Lessons from Lodestar
UM’s Global CEO Jacki Kelley believes that India is one of the best examples of UM’s global philosophies of collaboration, client relation and custom executions, and looks to replicate Lodestar’s best in other markets Open all the doors, break all the walls... The more one looks at UM’s global philosophy that has strategy coupled with analytics and insights at its core, and holistic planning and buying on top, the more this appears to be the working principle behind the culture and structure that the company has attempted to create in the last few years. The agency has coupled this offer with custom content and has integrated Digital to such a degree that it works in complete coordination with the so-called traditional media. In short, as UM’s Global CEO Jacki Kelley puts it, the agency is no longer thinking in silos but thinking together. From an India standpoint, it all ties in well because the collaborative code is precisely what Lodestar UM has built its operations on. Taking India to the World Some of the work that Kelley is referring to has been done for UM’s global clients Microsoft and Coca-Cola in India. Sinha adds, “The focus was to get consumers to experience and romance the products rather than just talk about them. The work we did for Microsoft has formed a strong ground as we prepare for the big forthcoming Windows launch from the company. We had got Coke Studio to India last year and we were able to leverage it through the year and integrate it online as well. The results were great for Coke Studio and the album of the first season was the largest selling non-Bollywood album in India. The keyword in all of this is collaboration, because it is about different companies coming together and working in a mutually beneficial manner.” UM strives for the culture of collaboration in all its markets, and according to Kelley, it is evidenced in the India team. She observes, “Part of the achievement is the level and quality of integration. To achieve this would require working through all levels of planning and execution and not just individual levels. There is no hierarchy, every idea is a good idea and there is shared pride that comes together beautifully. It is all about leadership. It is a fun group of people who love working with each other and we would want more offices that can cultivate such culture.” Client, Collaboration, Commitment “We want to be the most accountable, effective agency that is completely aligned to our clients,” admits Kelley. The central point in UM’s sans-silo thinking structure is the Client Business Partner, who helps advocate with the client to make sure that all the pieces that form UM’s core are brought together in a way that adds value to clients’ businesses. UM understands the advantages that clients have by being housed together, and India is no exception. But UM’s true commitment to clients comes from the agency’s willingness to work in a pay for performance model, which implies that a client can pay UM on the basis of what UM has delivered for the client. Pay for performance is one of the key pillars that Mediabrands operates on. The company has invested in analytics, data, technology and talent in order to provide a platform that enables a pay for performance model. As Mediabrands Makes Way to India In the last year-and-a-half, Mediabrands, under the leadership of Matt Seiler, has re-energized itself to equip its operating units with the best, to get the best. According to Kelley, the holding company for IPG’s media service brands is working better and faster than was expected. She reflects, “As a direct result of Mediabrands, we have been highly focused in prioritizing our investments against the G14 markets.” G14 is the cluster of markets that exhibit the signs of a growth market. India is a G14 market for Mediabrands. Mediabrands was officially announced in India earlier this year. Both Kelley and Sinha believe that UM is already seeing the Mediabrands advantages in India. Kelley says, “Reprise is a strong brand here and is already engaged with many of our clients, adding significant value and that will only grow. All markets have virtual access to the IPG Media Lab that they can learn from.” Top on India agenda: Digital & Analytics One of the key points on UM’s agenda is to be able to advise and respond to clients in real time. Kelley solemnly believes that in comparison to the proposition of scale, it would be intelligence, and the precision to react closer to real time, that will matter in the future. Consequently, the focus on Digital and Analytics has gained greater significance in Lodestar UM. “The India office is already focussing on increasing our Digital capability. India, relative to the rest of the world, is not spending as much on Digital, but it will and mobile will be a big piece of that. We want to stay ahead of the game, and we are making appropriate investments to achieve that. The second is Analytics. We had a colleague from San Francisco come here and look at different data partners we can work with in order to enhance our analytics capability,” informs Kelley. Lodestar UM is poised for the future, believes Kelley. While there are areas that the company is focussing to gear up for that future, Kelley stresses again on the culture of the agency. She says, “The employees’ tenure with us, the loyalty, commitment, care and longevity of clients is unlike any other place, where you see people move between agencies. I credit Shashi for creating this culture that allows people here to do their best work.” Bringing Two Amazing Brands Together - Amul & Spiderman in India Amul - Asia’s largest dairy brand is the sponsor of the Indian contingent to the London Olympics, 2012. They wanted to popularize this Olympic association within the country. Spiderman – the eagerly awaited series from Sony Pictures was about to release at the same time. There was tremendous hype the world over, including India, making The Amazing Spiderman one of the biggest releases of 2012. Lodestar found great synergies between brand Amul and The Amazing Spiderman, as both stood for high ‘energy’ which is the secret of great superheroes. It envisaged a co-branded commercial marrying the Amul Milk athlete girl and the highly energetic leaping, flying, swinging Spiderman promo. It leveraged this association by creating a co-branded TVC, which was amplified across media. This worked wonders for both brands, which made great waves together, popularizing Sony’s Spiderman and Amul Milk in India Coke Studio – Lodestar’s Music Route to Success At the beginning of 2011, brand Coca-Cola was looking for a way to connect to Indian youth. Coca-Cola was ranked behind the category leaders like Thums Up, Sprite and Pepsi. While most teens knew the brand “Coke”, almost a third had never tried it. Hence the challenge was to introduce them to the world of Coca-Cola. Research made Lodestar realize that music is one of the biggest and most common connectors among teenagers even in India, a country of contrasts. The research indicated that while youngsters are happiest while listening to music, they are constantly on the lookout for the next new or different piece of music beyond Bollywood. Lodestar then partnered MTV for the Coke Studio initiative, and musician Leslie Lewis was roped in. Coke Studio brought artistes from different genres on to the same stage to create a medley of sounds. Ten episodes showcased the creation of amazing sounds born out of the collaboration of diverse regional and mainstream artistes celebrating the musical diversity of India. A music fusion across TV, Radio, Internet, mobile, custom on-ground events and mini-certs, music CDs, Coca-Cola key accounts popularized Coke Studio. The content pull attracted GEC channel Colors to broadcast the show every Sunday morning. There was also a radiosimulcast with Big FM, mini-certs at Hard Rock Cafés, tie-ups with events like the Jaipur Literary Festival and the Filmfare Awards on another GEC, Sony Entertainment Network. The musical content created on Coke Studio galvanized youth and their sentiments were projected across Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms. The net result was more than 15% growth in volumes in ‘non-season’ months of July-September 2011 for Coke.
Not surprising then that as Jacki Kelley completes her first visit to India, she reiterates that there is much happening in the Lodestar UM office that she looks to replicate in other UM offices. During the visit, Kelley spent considerable time meeting Lodestar UM staff, clients and other partners such as media owners. From her initial takeaways of the India visit, Kelley tells IMPACT that UM is “exporting a lot of what India is doing to other markets and using various learnings from here”.
At the top of Kelley’s list is custom execution. “An incredible level of custom content experience has been created in the India office – globally, we have put an Experience Architect team to do that for some of our clients, but Shashi (Sinha, CEO, Lodestar UM) and his team have been doing it for a very long time and the work is exceptional. Very few countries have been able to do it the way India has. We are working to replicate that in other markets.”
Kelley says, “What is interesting to me about the work done here is that Shashi and team are doing a great job of integrating our clients together, where it makes sense. An example is Amul and Spiderman – Sony Pictures got incremental value from that relation and Amul got a great platform. It was a highly creative idea that came from the shared partnership of being our clients.”
Kelley remarks, “Every client deserves a partner who is willing to sign up for the same thing that they’ve signed up for. We are less worried about being assured that we will be compensated for what we deliver. We are more conscious of making sure our clients know that they have a partner 100% committed to what they are trying to accomplish and willing to be compensated for that. And there are many degrees of doing this. Some clients may want to go all the way to pay per performance but others may want to determine the appropriateness of that within their own compensation structures.”
Kelley elaborates, “Take the example of Indonesia. Markets like Columbia and Indonesia can learn so much from each other but there is no way to do that in a regional structure. We divided markets on the basis of similarities, the kind of capabilities they need and the types of clients they are working with. In the process, we have been able share best practices at great speed and improve overall market performance. I had a comment from our CEO in the North East who said that he saw more progress in the last 18 months than in the last eight years, as a result of the world market structure. And this momentum translates directly to our clients.”
The launch of Mediabrands also saw Magna come to India and Sinha asserts that the benefits of Magna, which is operating in India only as an intelligence source, is visible. He adds, “Magna has allowed benchmarking in buying on the basis of what is the best that is being offered in the market. For a client to know that we have that kind of intelligence is significant. Mediabrands has provided a very strategic layer.”
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