AgTalk | The equality of disciplines and the primacy of the idea: BBH India's Subhash Kamath
Adgully: If you could share with us some of the key milestones of your career?
Subhash Kamath: This is my 25th year in the business, and it has been a long and an exciting journey. I started my career in January 1987 with Ogilvy & Mather and Piyush Pandey was my boss, he was my Account Supervisor then while I was an Account Executive. I got to work on some fantastic accounts like Britannia, Unilever (Hindustan Lever then) and Pidilite. Those were the first three accounts that Piyush asked me to handle. O & M even in those days was a large agency and among the top three, the Mumbai office comprised of around 150 to 200 people. It was a very good learning experience and we had a lot of fun working there. We had stalwarts like Mani Iyer, Suresh Mallick, Roda Mehta etc to learn from, and the same time, they encouraged us to enjoy ourselves. And this was the career I always wanted: extremely creative and very mentally stimulating.
After three years at O & M, I had to, for personal reasons; go back to Kolkata and interestingly there was an agency called Trikaya Grey that was just starting its operations there. I got to meet Ravi Gupta who I found to be the most amazing, inspiring and brilliant advertising man I'd ever worked with. Trikaya Calcutta was a small branch then, with just four or five people, but we did some great work there together. But soon, after about a year, though I was enjoying myself I was feeling unfulfilled because Kolkata was a very small market for advertising and I was used to the fast pace of work at Mumbai. So Mr. Gupta decided to transfer me to the bigger Delhi office of Trikaya.
I must say Delhi was a fantastic experience and I was there for four years. It was a small but extremely charged up office of Trikaya, we did some great work for HCL, Bata Power and Bausch & Lomb. Nakul Chopra who was heading Delhi then eventually came back to head Mumbai and asked me to join him. So I came to Mumbai as a Client Servicing Director and worked on brands like Real Value Vacuumizer, Lakme, Gilbey's etc. Brand launches are always hard work, and I think I worked late nights all through. Amazing experience though, because I had a fabulous team to work with. Then one day, within just a year, Ravi Gupta and Chopra asked me if I would like to run my own branch. I was quite stunned because I was just 29 years old then! But I went ahead and took the challenge and headed off to take charge of the fledgling Trikaya Bangalore.
I would say this was a golden period in advertising for me. Within just three years we grew from a team of eight people to forty people and in terms of billing from Rs.3 crores we moved to Rs.38 crores. We won accounts like Volvo, Timex. MTR Foods, Britannia Cheese, Arrow, Lee and Wrigley's. Towards the end of that 4 year stint in the south, the company also asked me to look after the Chennai and Sri Lanka offices and made me the Head of Trikaya (South).
A few years later, a terrible thing happened. Ravi Gupta, our father figure, was diagnosed with cancer. And within a few months he passed away. We were all shocked and orphaned. We just couldn't believe that he was gone. Somehow, all of us came together and decided to go on and finally got the agency back into profits.
Eventually, I moved on from there to join Ambience Advertising as COO. For four years I worked there and we did some great work especially on Lakme and Parachute. Then I met the WPP leaders they wanted me to take responsibility of their newly acquired business- Bates India. So I joined Bates India as its Chief Executive Officer and this was the first time I was independently in charge of a large company. What an experience it was! We went through 3 mergers and acquisitions in just 22 months and believe me, nothing prepares you for that. At the end of it though, we grew hugely and became very profitable. And some fabulous work on Nokia, Virgin Mobile, Tata AIG etc came out. I think I really learnt the true value of leadership at Bates. After a span of fantastic four years, BBH happened. This was an agency I had admired since I was a young executive and suddenly when I got a call from them I just could not say no. Especially when there was equity involved. Two years now and we are a team of more than 50 people and with 9 to 10 big clients. It's been great going so far.
AG: Can you point out two or three people who have deeply inspired your thought process and working style?
SK: First, I'd say Piyush Pandey. The one thing that I learnt from Piyush is that inspiration comes from life. If you take a look at all of his work, he writes from the heart because he writes from his experiences in life. Second, from an overall thinking perspective, I would say Ravi Gupta because he was the one who stressed everytime on the importance of strategy. That no piece of creative, however exciting, can work without the right strategy. And lastly, I'd say Ranjan Kapur, who mentored me through my leadership years as a CEO. He's absolutely inspirational.
AG: If you could point out any of your work that made the client jubilant?
SK: Oh, there are many. I remember a nice commercial we had made for the launch of Bausch & Lomb contact lenses. In those days contact lenses were not very popular in the country and most people would wear spectacles. Moreover even the quality of contact lenses in the country was poor. The TVC was a beautiful film and was backed by a fabulous print campaign. Launch of Gilbey's Whisky was also something that I remember very vividly. I remember how we brought in Apache Indian and Anu Kapoor, two people who, through their radically different styles of singing, brought out their preference of whisky. The campaign for Britannia Cheese with the copy reading "a glass of milk in every slice of cheese" is also a campaign that I am very proud of. Then at Ambience, my favourite campaigns were the Parachute "One-hour Champi Kiya?" that did wonders for the brand, and the Yana Gupta series we did for Lakme. I also loved some of the work we did at Bates for Nokia and Virgin Mobile.
AG: Can you tell us what is the culture at BBH India like?
SK: When we started BBH India, we had an open canvas to create an agency of the future. So, we have tried to create a very different kind of structure. We have a flat structure with just two designations, one is Managing Partner and the other is Brand Partner. So we have tried to break the walls and our process is not sequential or linear, we tend to bring all our brand partners and creative thinkers around the problem of a client. What distinguishes BBH India from other agencies is what we call "the equality of disciplines and the primacy of the idea." Which is why even our management group is structured that way. We are not driven so much by the top-line as much as the quality of the work. So we prefer to work with fewer clients and work more closely with them. We often never present creative work at pitches as a policy. Ninety nine percent of the work presented at pitches never sees the light of day. We believe in presenting solutions and an idea that can solve a client's brand problem. In addition, we also do a lot of brand consulting, rather than just advertising work. It's a very different business model, which is not driven by size of the agency, but the size of the reputation based on work.
AG: How has the creative space evolved ever since you began your career?
SK: The Industry has evolved a lot over the years. When I first joined, it was predominantly a very English speaking culture in advertising. Most copywriters wrote in English and the language part was often given to translators. That dependence on the English language has disappeared in the last fifteen years as heralded by ad-men like Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi. Also as India was evolving as a nation we became more proud of who we are and what we stand for. More and more people started thinking in their own language and came up with more evocative ideas. The other thing is that technology has changed a lot of things. What takes the West 10 years to create, it just takes us a few months to import it. There is also more focus on strategy now and a strategy is best when it is invisible. The final creative expression is what a consumer buys into but strategy is what helps you create that final transaction.
I think there is a lot of young talent that has come into the business which is a huge advantage and also a disadvantage. The advantage is that there is an energy that they get into an organisation and the disadvantage is that the generation is a very impatient generation. So what has happened is that there have been too many promotions and a youngster end up getting a role or a responsibility which is far bigger then he/she can handle.
The biggest change that happened is the separation of the creative and the media function. The good thing is that the media companies are able to invest in media research, optimization tools, media services, thinking and planning. The disadvantage of the separation has been that I miss their role within the creative organisation, earlier media used to influence the creative work in a bigger way. I think we should look at integrating it because in a digital world the medium itself can be an idea. We as an industry have lost a lot of good talent to marketing, to retail, to television and entertainment. It has also been very exciting to see creative shops mushrooming like TapRoot India, Creative Land Asia, Scarecrow etc.
AG: What growth-path have you charted for the agency?
SK: We have a very clearly laid down three year plan, and this is our third year. After which, we have a plan for next three years. We want to grow in the right way, and we are not worried about geographic presence. We do not intend to open up branches in a conventional way because nowadays, technology is a big enabler when it comes to handling clients across the country. We are also very open to working in a collaborative fashion with partners outside. We are looking at bringing in some exciting young talent for the digital part of our business. So there will be a core group of people within the system who will be very strong in digital thinking and parallel to that we are also looking at creating a whole panel of partners.
AG: Any message for young talent¦
SK: My only advice to them is that this is possibly the most exciting time to be in advertising because now is the time when the very definition of advertising is changing. It is changing to something at which younger people are better poised to deliver than the seniors in the field. However what it does require is passion, dedication and determination. So join this business only if you can think of it as a long-term career and not just a job. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]
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