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Rina Chandran

CHENNAI, Dec. 30

THIS has been a rather brutal year for the advertising industry, with smaller budgets, and a demand for greater accountability. One section, in particular, has suffered quietly; the creative folk, typically regarded as spoilt and difficult, have also felt the heat.

"Advertising has come under a lot of pressure quite simply because advertisers want their advertising rupee to stretch further," says Mr Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Senior Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. "On one level, an ad agency has to run a tighter ship, with each person handling a larger quantum of business. And, the creative person has to create ads which are more `creative' and deliver better results."

Certainly, clients have always viewed creative work as risky, so it has been even more difficult in the current environment, says Ms Elsie Nanji, Vice-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Ambience D'Arcy, which has always been known for its creative. Also, there is greater emphasis on strategy, even at the pitch stage, and clients now expect agencies to be just as strong on strategy as on creative.

"Creative was in a world of illusion and dreams - we had to bring them all down to earth," says Ms Nanji. "Creative have also had to become more servicing-oriented - and that is difficult because we have suddenly been drawn into the business part of the agency." Ambience, which will soon be known as Ambience Publicis, has a leaner and more efficient creative team now, which works more closely with servicing, she adds.

Certainly, the results of creative are not as quantifiable as media, and therefore there is greater pressure, says Mr U. Jayraj Rau, Vice-President & Client Services Director, JWT. "Also, we are running out of ways to project a brand image, so creative is under pressure to do more."

To be sure, creative heads are talking more about "intelligent creative" and "brand-building creative". "Creative is not just about winning awards, but building client confidence and working for the brand in the marketplace," says Ms Deepa Kakkar, Executive National Creative Director, RK Swamy/BBDO. "The agency is no longer someone who just comes in with layouts."

Ms Kakkar, who has patented her creative thinking process, believes that creative is unfairly and disproportionately criticised, because no one can see the thinking that went into an ad. "With creative, the product is on the table, on TV, in the paper - everyone can see it and has an opinion on it and passes judgment, while the rest of the agency can go under cover of mediocrity," she says. "So the pressure is never distributed equally."

The one bright spot is the increasing number of laurels Indian creative work is winning in international arenas, Ambience's Ms Nanji says.

With media planning becoming more scientific, some of the number-crunching has also crept into creative: several agencies now have analytics divisions that promise useful marketing insights for, among other things, a better creative product. OgilvyOne Analytics, OgilvyOne's data services division, offers a campaign management service, which entails creating a single repository for all advertising and marketing campaigns.

"Companies spend a lot of money on campaigns and want to know how they worked," says Mr C.S. Krishna Kumar, Head - CRM Analytics. "This enables you to evaluate campaign spend and see which format of media and creative worked - did Shah Rukh or Hrithik get more responses."

It is no longer enough to rely on a gut feel or experience to create a campaign; in fact, data actually helps deliver a better creative product as it provides better consumer insights, Mr Krishna Kumar adds. "You cannot ignore the facts when one piece of creative is giving you more leads and better numbers," he says. "Besides, clients are far easier to convince with numbers."

That will hold true even more in the coming year, as the industry sees no signs of a dramatic revival. So the nose rings and nail art can stay, but brush up on strategy, please, and carry a calculator.

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