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Ad Asia 2003 Round Up

The big event delivered its R.O.I. True or false? BT Online weighs the question.

The answer, one might be tempted to say, depends --- on whether you hung around. Around the Coca-Cola visicoolers (and Lipton tea dispensers), backslapping long-lost buddies in the galleries outside. Or sat glued. Glued to the 12-box B.B. screen in the B.M. Birla auditorium, the venue for Ad Asia 2002 held recently. In Jaipur, the 'Pink City' of Rajasthan.

You may, of course, also have been out. Far out, perhaps, visiting Jaigarh Fort up on a hill. Dreaming of buried treasure. Raising eyebrows at battle details in the museum. Admiring the architectural symmetry. Wondering how Coca-Cola's logo might look if turned even more calligraphically cursive.

But then, maybe, just maybe, 'Break the Rules', the jamboree's theme, was not meant to be taken too seriously. At least not on the opening day, as gate-crashers would attest (they were winked in only towards the end). Rules were rules, shrugged event chairman Pradeep Guha of the Times Group.

Celluloid legend Amitabh Bachchan, talking about the 1970s' relevance of the 'Angry Young Man', almost said as much. He said he hadn't really broken any of the big rules (at least in any historic way) and come to think of it, perhaps the audience hadn't either. In any case, he added, it's the market that matters, and so it should be about the rules ordinary folk want broken.

Timing-wise, though, it was C.K. Prahalad's inaugural speech that rang through. The Core Competence guru spoke of "co-creation", involving customers. And he used "Lego Brainstorms" and other devices to argue that it's competition that's doing it. It's competition that's powering some of the emergent need-addressal trends (such as hybridisation). "Product variety," he pointed out, "is not the same as experience variety."

If product experience variety is sorely lacking, job experience variety is.... well, hellishly lacking. Little wonder that Ricardo Semler, the 'maverick' chief of be-your-own-boss Semco, was such a draw. Innovation? Ha, he scoffed. Millions are spent on R&D... and to get what? A shaving cartridge with an extra blade. Safety, safety, safety. Emulation of the establishment it was, emulation it is. But what actually works is originality. Born of intuition. It was intuition, after all, that finally saw Gary Kasparov beat Deep Blue - less than two decades after his famous loss.

Sure, but it takes near-conjugal customer intimacy before intuition can work its magic. This was the lesson of Clyde Fessler's mobike mania talk on Harley Davidson. In a sense, this is also what M.S. Banga, chief of Hindustan Lever, had to say --- on soapy swoons rather than bike vrooms, though.

Ever the exponent of customer engagement, and of relationship sophistication, Lever's Banga offered a 'four Is' solution to the problem of brand commoditization. And the four Is? Elementary, actually. The nurturing of brands that are 'Intimate', that are 'Inspirational', and that appeal to the consumer's 'Inner self', and that too, as an 'Individual'. The "torture test" for this formula? Soaps. Lux et veritas.

Soaps, of course, have been overshadowed by colas --- or fizzies in general --- as the ultimate test zone for marketing wizardry (well, whaaddya expect halfway to the Thar?). Or maybe there's a gender divide over the issue. Depends on how you plot the graph.

Whatever it is, the American fizz business' own 'Ayacola', Sergio Zyman, spoke for a lot of ad-sceptics when he ribbed marketers for "looking for love in all the wrong places". The purpose of advertising, he reiterated (to the sound of a ripple of clenched jaws running through the hall), was to sell. Sell. In fact, "to sell more stuff, to more people, for more money, more efficiently", he elaborated, sounding suspiciously Pepsi-ish. Watch out for the big shift to R.O.I. consciousness, he warned. It's coming. What should cola advertisers do? "Tell the truth, tell it fast, and tell it all."

Message taken, said Jack Trout, but all it means is that advertising - at least the relevant kind, the reason-why kind --- is as critical as ever. "Truth," said the famous positioning man, or rather co-positioning man (Al Ries wasn't there), "will not win without some advertising help." Relief. Applause. Sighs.

Be accountable and be persuasive, advised DM legend Lester Wunderman, but be "accountably persuasive" --- which could well mean going direct. "In marketing and advertising, as in life," he philosophised, "there's no substitute for being direct."

The wunder-words were not entirely ignored. McKinsey man Rajat Gupta, for one, was quite direct in reminding the audience just how far Indian business was from becoming "truly global". The contenders, on the basis of "size and business diversity", in his reckoning, were barely a handful: "Infosys, Ranbaxy, Reliance and Wipro."

Funny, considering that the oasis of universal needs --- at least from an ad perspective, and at least according to Research International's Rory Morgan ---- is so nice and accommodating. By the research agency's list, it's all rather simple, really. Everyone in the world needs: 1. Well-being 2. Fun 3. Self-indulgence 4. Harmony 5. Knowledge 6. Individuality 7. Respect 8. Security 9. Attractiveness 10. Love 11. Belonging 12. Control 13. Tradition 14. Leadership 15. Freedom.

Hmmmm... could any of that serve India's cause in selling itself globally as a brand? Anyway, this was what K.M. Birla and Mukesh Ambani, two of India's most powerful industrialists, popped on to stage to discuss. Birla saw it as a challenge of establishing the country's brand values, which would mean leveraging the 'Indian mind' as an asset. Ambani wanted India projected as a "21st century miracle, and a replicable model for all democratic, modern and plural societies".

Batey Red Cell's Ian Batey, who moderated the Birla-Ambani power show, stunned the audience by hailing Old Monk, that old rum label, as a potential global blockbuster. "Just look at it," he marvelled, "it has a lovely name, it is dark, and it has a heritage." People looked unconvinced. It would have helped to have Icon Brand Navigation's Christoph Prox do a quick test of its Brand Iconography (its sensory experiences) and Brand Credit (its feelings evoked), but most adfolk weren't terribly bothered. They preferred to spike their Diet Coke cans with colourless spirits --- a side-gallery phenomenon that inspired some 'diet of worms' humour. Some things, alas, don't change.

According to the guys stocking the Coca-Cola visicoolers, Ad Asia's cola consumption rate was a Brazilian 2 servings daily per head (some 3,000 cans a day, mainly of Diet Coke). Absolut vodka, despite its iconographic omnipresence, was not easy to come by... strange, though UB tried making up with its peach flavoured vodka Shotz (in peach or lemon). Lipton ice-tea was arguably the better bet, especially lemon... but then that's a different debate.

Debate... did somebody say "debate"? Those who listened hard, really hard, were not disappointed.

Jeff Goodby, creative director of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, maintained a discreet presence at Ad Asia 2003. Celebrated by creative types for his global H.P.+ campaign, Goodby chose not to talk about it very much... though one could plausibly argue that this was just another expression of Van Gogh's humble chair tack --- masterminding a mega-success, but having somebody else take a bow.

Enormously charming, that sort of thing. Even if largely symbolic --- if Santosh Desai of McCann had captured the dominant culture of the Indian market (ugh - he prefers 'civilization') even partly right. This, after all, is India --- a place where symbolism reigns, "truths are context-sensitive", "modernity is continuously negotiated tradition", cricket is a caste-ordered game of "karmic ambivalence" and a punch is much less effective than a slap-a rebuke imprinted on the face.

Oh boy... dateline Jaipur, November 14, 2003, and cricket nerves had been twinged. And Bollywood? Ah, yes. A place where "India carries on its argument with reality". Or, even more lyrically, "India's love song to its mongrel self", in the Magic Realist's eternal words. The beauty of Indian cinema is its genuine "originality' --- at least to adfilm-maker Tarsem Singh, a self-confessed "prostitute in love with the profession" infamous for Coca-Cola's 'colour of passion' commercial of 1996.

Cut to Tarsem's adfilm showreel. All global, all sharp-edged. 'The more you wash 'em, the better they get' went Levi's pool-to-pool swimming commercial. The one that cannonballed him into global recognition. It was followed by other jaw-droppers, including a gory 'Food - for thought' MTV spot, blood oozing out of a goat's neck. So what's the deal? The deal, he said, was creativity. Or, what he hadn't said, creative thought. Fixation-free creative thought. His advantage? He is always "the outsider" looking in, wherever he goes. Just that he looks really, really well. His next film? Full-length feature. Tentatively titled The Fall, tis the tale of an immigrant apple-picker in California.

It wouldn't be pre-tested, for sure. Going by the words of Scott Bedbury, the creative man behind Nike's 'Just Do It', even high-budget ad campaigns shouldn't be pre-tested. How come? "The consumer is not always right," he held, intuitively, echoing a sentiment that had suffered an articulation deficit all through the proceedings. But then, the idea is not to punch, knuckle-hardeners n' all, but to "strike softly"...

After Nike, 'twas Starbucks for Bedbury. His latest job? Advising Coca-Cola. And he's been busy imprinting the iconic bottle outline --- a la Absolut --- on Coke cans.

Shocked? Hear Bedbury out, first. The best ads, in his view, are the no-words-only-image/logo sort (y'know, some sweaty heave-ho visuals, signed off with just a swoosh). So the man said, despite the fact that Coke has made remarkable progress in many markets. Made progress doing quite the reverse... busting its way far beyond the realm of visual appeal. So the man said, despite the reasonable reason that some of the sharpest creative brains remain enthused by the idea of those snappy, rhyming, alliterative syllables that could resonate --- audibly --- across millions.

Anyhow, that's occasion for more tea. And more debate. Net, net, it's fair to observe that creative adfolk still believe in the power of words. Or so it would seem from Piyush Pandey's presentation, which took place just before the philosopher Charles Handy ended the concluding day's session with advice on career independence.

It was an adfest, and Pandey, O&M's top creative, showed the audience a lot of ads. Visually rich, visually appealing, visually conceived ads, many of them. But he also had a few words to say. Indian advertising has struck Cannes, he said, and this could herald some big breakthroughs.

Pandey's advice? Read. "Read between the Lions."

True? Well, don't expect any easy answers. This is advertising, bud, still only halfway there. There's a long way to go, as the writer and truth-seeker Roman Rolland would've put it, and it takes a lot even to get going.

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