To habitual advertising award ceremony attendees, they are simply the people in black. They dress in black, prefer to stand behind the last row of seats, and make sure everyone else sees and hears them-difficult not to, especially when the tribe they belong to wins.

The tribe is an agency called Ogilvy & Mather (O&M, rolled off the tongue preferably, Ohendem) and despite not being No 1 or No 2-numbers are always kinda suspect in an industry where the topline is measured in terms of capitalised billings, not income-it has scorched a hard-to-follow path across the Indian advertising firmament. Awards? O&M has plenty, including two Gold Lions at Cannes 2002. Growth? O&M has grown at an average annual rate of 32 per cent over the past five years, a period when the industry grew at a mere 20 per cent. Customer-rating? O&M has just been ranked the 'best' agency in India, according to Agency Track, a syndicated survey that serves as the industry's scoreboard. Creative and large? Imaginative and strategic? Entertaining and persuasive? Gotta be kidding, many an adman would've said. Not Ranjan Kapur, who can't see success any other way. "Two years ago," recalls the Executive Chairman, O&M India, ''we were labelled a 'creative boutique'. I said, 'Should I take this as an insult or a compliment?'''

It would have to be one helluva large boutique, with over Rs 1,000 crore in billings, a heavy-duty strategy think-tank and a mega-mall of non-advertising shops offering to reach the consumer every which way-except bubbling up the kitchen sink.

And not Piyush Pandey. ''The idea is to beat the pattern,'' guffaws the group President & National Creative Director, O&M. "People said 'it's either-or'. It's never either-or... it can't be either-or," he says, sobering up to acknowledge there's a method to it. "It can't be that we get up every morning and fluke it again," he roars again, almost rattling the walls.

It's not about turning rocket science into poetry. But, yes, it's a new way to rock, drawing equally from logicians and poets, accountants and dreamers, bankers and ponytails-from divergent resources-to converge on the goal.

ALPHA & OMEGA It's part science and part art

"I'd rather entertain and hope that people learn, than teach and hope people are entertained" - Walt Disney. It's what Piyush Pandey looks at every single day. In strategic terms, entertainment is typically the 'omega' part, aimed at softening the barriers to a first-time prospect's mind. This can predominate if the task is to cast the net wide, for larger numbers. The actual message is the 'alpha' part, the brand proposition that must persuade the prospect to action. It's what hauls people together to the brand's core, and gets loyalty. M-seal: plugging grief Fevicol: sticking together Onida KY: enhancing fantasy The emphasis can vary, depending on the stage of market evolution and the strategy. If Cadbury's advertising, of late, has bored the 'be yourself' loyalist, it's because it's in omega mode, fanning out to reach the traditional mithai consumer, while maintaining thematic consistency. "Making a 'bahana' (excuse) is another expression of childlike adult behaviour," explains Pandey. Asian Paints, on the other hand, is done with widening out, and is onto the depth story with its new 'har ghar kuch kehta hai' ('every house says something') campaign. Says Pandey, "It's now the leader talking, appreciating the consumer's own creativity." A Cubist commercial of sorts, it offers varied take-outs from varied perspectives. Or take Fevicol, which can't be dislodged now, and thus has vast space to switch back and forth. This is an issue of timing the market dynamics correctly, again a science and art. Pandey cites the analogy of cricketer Viv Richards, who he admires for the idea of turning "a ball outside the off-stump into a perfect on-drive". That's alpha and omega appeal, together. Onida-KY's 'runaway-wife' spot and M-Seal's 'will' commercial, both, use disaster scenarios to get a chuckle and make their finer point. It's a technique that works for one-off ads rather well. Such as Pandey's latest jury-stunner for the Cancer Patients Aid Association. 'Second hand smoke kills', it declares, in Marlboro font. The visual? A cowboy scratching his hat, his horse flat on its side.

Even that doesn't quite explain why O&M, a WPP Group agency, has been piling up account after account and award after award. Since 1993, business has grown ten-fold-and the adrenalin's still pumping. The latest boost? It's the first Indian agency to be invited for a worldwide pitch.

Snip The Hedge

If the 1990s' transformation of O&M has been a denture-dislodging experience for adfolk of yore, it's by design. When Kapur returned from O&M Singapore to take over from S.R. Ayer, in October 1993, the agency was quite the propah place for strategically safe and executionally dignified advertising. All under the principled watch of David Ogilvy, the visionary founder who'd had his agency taken over by Martin Sorrell's WPP Group in 1989, but had left a gene-code so strong that the agency seemed pre-destined to live by it.

The 'barbarians' were under the command of 'bureaucrats'. And this, to the new chief, was a comfortable way to be, but no way to grow. Says Pandey, "The best thing that he brought was a mindset. He said, 'We want to be the biggest-by way of a great creative product'."

By way of what? People gulped and gasped, but Kapur delivered his first free-willed jolt by empowering creative-to move closer to the consumer...the desi consumer, for a change. He asked Pandey to do his own thing. To think Hindi, write Hindi, and draw inspiration from the roadside chana-jor-garam vendor who sang himself silly for sales and survival. That's the game, says Prasoon Joshi, National Creative Director, McCann-Erickson India, who spent his formative years at O&M. "It was the only agency that was Indianising," he remembers, thanking Pandey for showing him money in poetry.

"People are like caged tigers," says Kapur, "It's a question of opening the gate and letting them roam free in the wilderness of advertising."

That did it. Submission turned to defiance-defiance of convention-as the agency's creative gaze widened. Information flowed. Ideas erupted. Cadbury's-remember the girl on the cricket field?-found much-sought-after growth by telling adults that chocolates were okay. Asian Paints redefined colour consciousness. And Fevicol gave stickiness myriad dimensions-including an uncrackable egg ('Actually, the egg came first' the agency wisecracked later).

It was the same spirit that prompted O&M to rock the ad industry's agency remuneration system. All Kapur had to do was utter something on fee-based flexibility overthrowing the traditional '15-per cent commission on billings'-and all hell broke loose. In effect, O&M was daring other agencies to match it on both internal cost and market performance-with clients paying only for advertising that persuades. Horror, sacrilege, and worse, Kapur wanted everyone to compete!

"We stirred them up," says Kapur, "We stirred their wrath, we stirred their envy, we stirred everything you can stir-and the industry grew."

The reality now? At least 30 per cent of the industry is on fees-or on reduced commissions, reckons Kapur. Cost-efficiency counts. Creativity is winning business. And clients want to outwit rivals, not outspend them.

That spells boom-time for O&M. Effective creativity also means lower cost, says Pandey, citing the example of Pidilite's M-Seal, a Rs 2-crore media-spend campaign that outsiders think cost Rs 20 crore. Such work could reduce the agency's take, but then, reasons Pandey, "If we get 10 new accounts without a pitch, we save Rs 30 lakh."

Creative spunk is one thing, making money from it is quite another. And this is another ballgame that Kapur is busy re-inventing. With varying fee levels, each account must manage its own p/l now.

Sharpen The Edge

Sharp creativity and business acumen...it's a terrific strategic advantage. Provided the combination can be sustained. Can it? Alas, things do go out of whack. Take 1999-2000, for example. "We swung too dangerously close to just doing great creative work," confesses Kapur, "without too much strategic input." Brand planning was in danger of post-rationalising the agency's creative work, and clients were noticing. "The task," says Kapur, "is to build a point of view that is sensitive and intuitive. You do that with the right segment of the brain-and that must be balanced with the left brain." That's why Madhukar Sabnavis, an old hand who was running Ogilvy's affiliate RMG David, had to be brought back to launch the Discovery brain-tank.

Yet, observers suspect O&M's magic has everything to do with the unique Kapur-Pandey equation. What happens after Kapur retires? It's what analysts want to know.

Not an issue, feels Kapur, so long as the success principle gets institutionalised-and O&M remains an agency where "bankers are comfortable with ponytails, would like to be in ponytails, and the ponytails feel their comfort levels rising because the bankers are acting like bankers". It's not about mere reconciliation, which often means ponytails succumbing to suits, or vice-versa (or worse, mutual cloning). Nor even about functional equality. Rather, it's about actual consonance between divergent instincts.

What works within the agency, also works with clients. "We don't make presentations to each other," claims Pandey, "we talk to each other." Corroborates S. Ramkrishna, Senior Director (Corporate Affairs), Pfizer India, one of O&M's newest clients, "I've been pleasantly surprised-it's a dialogue."

No wonder Pfizer's campaign is warming hearts rather than declaring R&D statistics. Often, what clients need is an un-business perspective-which helps focus on a single benefit. Engaging the prospect, after that, is mostly a matter of using entertaining minimalism, to shoot the brand's message straight into consumer mindspace.

Fight The Wedge

To be sure, O&M isn't invincible. Some critics detect complacency setting in. Nirvik Singh, Managing Director, Grey Worldwide, admires O&M's clutter-busting skills, but wonders about pan-portfolio consistency. "Are they doing outstanding work for all their clients? The answer is 'no'," he says.

Others call it an 'award junkie', distracted from business issues, even as rivals such as Lowe and McCann charge ahead on cost-efficiency. The biggest criticism, though, concerns brand planning, on which HTA is still seen as the leader (think Pepsi). Titan, for example, has floundered. Some of O&M's other work seems aimed only at getting a laugh, not reshaping attitudes.

Can Discovery do something? "It's about institutionalising knowledge," says Sabnavis, defending O&M's long-range planning brainware. Asian Paints, for instance, has taken a planned step up, from celebrating festivals to celebrating the consumer's own self-expressive urge. "The objective is to increase the involvement of paint in the realm of home décor," says K.B.S. Anand, Vice President (Sales & Marketing), Asian Paints (I) Ltd, which has had a 25-year relationship with O&M.

The other thing Kapur must worry about is the classic problem of its whizkids remaining media-obsessed, although the agency's '360 degrees' approach is designed to draw revenues from non-advertising tools-on which WPP is bullish big-time. Kapur calls the idea a "real point of difference", giving the example of Ogilvy Outreach, which can deploy an army of 15,000 people for fieldwork to cover some 80,000 villages a year. Good. But the fact is: all the sparks are still coming from good ol' advertising.

And that domain is shrinking too, with Mindshare taking over the media-buying function for all WPP agencies-as ordained by Sorrell. Slowly, Kapur is having to cede his free-space to global forces. Already, says Arvind Sharma, Chairman & CEO, Leo Burnett, "The size game is being played more at the group level." Having recently taken over Rediffusion-Dentsu-Y&R, WPP has around a third of the Indian ad pie, with Interpublic and Omnicom having just woken up to the region. Growth dynamics could still change.

Are Kapur and Pandey really in control of O&M's destiny? Hmmm. They have little influence over business allocation at the global level. So perhaps the real wedge is global alignment, by which a brand assigns its account to the same network worldwide, regardless of market conditions. "I call it global terrorism," growls Pandey. Lack of local meritocracy could yet call the show off. Of course, the world could start taking India more seriously too.

Keep The Pledge

To Kapur, the climax of his career is still ahead: becoming India's top agency. When this unifying goal was set, back in 1993, O&M was on the fourth rung-with billings of Rs 100 crore. Below HTA, Lintas, and even Mudra. "There are very few brands," says Kapur, "that set themselves that kind of target: 'I'm No 4, I'm going for No 1. Y'know, it wasn't 'I'm going for No 2 or No 3', no, it was 'I'm going for No 1'."

Reductio ad claritum. Like much of O&M's advertising. Except that the goal is no longer scoff-worthy, though HTA has been the biggest ever since anybody can remember, and Lowe still claims higher billings (Mudra was overtaken some years ago).

"They have a great shot at becoming the largest," says Grey's Singh. "Perceptual leadership we have attained-undoubtedly," says Kapur, referring to the AgencyTrack survey. "And having attained that, we're going for actual leadership."

All said, HTA could still get 'too sexy for its brief', as it wants to. But Kapur says he'll worry only when the agency starts using the Pepsi magic on other brands. In any case, O&M doesn't see anything sacred about the so-called 'Agency Report' rankings; the ladder is just another object of human conception, after all. "Nobody reports actual numbers," alleges Kapur, matter-of-factly, "They're all lightly touched up. This debate can go on...but we want to be so far ahead that nobody will deny us that particular rank."

Ah, a matter of perceptions. And perhaps it's this attitude, this freedom from self-made fixations, that's the real stuff of consonance at O&M. Like an upside down free-speech ribbon-well-looped below, open-ended on top.