Adgully Exclusive | There is a need for a strategy boutiques: Marketing Unplugged's Suman Srivastava

Suman Srivastava is a name that is very well known across the 30 second space of advertising for his rare understanding and need to be strategy driven. Post resigning as CEO of Euro RSCG, Suman Srivastava has got together with Saad Khan, Saloni Singh and Glen Flaherty to start a new venture, a marketing consultancy called Marketing Unplugged. All four have termed themselves as Founders and Innovation Artists for Marketing Unplugged.

The consultancy, which commenced operations on April 4, 2011, already has six clients under its belt.

Speaking to Adgully about his decision to start on with his own venture, Srivastava says, "I actually planned it for quite sometime, so this was not something that was a spontaneous call. Sometime fairly early in 2010 I decided that I must move on. Frankly I had always been a reluctant CEO, but I took up the role with all my seriousness. However I could not see myself doing the same work for 10 more years and I wanted to head back into the planning mode. Moreover I very strongly feel that there is room for a strategy based offering. As much as there is a need for creative boutiques there is a need for a strategy boutique."

He further adds, "I see that both at the agency end and the client end that there is a bit of a need gap. My move to start out with Marketing Unplugged was well planned and there was lot of thought I put into this decision of mine. I had registered the company's domain name as early as in April 2010."

Talking about his new venture, Srivastava says, "We are an innovation company and our core offering is innovation. And innovation is something which every brand category needs today. I believe that marketing is a wannabe science because one can put all the processes in place and yet the outcome can often be not the obvious one. There are certainly new theories of marketing that have come up in the last ten years which have not been sufficiently used by our clients. So we are trying to explore these new age solutions and get the clients introduced to them."

However he further acknowledges that the biggest challenge is that a strategy is always an idea and invariably the client has always got strategy for free. "So to build on the importance and value of this idea is a key problem. But again we are not vying at just providing a strategy but we are looking at providing an innovative strategy. Moreover we have made it very clear to our clients that we will be charging them on the basis of the outcome of a strategy," he adds.

So while it's too early to ask the leader to sketch out the plan, the positive vibe certainly conveys that the team at Marketing Unplugged is here to cause the necessary "disruption'.

While signing off Srivastava says, "We are looking at clients who have ambitious goals and are worried about reaching them, because they are the ones who are in dire need of an innovative approach."

The founding members of Marketing Unplugged have considerable experience in the advertising industry. Srivastava was CEO of Euro RSCG India for five years, besides being the Chief Strategy Officer for Euro RSCG Asia Pacific. He had also been Chairman of Euro RSCG's emerging markets planning council and was a member of the global management committee as well.

Glen Flaherty, who is slated to join the team in India in October this year, is a professional strategist who has operated at the most senior levels with a range of global network agencies ' variously holding positions as Chief Strategy Officer for Innocean Worldwide, Strategy Director Global Brands for Euro RSCG Worldwide, Global Planning Director BBDO Worldwide, and Global Planning Director for Grey Worldwide.

Saad Khan is back from a two-year sabbatical, which he utilised by teaching at business schools and running an anonymous brand consultancy. He has spent 12 years at Leo Burnett, Lowe, Dentsu and Euro RSCG, on brands like Coca-Cola, Wills Lifestyle, Honda, Jack Daniel's, Voltas, Volvo and Reckitt Benckiser.

Saloni Singh has had a successful career across various fields from Human Resources and Finance (at American Express) to Planning and Strategy (at Euro RSCG and Lowe). Her last job was as Brand Planning Director, Family and Healthy Brands at Lowe Lintas. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]