60 Minutes: Jean-Marie Dru, CEO, TBWA

60 MINUTES: JEAN-MARIE DRU, CEO, TBWA
"Disrupting Brands"

"Here's to the crazy ones... because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.'' This is more than the voice-over for an Apple commercial. Ask the man who has been helping Steve Jobs put the bite into his Apple, and he'll tell you it is about building brands in a world of change-& disruption. Changing the rules is something Jean-Marie Dru, author of Creative Leap and Disruption, has been doing his entire life. In India to stretch the minds of Indian clients and CEOs, the 50-year-old President and CEO of TBWA International took some time off for a disruptive session with BT's Seema Shukla.

Q. Creativity, Disruption, Lateral Thinking. Many have waxed eloquent about the use of the right side of the brain as the most effective management tool going around. But how practical or implementable is it?

A. It is a conflict. The whole issue is to be different, yet be relevant. It is very easy to do creative things that do not sell or to say there is no need to be different because it is too dangerous. There is a fine line. Which is why we believe we should help our clients to be more creative in a relevant way. For that, you need to have processes and resources to help. For example, at TBWA, we have disruption days-we spend one or two days with 8-9 people from the agency and the client-to understand conventions in the existing market. We have 2-3 people who have prepared materials for a few weeks, so that we can understand the brand; it is very difficult to understand what you can change and what you cannot. It's easy to say; let's become creative. But you need processes for that.

How do you prevent a situation where surprise is for the sake of surprise or change for the sake of change. Isn't it easy to get into a situation where you are disrupting for the sake of disruption?

You can control it in three ways. The first-excuse my arrogance-is experience. When you've been around for years, it becomes a little easier to recognise flawed creativity that is superficial. Second, you have to ask some basic questions. What you are ultimately doing is trying to build the brand. You have to ask yourself how far you can go in stretching the brand without diluting it. Look at Caterpillar. They make tractors but are now becoming a fashion brand. This is extremely stretched. So you have to break it up and take it step by step. But you cannot stand still. You need to test the market besides being open to test ideas.

Yes, it becomes a problem when people start making changes just so that they 'look different'. It is exactly what happened to lots of dotcom companies especially in America in the last three years. Too much importance was put on being top of the mind rather than creating an image. The lesson to learn is that you cannot build knowledge without taking care of the image. If you surprise for the sake of surprise, people remember you but do not respect you. At the same time, as an advertising person, it is your duty to surprise-only 20-30 per cent of advertising is remembered. That means it is a necessary condition even though it may not be sufficient. Surprise means something unexpected. For example, you don't expect to see a Picasso in an Apple ad.

In your book you talk about practical advertising based on visible ideas vs ads that are more emotional in nature. Which form is more effective today?

In the 70s I would have said idea; today I may say thought. An idea may be great, but a thought will be beautiful. I can say it is true worldwide that advertising has become slightly more emotional than before. It comes from the fact that the more sophisticated you become in controlling advertising, the more you realise it is very smart to use emotions. But emotional advertising has been used even in the Sixties in America. I don't think it is a new trend-when you start using advertising, it starts with idea and moves towards emotion. Brands need to balance tangible and emotional values.

If, as you say, brands do not have life cycles, why do so many die?

Brands do not have life cycles. I would like to take the example of P&G, a company I have worked with closely. I remember meeting Ed Artzt, CEO and Chairman of P&G, in 1991, and him telling me about the most important change in marketing in the past 20 years in his company. He said earlier the mindset at P&G was one breakthrough, one product, and one brand. Each time something new was found, they created a new brand. So P&G had no umbrella brands and they were laughing at all companies that were doing it, like Colgate and Lever. Then, they realised it was a big mistake-brands are so strong it is silly not exploit them more. As a result they changed their mind-end result, end of 1998, Oil of Olay, which used to be a one-brand product offering, has 26 variations today.

Look at Tide. Each revolution in product development is incorporated in Tide. Sometimes they would not even talk about it-the idea being-Tide will always have the best. The products may be dying but the brand lives on. If brands die, it is because the companies have not been working on the products. Look at products associated with the IBM brand today-compared to before. But then, you run the risk of diluting the brand if you have several products.

How do you know how much you can disrupt the brand?

Disruption does not mean you are necessarily changing the brand. The idea is to try and stop thinking in terms of 30 second commercials and start building a brand. The end-result is to find larger billings for our clients, not to try and change the brand, though sometimes that is what the consequence is. Disruption is just an idea to accelerate that change. For example, in the case of Sony Playstation, they decided on a totally different vision for their game. They wanted it to symbolise a lifestyle, not just a game like Nintendo and Sega. The ad shows people-not just kids-doing fantastic things and coming home to play Playstation. The question is not just of changing the brand, but how far can you go to give more weight to the brand. This morning I saw a presentation of an Indian ad of a Ford New Holland tractor. It showed a guy with his tractor-his daughter had better prospects of getting a good husband because he owns this tractor. That is an example of building a brand.

What if one were to say advertising has become a convention that is in dire need of disruption?

I don't believe that advertising has become a convention. Yes, given the way we do advertising, there is the risk of becoming a convention if we do not change. There will always be people on one side proposing something and people on the other side disagreeing with it. So you need something in between. Look at how advertising has changed in the last forty years. In the Fifties we used to show detergent ads with a mother and daughter explaining how to use detergent; everything goes through a learning curve-in this case it was the learning curve of the housewife.

Crest and the boy whose fillings get erased, Tetley Tea bags and the chimps...all really successful campaigns that were killed in search of change...

Good point. I really believe a lot of great campaigns have been lost in the past 20 years because people think they can do better. In fact, it is very interesting because the other day I made a presentation with 10 commercials of the Seventies and how they would be effective today. I agree-look what happened to the English Heineken campaign, that lasted 25 years.

One day someone decided ''let's shelve it''. There is a fine line defining what we can change and what we should change. If you change nothing you lose, but if you change things that should not be changed, then also you lose.

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