How is MTR Foods moving from being your parent’s ‘instant idli mix’ to target the millennial consumer?

BY AMIT BAPNA

MUMBAI

Wit h pr ac t ic a l ly e v e r y p r o d u c t making a play for t he m i l len n i a l consumer, specifi-cally the bracket just under or over

30, could packaged food be far be-hind? MTR Foods, a company with a hoary legacy, is almost certainly not the first brand you’d associate with millennials. But the Bengaluru-headquartered firm intends chang-ing that in the near future.

MTR used to be ubiquitous for its mixes, carefully packed into the suit-case of every Indian student who was going to study abroad, but considered ‘non-vegetarian’ the stuff of night-mares. The US or UK bound student

in the 80s and 90s was not bothered by the preparation time and effort in-volved, considering it a small price to pay for home-cooked food in lands where there was nary an idli or dosain sight. Such patience is thoroughly lacking in the younger lot of today. And so, after a long-tail study of this customer’s choices and preference, MTR has launched a 3-minute break-fast range. It’s also hoping to gain some much needed relevance to a more youthful demographic.

As per Sanjay Sharma, CEO, MTR Foods, the range will be a big inspira-tion for the development of the MTR

portfolio. “We see this (breakfast) as an ̀ 1000 crore opportunity and as the face of MTR in the next few years,” he adds.

The homemaker contour has changed acutely over the last few years. Cooking is no longer as big a priority in a world increasingly domi-nated by double income households. Views Sunay Bhasin, CMO, MTR Foods, “Today’s youth have a severe paucity of time and do not have the knowledge of Indian food, perceiving it to be cumbersome to prepare, result-ing in a reduction of Indian cuisines’ share on the household dining table.” The current generation consists of con-venience seekers: eating out on a regu-lar basis or skipping breakfast is not a big deal. Adds Tithi Ghosh, executive vice president & head of advertising,

Ogilvy & Mather, South, “The new age consumer’s role has moved out of the kitchen to becoming the cheerleader, mentor, facilitator and peacemaker. Laying out tasty meals remains a mo-tivation, but she wants to do more.”

Taste, health and convenience are the three anchors of Indian breakfast and somewhere the last factor is a big road-block, feels Sharma. A self-confessed foodie who feels he is in the right indus-try, Sharma recalls being upset at how difficult it was selling Indian foods to Indians. Even for a company like MTR which was the first to diversify from masalas to full-fledged food. It explains why the Western breakfast market is a formidable ̀ 1500 crore compared to the paltry ̀ 150 crore Indian breakfast market. Corn flakes, muesli and oats seem to be the winners over poha, idliand upma, so far.

MTR Foods hopes to usurp a chunky slice of the market with its recently launched breakfast range. It com-prises upma, poha, Indian style oats and kesari bhaat that only need hot water and 3 minutes of a consumer’s time, before they are ready to eat. The range has been launched in a box, cup and single serve pouches. It’s set to be distributed across the Top 100 towns in the country.

>Continued on Page4

INSIDEBE

+On 3

THE POWER OF PRINT:

JUDGEMENT DAY

IBM’S SANJAY BRAHMAWAR

ON IOT

Facts about Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky that you may or may not know. Gleaned from our chat with him earlier this year

CHESKY TAKES

Excerpts from a Q&A with Future’s Devendra Chawla and Professor Jagdish Sheth from Emory University

BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN

MUMBAI

We caught up with Devendra Chawla, CEO, Future Consumer Limited and group president, Future Group and Professor Jagdish Sheth, the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing at Emory University Goizueta Business School, for their take on what products and categories are headed for the scrapheap, truth in marketing and more

How do you market in times of uncer-tainty: should categories that are worst affected stop communicating as many have done or find smarter methods of getting the message across?Professor Sheth: One strategy is to exit unprofitable markets. I want to board up my windows since the storm is here. It is sometimes a blessing since brands tend to cross-subsidise.

Chawla: In don’t think uncertainty will ever go away. We now live in a per-manent VUCA (volatility uncertainty complexity ambiguity) world. From a brand point of view, after demoneti-sation comes the alcohol ban across highways which impacts food and beverage categories whose sales seem to be down. And then will come GST!

These are unintended consequences of good intentions.

I’d say it’s an apt time for a crash course in VUCA! I’m not sure how it can be taught, though. To some extent, scenario planning can help brands be future ready and stay flexible with a Plan B or Plan C. From a career point of view, there are H1B visa barriers, the recent, but temporary spate of start-up job losses and the chatter of AI taking jobs away. Brands, careers, entrepreneurs all have to flow in a VUCA world and not stop but keep flowing, staying flexible and malleable.

Which categories /concepts do you see getting obsolete in the next few years or at least severely declining in relevance?Professor Sheth: Textile and gar-ments, especially for women. The core dress – the sari has become specialty. The core that used to be kurta-pyjama is going to jeans. Older categories have become spe-cialty markets and newer ones have become regular. I can see the same trends with cosmetics.Chawla: It’s interesting you mention

that, Dr Sheth. Now that jeans have taken over everyday life, during festivals, people are dressing in a far more ostentatious traditional manner for that one day. It’s almost like compensating for not wearing traditional clothes more often; a bal-ancing act. Professor Sheth: Any product that can be digitalised is in trouble. But everything that is given up as a core, will come back as a hobby or a specialty.

>Continued on Page 4

THE MTR MIX(CATEGORY-WISE BREAK-UP)

39%Masala and Spices

34%Mixes

10%Vermicelli

6%Ready to Eat

11%Pickles, Papads, Magic Kitchen Spice Mixes, Snacks <*Source – Internal Business Data>

From Masala To MillennialsTHE KHAL(I)BALI BOY

“Any product that can be digitalised is in trouble”

Professor ShethWE WERE BROUGHT UP WITH THE NOTION OF MARKET SHARE AND THEN MOVED TO SHARE OF WAL-LET...THE NEXT WAY TO BOND IS SHARE OF HEART.

Are agency’s in-house production units the way of the future? How will this trend affect the industry?

BY SHEPHALI BHATT & RAVI BALAKRISHNAN

MUMBAI

A few years ago, an ad guy lamented “The only people making good money in this business any more are the production houses. Clients approve of their budgets, no questions asked.” That was an exaggeration: questions are asked, but typically a lot fewer than those that are asked of ad agencies.

And so, the most surprising thing about a few agencies deciding to take at least some of their production work in-house, is the fact that it’s taken the industry as long as it has to make this move. But now that the

fi rst few sparks have been lit, it’s spreading like a wildfi re. Roopak Saluja, founder & CEO of 120 Media Collective (that houses production brands Bang Bang Films and Sniper), shares: “In 2015, 70% of production work in France was done inhouse. In the US the fi gures are only slightly lower than that.” And it

looks like India wants in on the action:

Britannia, Idea Cellular, to name a few.

agency Hogarth in India last year. Hogarth currently handles post production for 14 brands from the portfolios of Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Reckitt Benckiser, et al.

>Continued on Page 4

We see this (breakfast) as an ̀ 1000 crore opportu-nity and as the face of MTR in the next few years.Sanjay Sharma, CEO, MTR Foods

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EATS, SHOOTS, AND (NEVER) LEAVES

On 2

the twitter index

John Hegarty’s

Least Favourite

Things

On 4

THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 17-23, 2017

Power SurgeIt’s not just enthusiastic responses to contests that indicate the power of print. According to latest figures from the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations), average daily circula-tion has risen by 23.7 million to 62.8 million in 10 years from 2006, a CAGR of 4.87%.The highest growth has been clocked by north India at 7.83% CAGR, fol-lowed by the south, west and east with at 4.95%, 2.81% and 2.63%.The growth is matched by a rise in the number of publishing centres from 659 to 910 during the period.Another interesting trend emerges when one considers the total number of paid dailies in circulation. A WAN-INFRA report indicates that while in other countries this number is stag-nating, in the calendar years 2013-15, India grew by as many as 2,000 titles. English and language dailies dominate circulation. circulation.

With 823 entries to slog through, print advertising is alive and well according to the judges at Power of Print

It may seem a tad self-evident, but the first thing that the Times Group’s Power of Print (PoP) initiative demonstrat-ed was, in fact, the power of print. 823 entries poured in from over 400 agencies, gal-

vanised by a brief from Nestle India — the MNC is partnering PoP in its first year — a print campaign for the cause Educate the Girl Child.

Given the contest was open to all com-munication companies, it was not just creative ad agencies sending in en-tries. Rajesh Kejriwal, founder CEO of Kyoorius points out some entries even came from digital shops.

The entries included everything from gutwrenching words and im-ages, to creative treatments that were more celebratory. The solutions on hand ran the gamut from ‘classic’ print ads that could have run half a decade ago, to others that harnessed a lot of the new age thinking in vogue these days. Some agencies had even created facsimile newspapers to bet-ter demonstrate just how innovatively they intended deploying the medium.

The judges pored over a shortlist of 113 entries and examined every single bit of work that made it to the competition, to pick up any deserv-ing ads that may have fallen by the wayside. The relative merits of these were keenly discussed by the judges who could make it to the final ses-sion: Arun Iyer (Lowe Lintas), Bobby Pawar (Publicis), Chandrasekar Radhakrishnan (Nestle India), Kainaz Karmakar (Ogilvy), Raj Kamble (Famous), Senthil Kumar (JWT), Shrijeet Mishra (BCCL), and Swati Bhattacharya (FCB Ulka).

As mentioned earlier, you’ll have to wait just a little longer to know who won the grand prize: a trip to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, this year. The winner will be an-nounced at the Kyoorius Creative Awards on the 2nd of June 2017. Brand Equity caught up with the

judges to discuss the competition and here’s what they had to say:

Creativity without relevance is of little significance -AG Krishnamurthy, Founder, Mudra Communications

MADE FOR INDIA 4

From ‘Football Shootball Hai Rabba’ to the world of Mad Men, BE traces Jigar Fernandes’ cinematic journey

BY SHEPHALI BHATT

MUMBAI

Jigar Fernandes, creative head,Publicis Ambience, the brain behind the famous Khali ad for Ambuja Cement, started life want-ing to be a professional football play-er. Till 19, he was a centre forward for The New India Assurance foot-ball team in Mumbai. Cue a twist in the story: a bad ligament injury put an end to his dreams.

The 38 year old Khal(i)bali boy recounts that chapter of life like it happened yesterday. “I hailed from a lower middle class family so it was important to immediately get a job now that football was over.” After completing engineering, Fernandes was all set for a career with Mahindra & Mahindra. While at

the company, he also finished a part time MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai. He was doing great at the job and be-ing appreciated as well. So, how did advertising come into the picture? Strangely enough, from the church he frequented every Sunday.

First brief - The Holy Bible“During Mass there’s a session where the priest reads the Bible. Having heard the same passages since childhood, I’d feel bored. How can you make that interest-ing, I asked the priest. That was my first brief - to make the Bible’s stories more interesting.” By way of example, he points out that while there are Ten Commandments, Jesus (Christ) says the only one that matters is that you love your neigh-bour - because if you follow this commandment, everything else is a subset. So, he wrote a short play where two students take a test of the commandments. The child who gets all 10 right, gets full marks. But so does the other child who remem-bers only ‘love thy neighbour’. It got Fernandes noticed by a voice-over artist who suggested he consider ad-vertising. “It was a sought after pro-fession, those days” he recollects.

Fernandes attended a workshop

by Gangadharan Menon, who had a storied career in agencies like DDB Mudra. Amidst communica-tion students and young ad lads, he was the only outsider. Yet he caught everyone’s attention by emerging the winner at the end of the workshop.

No money, honeyMenon encouraged him to ap-ply to the biggest agencies of that time but simultaneously warned him: “Paise nahi milenge.” Given his financial obligations, it was a leap of faith that wasn’t as easy. “For a family like mine, a job with Mahindra & Mahindra or The Tata Group was the best thing that could’ve happened.” For the next two years, Fernandes went on a saving spree. In the meantime, he met Josy Paul of BBDO India who was running David at that time. “Josy said he sees a spark but wanted me to get a taste of agency life before I took a drastic decision and a massive pay cut. He asked me to take a short break from office and work with him for a month. I took it up.” A month later, Paul offered him a job as junior copywriter at ̀ 14,000. It may have been significantly lesser than what Fernandes was making at Mahindra but he was joyous. “I had come with the expectation of no salary at all, so this was a pleas-ant surprise.”

Vodafone se Khali takAnd so his journey began, at 28. After short stints at Brand David, J Walter Thompson, and Leo Burnett, Fernandes was roped into the Vodafone team at Ogilvy by Kiran Antony. There he worked with Ogilvy’s NCD Rajiv Rao for close to four years. “In an industry famous for adding layers to a message, Rajiv taught you how to simplify the mes-sage and still keep it beautiful.” It wasn’t easy to bid adieu to Ogilvy and its people but a new challenge beckoned when Bobby Pawar, MD and CCO of Publicis Worldwide, gave him a challenging offer: to turn Publicis into a creative power-house. 10 months into the new job, Fernandes gave us the Khali ad for

Ambuja cement.The campaign

w a s h e a v i l y awarded but also criticised for be-ing inspired by ‘The Wind’ com-mercial for the Germany-based company Epuron. He’s heard them all: bouquets and brickbats, and didn’t indulge ei-

ther. “The ad was made on the old-est model in advertising and the idea there was the celebrity (The Great Khali),” he says. His latest ad ‘Appu’ for OTA startup goomo.com showcases a blind child running free in the Rann of Kutch. Another ad that can be accused of falling for the handicap trope? “That’s not how I see it. I ran wild while I was there. So imagine that child’s joy.” Advertising is in fact focusing on an emotion and taking it to the extreme for maximum impact. It doesn’t hurt as long as it is not manipulative and has its heart in its right place. His conviction makes you want to be-lieve it’s the latter case.

But even with your heart in the right place, everyone in the tradi-tional ad agency setup is struggling with the Netflix era. Fernandes is a notable exception. “Right now it’s just another advertising avenue for them. The day the client leaves a TVC meeting for a Netflix PPM , I will be worried.” .

shephali.bhatt@timesgroup.com

THE Khal(i)bali BOY

Please read the full storyonline at etbrandequity.com

MY FIRST EVER BRIEF WAS TO MAKE THE BIBLE’S STORIES MORE INTERESTING FOR PEOPLE

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2007: I was still in marketing when my first ad was released. Josy Paul (I’ll always be grateful to him for giving me a break) knew that I loved advertising, but was also wary that I was about to sacrifice a lot of money and a promising career at Mahindras. So he suggested that I spend some time in advertising first, to see how things are from the inside. I jumped

at the opportunity and started moonlighting with Brand David, under the super talented Steven Mathias and Priya Pardiwala. My first brief was on Mumbai Mirror. Call it beginner’s luck. The first set of lines were all over Mumbai’s skyline in a week. I saw the hoardings and said to myself: “I can do this for a living.” I quit Mahindra & Mahindra the same day.

MyFirst Ad

Federal Bank, 2012

Goomo.com, 2017

Ambuja Cement, 2015

PRESENTING THE BRAND ENGAGEMENT INDEX

AS ON MAY 10, 2017

the twitterindex

The index looks at the live list of all advertisers on the platform and measures the total number of user engagements with all the tweets that they sent out

that week - specifically this is a sum of all the replies, retweets and favourites across all tweets that week.

IPL Special

1) @oppomobileindiaAs @oppomobileindia launched its latest smart-phone #OPPOF3, it announced it would spon-sor the Indian National Cricket Team and its asso-ciation with ICC Champions Trophy’17 that would be held in England and Wales.

2) @Moto_IND@Moto_IND continued to promote its #motog5plus mobile phone with the help of the IPL players from the Rising Pune Supergiant. In the video posted, it is seen that the #motoRPS players are always on point, in terms of shooting and clicking, just like the #mo-tog5plus because #differentshootsbetter.

@3) @Vivo_India@Vivo_India kept the IPL conversation going with its followers, asking questions like “Who is your favourite bowler?” and “Who is that batsman you want to cheer for from the stadium?” and reward-ing fans who answered with chances to win match tickets.

4) @GodrejAppliance@GodrejAppliance got cricket fans thinking and chipping in their opinion in another round of #SochKeKhelaHai. Fans are told to share who they thought #SochKeKhelaHai, the player they are sup-porting who was a game-changer.

5) @GioneeIndiaFor this week’s #GioneeSPL, the theme was #Gymfie, where people were encouraged to post selfies of themselves working out or even posing with their biceps in the gym

h id t d it i

The Power Of Print: Judgement Day

Here are the brands that continue to make a splash through the latest season of the

Indian Premier League (IPL). Watch out for updates in the forthcoming issues.

Shrijeet MishraCHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BCCL

We generated an un-believable number of entries in four weeks, just using the Times Group print medium, and no digital media. Each idea was powerful enough to lead to fur-ther strings of thought. Within the entries, some purely created awareness, some were activation ideas and still others a combina-tion of both.

It’s also demonstrates that if you have a clear brief and give time to your agencies to come up with brilliant print ideas, they will do so. And then, if you want to take them to the mar-ket, obviously there’s nothing better than the Times Group print medium. When two big companies come together like Times and Nestle in this case, there’s magic and that’s reflected in the entries.

Senthil KumarCHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, J WALTER THOMPSON

Everyone is aware of the problem. But I saw very few action ori-ented ads and even the ones I saw, fell short. But the fact that nearly a 1000 teams have done this great is news for the country and cre-ative fraternity. If all of them put up the work in their neighbourhoods and communities, I’m sure it will help the cause even more.

Swati BhattacharyaCHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, FCB ULKA

The level of art in our industry has gone up tremendously. Even mediocre ideas were laid out beautifully. I thought most entries missed stra-tegically conveying both the messages the brief re-quired: encourage people to donate for the cause of girl child’s education and more people sending daughters to school. Those messages were meant for a different set of audience altogether so the com-munication should’ve ad-dressed both aspects.

Chandrasekar RadhakrishnanSR VP AND HEAD OF COM-MUNICATIONS AND ECOM-MERCE, NESTLE INDIA

The cause of educat-ing the girl child which we have focused on with our #EducateTheGirlChild campaign, is an issue of national importance. Every step matters in drawing attention to this cause that can positively change the lives of not only girls but families and societ-ies. The idea was to collaborate with the entire industry to de-liver a strong message through the power of print. I’m extremely heartened with the sheer number of entries and the effort made by the participants. It’s going to be quite a chal-lenge to pick a winner!

Arun IyerCHAIRMAN AND CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, LOWE LINTAS

After a long time I spent an entire day looking at only print ads! The good part was a lot of art effort has gone into the ads. But the writ-ing lagged. It seemed there wasn’t much effort put into finding an insight and working on it. Creativity could be seen in the layout and cleverness. But not in that one thought that you’d want to leave behind.

Kainaz KarmakarGROUP CREATIVE DIREC-TOR, OGILVY & MATHER

I rated highly the pieces that surprised me, made me smile and left me feeling ‘this will change someone’s mind.’ Some ideas were pretty strong but push-ing the pencil on writ-ing and art direction could’ve made them stronger.

Don’t treat print as second to television. If you do that, you will never give it its due. Also remember: people will only see the final ad and react or not. So go a step further and get the details abso-lutely great.

Bobby PawarCHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER, PUBLICIS

There’s probably more entries here than print in Goafest. It’s great that people are interested in doing print ads. Or the prize of winning a trip to Cannes has more of a draw than I thought! What I didn’t like was the lack of history that young people have on the business. If they’d checked the ads from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, they’d know what’s been done and what’s great. They’d know how to use insights and solutions in a flat static medium. It showed in the few people who had that knowledge. The rest were trying to be clever which is the worst thing.

Raj KambleFOUNDER, FAMOUS

First off, thanks to the Times Group and Nestle for supporting the cause. Normally in such contests, a lot of people who enter are from ad agencies. But this time there were individuals from small organisations and towns which was amazing to see. Print is not dead and still has the power to change things. Overall the quality of work was fantastic. I was expect-ing a lot of sad images and faces. But I was pleasantly surprised. The ad that wins will make people look at the cause positively.

ce -ons

2THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 17-23, 2017

IBM’s Sanjay Brahmawar on how IOT can help with a better customer experience

BY RAVI BALAKRISHNAN

MUMBAI

Excerpts from an interview with IBM’s general manager and head of global sales for IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT)

What are some of the sectors that are really getting behind IoT?The sectors that take value out of it include auto: 90% of cars are going to be connected by 2020. It’s driven by the need for us to operate better in our cars, but also allows manufacturers to have a better understanding of the operation of the car. How you main-tain the vehicle helps them upsell or cross sell.

The second sector is retail. How do we leverage data to help the consum-er have a richer experience? With non-invasive sensors, you can under-stand where people are browsing and connect that with data on customer profiles. You get a lot more visibility to what people are doing. Retailers can create a 360 degree view of the stores, know where to product place, what to do and how to manage the store.

An industry that’s very exciting for us in India is insurance. The entire industry is moving to usage based insurance. Rather than the tradi-tional models of risk, based on demo-graphics or age, you can calculate on personal usage. If your car has a sensor that collects data on how you drive, where you brake and how you accelerate, that data is available to the insurance company. They know if you are safe or not. In the UK for example, if you are you n ger t h a n 20, the in-s u r a n c e

is killing. But if you can see how the person drives it does not need to be that ridiculously expensive.

The final sector would be electron-ics: Whirlpool and Electrolux are embedding sensors into devices like washing machines and fridges. The data helps not just with maintenance but to provide new offers and better service to customers. IoT facilitates the shift from products to services. For a product company, if your dependence is on creating brand new products, the sell is hard. Whirlpool wants to sell the washing machine as a service — pay per wash. If you are a young family, and buy a

washing machine, you don’t think of the asset any more. Whirlpool has got the job to refresh the asset for you as you progress and have a larger fam-ily. So, they are very keen to move from just products to products and services.

How enthusiastic have Indian compa-nies been?We are talking to Reliance, the Tatas, the Birlas… We have signed deals with the largest Indian tyre OEM, based in Chennai, we’ve tied up with the largest car manufacturer and pos-sibly the world’s second largest agri-cultural equipment provider. We also have an insurance company on board.

Could you give us some consumer facing applications of IOT?We are working with Har man Kardon, infusing intelligence into their speaker. We are talking about a speaker that put in a context, has a better understanding of the envi-ronment and person it is interacting

with. A speaker in a hotel room in the Hilton could become a guest’s very own concierge service. But it’s a very personalised service. Considering Hilton has a lot of regular customers, the speaker would know your history, background and preferences. We are working with BMW to create a cognitive car that’s leveraging natu-ral language (which understands the intent behind text) and other APIs with Watson to create an intuitive en-vironment in the car.

What’s the strategic intent driving your ad campaigns around Watson?For us it’s not about replacing the human being but partnering with people. Giving them the best possible support capabilities. Our path is to monetise but we have a larger mission at hand which we are also communi-cating through the campaigns.

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Welcome To The Machine

Every two years, to keep Moore’s law happening, you have to invent - that’s where I grew up

- Brian Krzanich, Intel

THIN

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Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has finally addressed the giant blue elephant in the room. During his company’s first-ever earnings call with investors on Wednesday, Spiegel summed up his feel-ings on Facebook’s relentless copying of Snapchat’s core features with an audible laugh.“You have to get comfortable with

and enjoy the fact that someone is going to copy you if you make great stuff,” he said in response to an analyst question about Facebook’s copying of Snapchat’s Stories format and augmented reality efforts.“We believe that everyone is going to de-velop a camera strategy,” he said. “I

think we really help everyone un-derstand how valuable the cam-era is.”Interestingly, Spiegel also compared his company’s rivalry with Facebook to the early days of Yahoo and Google. “At the end of the day, just because Yahoo has a search box, it doesn’t mean they’re Google,” he said..

Source: Business Insider

SIDETAKE:

GLOCAL BUZZ 4

Please read the full interviewonline at etbrandequity.com

Chesky TakesFacts about Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky that you may or may not know. Gleaned from our chat with him earlier this year

BY ANUMEHA CHATURVEDI AND MADHAV CHANCHANI

Chesky is the thirty-five year old co-founder of the poster-child of the sharing economy, Airbnb, a company valued at $31 billion. (Hurts doesn’t it?)

The former industrial designer interviewed the first 100people to work at Airbnb himself.

A values man, despite a hectic schedule he finds time to send a weekly email to his employees on the company’svalues. He firmly believes how they operate in cities is areflection of their culture.

Cities, however, are not always in the mood to share.That’s perhaps why the person he looks up to at Airbnbis its chief business affairs and legal officer BelindaJohnson for teaching him the basics of dealing withpressing government regulators and pressures. Airbnb has run into trouble with regulatory authorities inmarkets across the world. For instance, Germany bannedunlicensed rentals from May 1 last year and Singapore’sparliament passed a new law this February making it

illegal for home owners to rent out entireapartments and rooms for less than sixmonths to aggregators such as Airbnbwithout permission from the UrbanRedevelopment Authority.

On work trips, he eschews hotels (naturally), preferring instead to mingle and stay with Airbnb hosts. One of his favourite experiences was staying in a treehouse in California with hosts Doug and Linda last year.

Chesky feels the comparisons with other sharing economy majorslike Uber are not fair as they’re both in distinct businesses.He explains: “We are a global network effect business. So if I live here I want to go to one platform, one app, one website. I want to be able to type any city in the world and be able to travel. I don’t want to use one website when I go to India another when I go to France and another when I go to the US. Because we’re one global network and your first experience with us could be when you travel and leave the country,its a very different proposition than a local network effect business.”

The challenges that he faced while building this super disruptiveonline global network effect business? Fighting everyone whothought they were crazy. “People thought it was crazy. Investors thought it was crazy. The press thought it wascrazy. Customers, hosts thought it was crazy. When everyone startssaying you’re crazy you start thinking am I crazy? But we weren’t crazy.”

anumeha.chaturvedi @timesgroup.com

Travis Kalanick

Evan Spiegel on Facebook: ‘Just because Yahoo has a search box doesn’t mean they’re Google’

For us, it is not about replacing the human being but partnering people, giving them the best possible supportSanjay Brahmawar IBM

3THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 17-23, 2017

Through the course of a freewheeling chat, with BBH’s 73-year old founder and legendary ad man John Hegarty we discovered a laundry list of people and things he doesn’t think too highly of

BY AMIT BAPNA & RAVI BALAKRISHNAN

MUMBAI

AccountantsSome of my best friends have been ac-countants but I would not let them run my company. Accountancy firms are run by accountants. The most well-known (and the richest) people in the music industry are musicians, architects in architec-ture firms and so on. Even in the cre-ative industry, all the big changes – the philosophical changes - have happened under the charge of creative people: Bill Bernbach, David Ogilvy, Dan Wieden etc. We don’t talk about the accountants in the creative industry, though Martin Sorrel would like us to talk about him.

Sir Martin SorrellWe avoid each oth-er. At a conference last year, some -body asked a ques-tion about data, and they said ‘John Hegarty says that data does not mat-ter.’ (I’ve actually never said that !)

And Sorrell said ‘Hegarty is a dinosaur. Who wants to takes any notice of what he says?’ That was fine, I didn’t give a shit! We have the A-list every year and there’s a question ‘Tell me something notable that happened to you this year.’ So I put in ‘being described by Martin Sorrell as a dinosaur because I think people are more important than data.’ I have had many a row with Martin. I only agree with him on Brexit.

Brexit and the Remain campaignRemain was an appalling campaign. David Cameron will go down as prob-ably the worst prime minister we’ve had. What they did was frighten people, which never works. It’s like saying ‘don’t

do drugs.’ They all go out and do them, don’t they! What they should have done was painted the picture of the opportu-nity, the big idea and why it is great. I’d written some scripts, but couldn’t find anyone interested, that talked about why Europe is such a great idea.

The KendallJenner Pepsi AdIt was clichéd and really bad. They went for the lowest denominator personality and they traded their brand thinking she was cool. Anyone with half brain, would have seen she is not cool. Brands need to create their own culture. My advice to Pepsi – use a creative agency, guys, in-stead of creating your own ads. We have often done things where we overstepped a bit and that is going to hap-pen. But stay away from being over seri-ous and do not try to annex a big issue. Brands should not borrow other people’s principles and that is the trouble. That

is what Pepsi was trying to do. You are a sugar drink that rots people’s teeth, a brand that makes people overweight! Remember that. They should have that written somewhere. Let’s not adopt ‘Black Lives Matter’!

Sexist ads for AxeI understand why they wanted to change. I’m happy to say this publicly: I was quite critical of a lot of our later work. It became sexual rather than sexy. The foundation we started with was ‘The Axe Effect’. We were, in a way, laughing at deodorant ads that said ‘put this on and women will fall at your feet and in love with you.’ So we cre-ated geeky blokes who put this on and women fell for them. And in the end it doesn’t work…you can see that in the first ad, House Party. We were laughing at ourselves. What happened is they did research and found ‘16 year old boys go for girls with big tits!’ Consequently, we

were forced to do that. The girls got big-ger tits, and finally we did one ad where you had thousands of girls running on a beach. It was gratuitous. I loathed it. At least if the guy on the beach had been geeky it would have been funny. He wasn’t. We lost what had made the cam-paign and the brand great.

For more on this story and to find what John Hegarty actually likes, please check www.etbrandequity.com

amit.bapna@timesgroup.com

Chawla: TV ratings/measurement in current form will be redundant as now there are mul-tiple screens we spend time on and are measur-ing. Current middlemen will be obsolete yet new middle men (platforms) will disrupt and

be created due to network effects. Questions in interviews like “what do you in your spare time?” will become obsolete since we live in an era where everyone has time on, or rather in, their hands (via clocks on their phones) yet no one has time. How do you “make time” will emerge as a question. Deodorants have mir-rored aerated drinks and the “no gas” ones are growing faster.

Landline phones and privacy will become ob-solete. Prime time will be obsolete as everyone has a screen and will choose their own prime time given on demand entertainment like Netflix. We are living much longer; life expec-tancy is increasing, so retirement will become obsolete, perhaps. I hope the gender pay gap becomes obsolete.

Have emotions become more important than truth in marketing, in the digital era?Professor Seth: Yes. The marketer’s objectives have changed. We were all brought up with the notion of market share. Then we moved to share of wallet. How can I gain more of the to-tal spend? Today, share of wallet has become the lifetime value of a customer. The next way to bond is share of heart. As you increas-

ingly automate society, you deprive people of emotion. You have to embed emotions in ev-erything. If you can’t differentiate on product, you have to differentiate on emotional appeal.Chawla: Everything has technology in it. We book tickets, check in, chat, play games and have fun, all online…its e-wallets, e-commerce, e-visa and now smileys and emoticons have turned emotions into e-motions. We have digi-tised smiles, sadness, selfies (moments). The ever present nature of digital in our everyday life has consumed so much of us that we become unaware of its presence. We are at heights of FOMO (fear of missing out) leading to Instant Gratification and then looking for “what’s next” the next second. It’s happening at a speed where T20 becomes the primary cricket game, pushing 50 overs and test cricket behind, where “desire” is getting trumped, numbing us in a way. Desire needs space, longing and time to manifest into meaningful fulfilment. Physical is dating digital and soon they will get married. And yet we crave respect, affection, bonding, and support. ‘There are emotions in every-thing’ will become louder than today’s ‘there is technology in everything.’

ravi.balakrishnan@timesgroup.com

Continued from Page 1 >>

Eats, Shoots, and ...

Why keep it in the family? ‘The talent crunch in advertising’ is not breaking news anymore. Why, then, would agencies add yet another gigantic hiring as-signment? For money of course, you’d say. As agencies fight for mar-gins, production houses benefit from a business model that allows them to make money.

As Saluja points out: In the last 18 months, higher-end projects (up-wards of ̀ 1.5 crore) have gone down by 60%-70% but the sub `50 lakh projects have gone up 8 to 9 times. Digital only films have become an integral part of an agency’s scope of work. “The budgets are between `5 lakh and `10 lakh sometimes. If we were to go to a production house with that, they’d laugh us out of the room. In Bushfire we can do this very effectively,” says Rohit Ohri, group chairman and CEO, FCB Ulka, who reasons that taking things in-house has more to do with efficiency than just money.

However, the financial advantages are significant. A veteran of the ad business, Ohri recalls, “We used to do shadow costing through in-agency film people and find we were paying 10x.” Marketers reacted by putting an auditor or cost controller in place. According to Ohri, the exercise rapid-ly descended into farce: “As soon as a production house knows a controller is involved, it marks up its rates, and then when the auditor brings these down, everyone is happy.”

Yet another reason for small bud-geted agency produced films find-ing takers has to do with marketing cycles. Previously a company could afford to spend on an epic production, realising the RoI on the film, by run-ning it unchanged for years on end. But today, films are on air for a much shorter duration, challenging the RoI.

So, who does it hurt? The A-list production houses and directors will remain unaffected even if inhouse pro-duction goes up. Siddharth Banerjee, EVP marketing at Vodafone, says, “Prakash Varma of Nirvana will remain the corner-

stone of our large scale projects. But we have a bank of directors for campaigns on our many digital assets and social experi-ments.” It’s mid-level and small production houses that will take a hit, basically. Swaty Pande, senior producer at Hogarth, agrees: “Increasingly, big corporates would want to go to cash-secure production houses and a network agency’s in-house unit will provide that safety net.”

And yet the small to medium shops are not panicking. “We don’t work much with some agencies that have in house production units. Production houses are still em-ployed by them, though. But they make lesser margins now,” says Kiss Film’s Dalbir Singh. Piyush Raghani of Like-Minded People adds: “Some clients will move to agency production houses but the business is not going anywhere from us. No point fretting about it.”

Pros and ConsSaluja says it’s actually good for the industry. “There’s far too much clut-ter, given the low barrier to create a production house.” However, he high-lights an issue with in-house produc-tion: the three-party bidding system. Clients normally ask agencies to recommend three production houses based on budget and creative require-ment. “The work may go to inhouse units for value additive reasons alone. You need complete transparency in such cases.” Arun Iyer, chairman and CCO of Lowe Lintas, says: “Creatives want to work with directors. So, a lot of these decisions are director-led. We (LinProductions) are conscious about being fair and have never had issues in the past.”

With more players entering the fray, there’s no guarantee that there won’t be issues in the future too. As Harsh Agarwal, executive director of Emami, says, “Bias can always hap-pen.” And that makes the role of a cli-ent pivotal. “Ultimately the decision lies with us. We watch showreels and

tell them who we want,” he adds. If client needs to be more involved and agen-

cies more transparent, production houses need to do their bit as well. “Don’t refuse jobs because budgets are low,” says Hogarth’s Pande. “There’s a huge opportunity as a pro-duction house to become an incubator of talent and keep providing value,” Saluja concludes.

shephali.bhatt@timesgroup.com

CLASSIC BE 4

Devendra Chawla

SMILEYS AND EMOTICONS HAVE TURNED EMOTIONS INTO E-MOTIONS. THE PHYSICAL IS DATING THE DIGITAL AND SOON THEY WILL GET MARRIED.

“Any product that can be digitalised...”

Breakfast is a good space to occupy, feel many marketing experts. While everyone from our grandmas to our doctors encourage us to “to eat breakfast like a king…” nobody seems to have the patience or time. This is especially true of millennials where concepts of fixed bed time or fixed meal times have blurred, says Ashwini Deshpande, co-founder, Elephant, the design agency behind the brand. Adds Abneesh Roy, SVP, Edelweiss Financial Services and a FMCG sector analyst, betting on breakfast is a good idea since the Indian consumer is more willing to try ready to eat offerings in breakfast than for other occasions like lunch or dinner. However, the challenge in his view is that in the FMCG business the fact is ‘Jo dikhta hai who bikta hai’and there MTR may take a hit due to its low vis-ibility and lesser ad-spends.

To reach this new audience, there has been an overall change of approach, that includes chang-es in messaging as well as media-choices. For the first time, digital forms almost 30% in the overall mix. While the team is very clear they do not want to continue to talk to the grannies or even to the current 40-45 age group, an obvi-ous question is the risk of alienating its loyal base. Accedes Sharma, “There could be some alienation but the benefits of starting to build

ourselves for tomorrow are far bigger than los-ing the core.” As per Ashish Bhargava, partner, True North Managers, (formerly India Value Fund Advisors), the single biggest challenge would have been to make itself relevant and appeal to the mind and palate of the emerging consumer. MTR targeting millennials with a breakfast range is a good idea and can set the

stage for a bigger platform.Advantages of being a legacy brand are many

- for instance, the authenticity of ingredients, recipe or taste are easily accepted in the shop-ping basket. However, brands like MTR have to be careful that the legacy does not become an albatross around the neck.

amit.bapna@timesgroup.com

The Hunger GameMTR had actually started life as a restaurant way back in 1924, and it was post-emergency in 1976 that it branched out into the processed foods. According to folklore, MTR invented the Rava Idli breakfast mix in the 80s and alongside kept en-larging its portfolio with sambhar-mix, vermicelli, pickles and the ‘ready to eat’ range. In 2007 Orkla, a Norwegian foods & FMCG compa-ny took over MTR Foods and since then it has be-come a ̀ 8000 crore brand (as on December 2016). Its home-market Karnataka remains its strongest, contributing 45% of the total business.

John Hegarty’s Least Favourite Things

We need to get to kids who have no idea what we do. - Dan Wieden, W+K

People make one viral film and think they’ve arrived. Then they start refusing low budget work which is wrongSwaty Pande,Hogarth

This is actually good for the in-dustry. There’s far too much clutter, given the low barrier to create a pro-duction houseRoopak Saluja, 120 Media Collective

From Masala To MillennialsToday’s youth’s severe paucity of time and their perception of it being cumber-some to prepare, has resulted in a re-duction of Indian cuisines’ share on the dining table.Sunay Bhasin, CMO, MTR Foods

SIDETAKEChallenging times for Whole Foods?Whole Foods has been trying to lure back lost cus-tomers by cutting prices, but business has yet to improve. The supermarket chain’s same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, fell 2.8% in the most recent quarter, continuing a long stretch of declines for the once-dominant grocer. Analysts have repeatedly blamed Whole Foods’ lack of competitiveness on price as the primary reason for its shrinking pool of loyal customers. But according to Neil Saunders, manag-ing director of the retail consulting firm GlobalData, the grocery chain is facing a host of issues that have nothing to do with prices. “That Whole Foods can’t turn around its fortunes is, in our opinion, the result of several fundamental flaws in its business model,”

Saunders wrote in a note to clients. “Over the past few years, these cracks have be-come more pronounced, and the company has done seem-ingly little to correct them.”He outlined three main is-sues:1. Stores are cramped and

uninspiring.2. Food quality is “excellent,”

but the taste is “bland and dry.”

3. Organic and fresh is no longer a differentiator for Whole Foods.

Traditional and discount grocers like Kroger, Aldi, and Walmart are investing heavily in expanding their organic, natural, and fresh food selections - and they are stealing customers from Whole Foods in droves. In March, Barclays analyst Karen Short estimated that Whole Foods has lost as many as 14 million custom-ers in the past six quarters, and that most of them are going to Kroger instead. Source: Business Insider

Regn.No.MAHENG/2002/6711Volume 16 Issue No. 20Published for the Proprietors, Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd. by R. Krishnamurthyat The Times Of India Building, Dr. D.N.Road, Mumbai 400 001Tel. No. (022) 6635 3535, 2273 3535, Fax- (022)-2273 1144 and printed by him at (1) The Times of India Suburban Press, Akurli Road, Western Express Highway, Kandivili (E), Mumbai 400 101. Tel. No. (022) 28872324, 28872930,Fax- (022) 28874230 (2) The Times of India Print City, Plot No. 4, T.T.C. Industrial Area, Thane Belapur Road, Airoli, Navi Mumbai-400708 and (3) TIMES PRESS, Plot No. 5A, Road No. 1, IDA Nacharam Ranga Reddy District, Hyderabad-500076. Editor: Ravi Balakrishnan(Responsible for selection of news under PRB Act). © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written permission of the Publisher is prohibited.

4THE ECONOMIC TIMES MAY 17-23, 2017