part of the ambience,” she says.
Asked if she has a piece of advice for mar-keters, Leong falls back on her branding in-stinct: you cannot call yourself a marketing person unless you know the brand. For her, branding and marketing are same side of the coin and inseparable.
“I KILLED THIS THING CALLED ‘CORPORATE CAMPAIGN.’ I KILLED THE DEPARTMENT, I KILLED THE TERM”
Chris Leong
CHU CHU TV IS ONE OF THE FIRST IN THE SPACE TO ACTIVELY ENGAGE WITH PARENTS
“We wanted every film to have a certain look and feel to stand out in the sea of ‘bank adver-tising.”Kiran Antony, ECD, Ogilvy Mumbai
“We’ ve nudged into the 1% of India’s market-share this year. We want the remaining 99% to know us.”Shyam Srinivasan, MD & CEO, Federal Bank
The Chu Chu Mantra The 44th most viewed video on YouTube is not from usual suspects like Swift or Psy. Its from an unassuming Chennai based startup. Here’s how Chu Chu made it big
FEDERAL BANK’S COMEBACK CAMPAIGN IS HOPING TO MOVE THE NEEDLE FROM A STRONG REGIONAL PLAY TO A LARGER FOOTPRINT
(Top to bottom) 1. Selfie account film 2. Car loan film 3. Home loan film 4. Salary account film 5. SME loan film
Chu Chu Tv founders: Subbiramanian TS, Suresh Bhoopathy, Ajith Togo, Vinoth Chandar & BM Krishnan
A still from Chu Chu Tv’s most viewed video ‘Johny Johny Yes Papa’
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When, how and why did Madison Avenue cease to be the hub of ad agencies? Why are some network agencies still there? By Shephali Bhatt
Madison Avenue always represented power and success to Indian adwoman Stephanie Fernandes, until she moved to the US less than two years ago.
She is a senior copywriter at BBDO San Francisco now. During her seven-year stint with Indian advertising, she thought that if you worked and lived at Mad Ave, you had made it. This was partly due to all the litera-ture on advertising which touted Madison Avenue as the place where the industry started and flourished. Mad Men - the most popular series on advertising - only glori-fied its importance.
“But the idea of Mad Ave is as 50s as the reality of the 50s advertising era, when women weren’t allowed to be a part of the Ad Club of New York,” says Lalita Salgaokar. “No wonder the Club filed for bankruptcy in the 70s,” she adds. Currently a senior copywriter at Lippe Taylor - a New York-based agency that specialises in market-ing to women, Salgaokar is also a journal-ist with Campaign US and teaches at the Miami Ad School in New York.
When Salgaokar moved to New York from Mumbai seven years ago, she admittedly had gooseflesh the first time she did the ‘Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame’. “It was like meeting the spirits of advertising’s past life,” she says. The place tends to have an aura, especially for someone new to American ad culture.
The more you immerse yourself in that culture, however, the stronger the realisa-tion that Madison Avenue isn’t what it used to be. Salgaokar had her epiphany soon enough. “It isn’t a hip neighborhood or a place where most agencies would like to set shop,” she says. The vibe is very old New York and we all know advertising’s obses-sion with being ‘youthful’ and ‘new age’.
The former haven of ad agencies, houses very few prominent shops now (DDB, TBWA, and StrawberryFrog are some of them). “The shift started twenty years ago or earlier,” says Scott Goodson, founder of StrawberryFrog, “when Chiat\Day and the Swedish ad agency Anderson & Lembke moved to 5th and 15th near Barneys. That started the avalanche.”
Maintaining an office in the posh streets of Mad Ave became increasingly unaffordable, what with shrinking mar-gins. So more offices moved to areas like Brooklyn in the same way London’s ad agencies started moving from Soho to Shoreditch. But there’s no Shoreditch equivalent in New York yet. The agencies are everywhere now. Some believe that those who are still at Mad Ave must have struck a sweet deal with the landlords.
Goodson has other reasons for staying
back. StrawberryFrog’s first office in NYC was beside Pastis in the Meat Packing dis-trict. Within two years of its launch, the agency moved to its current home in the Penthouse at 60 Madison Avenue.
“We had the Penthouse and beneath us was Hillary Clinton’s Senate office. When she moved out in 2009, we took over that floor too. The space is the same one that David Ogilvy started his agency from, many decades ago,” he tells us. Goodson wanted his agency to be the first ‘move-ment marketing’ firm to return to Madison Avenue. “And when we moved in 2006, we were,” he says.
TBWA\Chiat\Day moved to 488 Madison Avenue in 1999. The central location, prox-imity to clients and sibling Omnicom agencies - all helped bolster its deci-sion to stay put. “Staying in this part of Midtown Manhattan has allowed easy
access to transit for our many of our em-ployees. And of course the iconic nature of Madison Ave is hard to stay away from,” a spokesperson tells us.
And why leave when deep down we all know that location is a silent nod to success, as Fernandes of BBDO SF points out. “It’s not something that ever comes up in con-versation but it shapes people’s opinions. What’s nice to see is ‘smaller name’ agen-cies sharing the renowned space of Madison Avenue with goliath networks,” she adds.
Whatever their reasons, most agencies don’t deny the dated vibe that comes with the place. DDB, for instance, has repeatedly contemporised its interiors to give the office some much-needed vibrancy. Ultimately, there’s only so much a zip code can add to the work - the first and foremost factor defining success. Everything else is secondary.
“The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.”
—David Ogilvy, founder, O&M
BE CLASSIC 3
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Humans of New YorkAdvertising EditionNo visit to New York is complete without a visit to Madison Avenue. At least that’s how Brand Equity rolls. In the past we’ve brought you spices from the streets of Soho - London’s advertising capital. We’ve given you a peek into the 50-storeyed headquarters of Dentsu Inc in Tokyo. It’s only fitting then that we give you a glimpse of the life and times of ad agencies at Madison Avenue - the birthplace of all Mad Men, reel and real. Here’s presenting nine stories told via pictures: Stories of ad men who keep their workplace alive. And stories of admen whose memories still live in these workplaces. By Shephali Bhatt
So long, Grey: Inside DDB’s New York office lies a relic, framed and neatly kept
on the shelf of a showcase. It is the original resignation letter that Bill Bernbach wrote to Grey in 1947 - before he founded Doyle
Dane Bernbach.
Family comes first: This is Scott Goodson’s mousepad. Designed by one of his sons, it reminds him of the importance and responsibility of being a father. It also reflects on the agency’s philosophy of supporting new parents in the StrawberryFrog staff.
The Crazy Frog(gies): Awards committees across the ad industry can learn a thing or two from Froggies - StrawberryFrog’s internal awards show. A little sense of humour never hurts.
Product Innovation 101: This was a fun birthday surprise for TBWA\Chiat\Day’s then-account executive Greg Masiakos. Also, given the circumstances: chances of making America ‘Greg’ again are much higher anyway, no?
Creating outstanding work: Astaid standing desk jazzed up by TBWA\Chiat\Day’s account supervisor Darren Mitchell.
Remembering the real life Peggy Olsen: A picture of Phyllis Robinson, the first lady of Madison Avenue, the original Mad Woman, and DDB’s first chief copywriter, is the highlight of the agency’s New York CEO Chris Brown’s office decor. Well, that and the splendid view of a church from the window.
Not out with Old, still in with the New: Atypewriter from Bill’s office kept alongside a tower of Jenga, and some contemporary gadgets and gizmos at the DDB NY office.
No man’s cabin: This is Scott Goodson’s desk at work. The founder of Strawberry Frog sits along with his team - like any other employee would.
Briefs on the wall: Yes, you will see bright-coloured underwears pinned on the desk boards of a lot of employees at TBWA\Chiat\Day. But it’s only a memento of the time the agency created a campaign called ‘Singing Undies’ for its former client GoDaddy. Don’t know about Singing Undies? GoFigure!
All of the marketers we spoke to have a good word for P&G. Says Gaurav Mehta, chief marketing officer at GirnarSoft, “Google said they would refund money for ads that ran on sites with fake traf-fic and that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for companies like these rais-ing their voices.”
But for most part, marketers con-sider themselves in a damned if we do-damned if we don’t situation. It is folly abandoning digital — Tushar Vyas, chief strategy officer, GroupM likens it to throwing the baby out with the bath-water. But as Kakar puts it, “We can’t stay away from digital, but if we are bleeding it makes no sense to stay on it.”
Blame it on the inexorable march of technology that’s left the marketing industry with rela-tively little time to pause and decide what needs measuring. The early years of the digital boom were spent blindsided by a mad rush for ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’. Even now, when the hollowness of these measures are well established, they continue to show up in conversations and PowerPoint presenta-tions on how well a brand or its commu-nication is doing.
Depending on the industry and state of maturity, marketers are widely divided on the most serious threat. Jindal is betting on brand safety: “Efficiency is-sues can be resolved, but any damage to brand is too costly to recoup.” For Mehta it’s clearly viewability. As for the rest, he
says, “We’ve done many things to make our investments foolproof. I’m not sure about the others.” There are some tell-tale signs to look out for he says, “A publisher giving you 100 impressions for the longest time can’t give you 2,000 all of a sudden.”
While media agencies and tech giants have stepped up to bat (see The War On Fraud), marketers left us feeling they expect a lot more help. That their media partners and the tech behe-moths tend to be more reactive than pro-
active. Mehta says, “When an eco-system partner raises an issue, it’s because of competitive pressure. A person will reveal the source you are buying from is full of bots and fraud but only because they want to earn money off you!”
Adding to the confusion are a number of solution
providers, offering to crack one part of
the puzzle. For a price, of course. John Koetsier, mobile economist at TUNE expects a massive growth in ad fraud protection and prevention. Brand safety and viewability measurement solutions are worth a couple of billion dollars,
and attribution is a $400 million a year industry, growing rapidly. Missing here is a unified voice to pull it all together. Mehta says “It’s an issue of finite resources: be it time or money. With six service providers offering six different solutions, at no point can a marketer say ‘I know exactly what’s
happening.’ Until and unless consolida-tion takes place, it’s going to be hard for people to buy into this.”
Kakar concludes, “We need a Jon Snow. Who is going to do this? Who will stop thinking ‘why do I have to worry?’ and say ‘let us do this together?’” And that’s only half the battle won. As any
Game of Throne viewer knows, Cersei still needs to be convinced. Something that’s likely to take a lot longer than even the du-ration of a TV series.
Digital HarmageddonQuestions Marketers Should Be Asking Their Partners (And Why)5
A re the bottom of the funnel metrics — sales, sign-ups, long term
engagement — as robust as the top of the funnel metrics (clicks, views and installs)? Post-acquisition or post app install behaviour helps determine if the entity at the other end is real or a bot.
A sk the ad networks where does your ad supply come from? Also, do you
know where it’s coming from on a real time basis? With re-brokering, many networks don’t have the answer on a real time basis and that’s where fraud can enter the system.
What fraud reduction and prevention procedures do you have in place?
There has to be some third party looking at what’s happening in the ad stream, to determine if it is or isn’t legit.
How has ad fraud evolved and what are you doing to keep pace? Pretty
much like anti-virus software, anti-fraud measures need to constantly evolve. With some estimates putting the money to be made from ad fraud second only to the illegal drug trade, you can bet the workarounds and hacks to today’s best solutions are already hitting the internet.
What will it take for us to work together? As some of the
marketers have pointed out, an issue that confronts the entire ecosystem is best solved by everyone pulling in the same direction. This means collaborations between and acceptance of common standards by various networks, groups and companies that are otherwise at each other’s throats.
The Last Mad Men of Madison Avenue
MARKETERS WANT TECH GIANTS AND MEDIA AGENCIES TO BE MORE PROACTIVE
At the vanguard of the fight against fraud are media agencies and of course the tech giants. While
Facebook had not responded to our questions at the time of going to print, a spokesperson from Google says, “We can’t comment on specific details of ad fraud but the vast majority is filtered in our systems before our advertisers are ever impacted or charged. Some key initiatives include working with the broader industry to make it easier to spot counterfeit ads. In our own platforms, we’re working with our exchange partners to remove monetary incentives for spammers and increase transparency for buyers.” In a blogpost from earlier this year, on Bad Ads, Google said “In 2016, we took down 1.7 billion ads that violated our advertising
policies, more than double the amount of bad ads we took down in 2015.”
GroupM recently announced its viewability standards rolled out across
the globe — 100% of pixels available on display ads for at
least one second; 100% pixels visible, user initiated with sound on
and at least 50% completed for pre-rolls and mid-rolls, and 100% pixels visible autoplayed or user initiatied with or without sound, at least 50% completed. Tushar Vyas, chief strategy officer believes, “The effort is at multiple levels. Educating clients and working at an association or industry level with publisher groups and industry bodies
like the Mobile Marketing Association.” A lot of it is about steering advertisers towards premium inventory where the rates of fraud are low. Says Vyas, “The non-human traffic is legitimate and you don’t pay for it. That can be measured and eliminated.” Shantanu Sirohi, COO, Interactive Avenues points to Google opening up its platforms to increased third party verification with three top suppliers like Moat, Integral Ad Science and Double Verify, and adds, “we are demanding Google do more to clean up its inventory supply, and take stronger action to eliminate offensive and inappropriate content.”
The media agency folk also rather wryly believe it’s in the interest of tech companies to be alarmist about digital fraud. As one industry veteran points out, “The TUNE figures that are being quoted were part of a release for a launch of their product.” However, many in the ecosystem believe the change won’t come so long as marketers themselves pursue top of the funnel measures. As Subrat Kar co-founder, Vidooly who is offering a brand safety product puts it, “The objective is to reach both the audience who is not watching anything objectionable and also to achieve the goals on views and engagement. But in India, a few brand managers are more concerned about reality than issues: they have KPI pressures and that’s how the industry works.”
The Great War On FraudWhat Google and the media firms are doing to clean up the system
SEPTEMBER 6-12, 2017
Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 16 Issue No. 36Published for the Proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400 001Tel. No. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax- (022)-2273 1144 and printed by him at (1) The Times of India Suburban Press, Akurli Road, Western Express Highway, Kandivili (E), Mumbai 400 101. Tel. No. (022) 28872324, 28872930,Fax- (022) 28874230 (2) The Times of India Print City, Plot No. 4, T.T.C. Industrial Area, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli, Navi Mumbai-400708 and (3) TIMES PRESS, Plot No. 5A, Road No. 1, IDA Nacharam Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad-500076. Editor: Ravi Balakrishnan(Responsible for selection of news under PRB Act). © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the Publisher is prohibited.
CCI NG 3.7 Product: ETMumbaiBS PubDate: 07-09-2017 Zone: BrandEquity Edition: 1 Page: BEPG4 User: sandesh.pingale Time: 09-01-2017 23:06 Color: CMYK
