We do not have the courage to reinvent

We must be a very funny industry. Until a few years ago, till some of us strongly objected, we used to run seminars that said, “advertising works”. Have you ever heard of doctors running a seminar that says, surgery works? How comfortable would you be going to an aviation seminar that said, aeroplanes work. How would our clients be feeling? That’s exactly what has happened over the last 30-odd years. We have not reinvented ourselves. The faster we do something about it — rather than debate it at gatherings like these — the better. All of us know that with respect to digital, the writing is on the wall.

So what did we do about it? We made nice Powerpoint presentations to our clients saying the digital medium is important and so on. And what did the peripheral areas around our industry do? A 20-year-old kid went out and figured out the medium and set up a social media company. Somebody else set up a search engine marketing company. What did we as agencies do? First we denied it, and when these new entrants had built their business, we said we will pay them ₹50 crore or ₹100 crore to come and be a part of our business so that they also stop reinventing themselves. And after sometime we will all be the same.

Missing the big picture Today, e-commerce is the biggest challenge and opportunity facing our clients, right? We can see it around ourselves. What is the agency response? One is, we will become your agency, why don’t you put up a few hoardings and some spots behind cricket and build your brand? Then we get a few crores as billing out of it. But some young guy in some garage out there is reinventing the whole model and figuring out how they can become an integral part of the e-commerce and we will end up paying $200 million to buy that kid’s business four years from now. Then, we will say we understand the change and that we are reinventing. We are missing the big picture because we are not reinventing ourselves.

We are smart people who forecast the change yet live in denial and do not have the courage to reinvent.

There are some harsh realities. The biggest reason is talent. We all agree that people are our biggest asset. But India has the highest gap in remuneration between the highest paid and lowest paid executives in advertising. Our average ratio of any agency is anywhere between 100 times and 250 times. The global average hovers between 50 and 100 times.

We have commoditised our business so much that we are not able to earn enough and hence not pay enough. The talent coming in is not as good as the talent going out of the industry. And this will only accelerate further.

I have nothing against age, but every industry body meeting of our business is like going to a geriatric ward. In an industry where the average age of the workforce is about 25 years, the average age of the decision maker is upwards of 55 years. How is it ever going to work? That’s one of the reasons we have not been able to reinvent ourselves. We do not have the courage to do it in a disruptive manner.

(Ashish Bhasin is Chairman & CEO, South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network)