Lowe boss seeks scale from India ops

BY IMPACT Staff

Lowe & Partners global CEO Michael Wall says the road ahead for the agency in India would be to build on its current strengths and create a contemporary agency of scale

Earlier this year, when Coca-Cola India announced that it had opened its roster to also include Lowe Lintas as one of its creative partners, and then awarded the summer 2012 campaign of flagship brand Coca-Cola to the agency, not many were surprised. After all, in a manner of speaking, the person competing with creative genius Prasoon Joshi (McCann Worldgroup), who has owned this coveted business for a decade now, was none other than R Balki.

Joshi and Balki form part of India’s famous creative trinity – Piyush (Pandey, Ogilvy India), Prasoon, Balki. Even though more names have, over the years, made place in the Indian creative industry, Agnello Dias leading that list, even today, this trinity commands respect of its own.

In May 2012, when Lowe Lintas won India’s first Global Effie award for Lifebuoy, once again not many eyebrows were raised – Lowe Lintas abstains from creative awards of all kinds but Effie Awards that recognizes effective creative work was one platform that even Lowe participates in. Lowe had won a Bronze in the category that had Nike, Google and X-Box as other contestants.

In 2011, Lowe Lintas & Partners announced that it had bagged 100 new businesses, across its various divisions. For the creative agency, the wins included Maruti Suzuki Ertiga, Expedia, Suzlon, Birla Ultratech, Muthoot Pappachan Group, The Economic Times, 3M, Tata Interactive, Videocon D2H, GE Healthcare and Starwood amongst others.

The wins and the recognition reiterate the fact that Lowe Lintas enjoys the right combination of talent to reckon with and a healthy creative reputation.

Perhaps this is the reason why Lowe and Partners’ global CEO, Michael Wall is now asking the agency to step into the next phase of its evolution and form a roadmap that will make it the number one creative agency brand in India. “This may sound prosaic but we will follow the right way to go after the top spot. It will take time for us to build our capabilities and grow organically but we would do that, rather than just buy it,” he tells IMPACT in an exclusive conversation.

Not that Wall has any qualms about where the agency is in India today. On the contrary, he believes that unlike competition such as Ogilvy, JWT, BBDO or DDB in India, which are Lowe’s fiercest competitors and way ahead of the agency in various other markets, in India, Lowe & Partners is just at the right place. “Being on top of the game is good and we are in that league in India. But this is a very competitive market and striving to be better, from the place that we are at, is good too. In some ways, and I am sorry to use a very old-fashioned piece of marketing lexicon, but as Avis said, we try harder. It is good to be at the sharp end of the business. Even though it will take time, I believe we will be right on top. And there are steps that we have taken to achieve this,” he says.

Focus on building second agency brand

Elaborating further on the broader thought process of the agency, Wall says, “In the last couple of years, we have focused on Lowe Lintas’ leadership. The agency has strong local management with Balki, an inspirational and talismanic figure, in its stride. Lowe Lintas has a great team, winning new businesses and doing great work. One of the reasons for this is because in the last two years, we have focused on the core offer to strengthen Lowe Lintas’ foundations so that we have a solid base to build the agency on.”

“My brief to Lowe Lintas now is to evolve as a contemporary agency that has advertising as a fundamental part and also invests in other skills and services. Also required is a full scale shift in digital and investing into a second agency brand that is a force in its own right,” states Wall.

Interestingly, Lowe was amongst the first companies in India that had enjoyed multiple-agency brand structure through brands such as Quadrant, SSC&B Lintas and even Pickle. Agencies such as Ogilvy and JWT have David and Contract as second agency examples today. But Lowe at present has no second agency to show off. Even though brand Pickle is still in Lowe’s fold, it does not have the presence to be seen as a strong second offer. While Wall confirmed nothing more than the assertion of a strong second agency brand in place, industry gossip indicates that one route Lowe may take to achieve this is acquisition.

Choosing skills and timing the run

Acquisition is also considered to deliver on digital and the ‘other skills and services’ part of Wall’s brief. For Wall, scale has value. And this becomes more apparent in his advice to the company’s managers in India.

He observes, “At some point, you have to determine whether opportunities such as retail, content and so on, have the scale to become business opportunities. We have capabilities such as LinProductions but it is small at the moment, because from an industry standpoint, it is small.”

Timing the run is important, when technology is involved and today, many domains are tech-driven. The technology sector indicates that when brands go out there, so far in advance, it is often the worst place to start. The reason for this is because they end up being prototypes to their competitors and eventually disappear. To elucidate this point, Wall cites the classic marketing textbook study of BetaMax - VHS, where an inferior format wins over an older, better format, just because the inferior format was easier, cheaper and quality was not a deal-breaker.

“When you are talking about areas that inherently involve technology and the consumer’s uptake on that, my belief as the manager of the Network is that getting the timing of our run correct is as important as choosing the capability that we are going to invest in or focus on or develop on behalf of our clients,” states Wall.

I kid you not - Digital is here!

The decision of where to invest comes on the back of this thought process and it is no surprise that digital and its components like mobile and social are high on Wall’s to-build list. Digital is an accelerant for our industry, he says, adding, “Digital ideas increasing overlap with non-digital ones, because it is everywhere. It keeps our industry vibrant. It opens a whole new campus of creativity, interaction and relationship selling. When you don’t have it, in a way you don’t know what you are missing. But India is underselling itself on digital. The popular opinion may be that it is still a couple of years away, but take one quick look at other markets, and you know it will be here soon.”

Apart from digital, the domains of rural, healthcare and PR, where Lowe Lintas & Partners is already present in, are high on Wall’s agenda in terms of building scale. Wall remarks, “These do not need the kind of shift that digital or building a second agency brand would need. But we have to be focused on the scalability of these services.”

Wall asserts that the social-digital impact of what is happening in the rest of world will soon be seen in India as well. He concludes, “My brief to India operations is not to worry about what we were. Maintain, nurture and grow our strengths because they are good and relevant. Start to look at how you build it up. The change in the communication business is going to be in India soon and we have to make sure that when that happens, we are in the right place to offer the best to our clients. And our deadline to begin achieving this is by the close of this year.”

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