When three advertising veterans with a distinguished body of work band together to start a new venture, you sit up and take note. Former Lintas and Tilt Brand Solutions executives T Gangadhar, Shriram Iyer and Rajiv Chatterjee’s new venture, ZeroFifty Mediaworks, has just launched with the promise of simplifying the agency model.
Bandra vibes
The name ZeroFifty comes from the pincode of Bandra — 400050 — in Mumbai, where the agency has set up office. As Gangadhar explains, “We believe advertising could do with some of the vibes that the lanes of Bandra are synonymous with — eclectic, lively, quirky, creative, and, most importantly, fun!”
Given that all three were part of Quotient Ventures (home to Tilt Brand Solutions), which is doing some outstanding work, including the unforgettable Dream11 creatives, what was the white space they saw that made them leave the firm and start a new agency?
Responds Gangadhar, “It’s probably less about a white space than about us wanting to explore a different way of doing business.” Explaining this, he says that advertising agency work these days has got bogged down into a lot of daily drudge work. “I am not undermining that work, but, broadly speaking, there are three parts to what an agency does — you have brand strategy, you have creative and campaign development, and the third bucket is the really intense long tail of the daily grind, at which agencies throw a lot of resources.”
“What we are trying to do,” he says, “is to focus on the top two without having to do the third part.” Given his background in media, will the agency do media planning? “We won’t do media, but we will develop assets for different media touch points. Our primary focus is brand strategy, and creative and campaign development,” he replies.
Adds Chatterjee, “Our ambition is to build a firm that works on a limited number of clients, but solves for deeper and more fundamental challenges. At this stage of our lives, the source of joy will come not from a larger number of clients we plan to service, but the nature of the issues we address. It’s more depth than width.”
Chimes in Gangadhar, “While becoming large is a metric of success, it comes with a downside as well. I think distance between you and the work increases. So we believe there is a sweet spot that operates at the intersection of the number of clients that you can take on and the degree of attention you can give them.”
Ask him if ZeroFifty will be digital-first, and he rears up. He says, in his book, digital-first is a bit of a cliché. “Today TV is just a device and not a media platform. You happen to see a video on a TV device or on a digital channel. We are a video-first country.”
Creative development
Gangadhar, who had a hand in the media planning strategy of cricket extravaganza IPL’s first ever edition when he was with Sony, says that in media agencies there has been huge evolution and innovation. The same level of change has not been seen in creative agencies, and things are sort of ripe for a shake-up.
“I was lucky to have seen first-hand the dramatic transformation of the media business — from a sort of backroom boys to being right up front, having their fingers in many pies, beyond crafting entertaining content and properties for sports. I think media agencies spotted opportunities that creative agencies looked away from,” he says.
Agrees Iyer, “We believe that the return to creativity is a return to the core and is long overdue in this business. In fact, we owe it to the craft. The opportunity to deep-dive personally keeps us alive, and starting out again has allowed us that experience.”
“I think there’s a stillness in advertising that needs to be shaken up. There’s this trend of stunts masquerading as great ideas. An obsession with the latest shiny toy — a trend fuelled by ambitious CMOs (chief marketing officers),” says Gangadhar.
Talent and pay
Gangadhar says the crop of people entering media agencies now crackle and sparkle. On the other hand, on the creative side “we don’t have the talent. I think, to be very candid, salaries, especially in the lower rungs, are an issue”, he says.
The ZeroFifty founders say they want to change the agency model when it comes to costing and salaries. Most agencies build costs on the back of the daily grind they do. And there is a lot of undercutting and discounting, which results in poor salaries for the fresh entrant. “We have to make sure that we are paying people a fair salary. And that is something that we at ZeroFifty are definitely committed to. We want to be in the top percentile when it comes to salaries,” asserts Gangadhar.