Maxus India is highest awarded agency in any of our markets: Lindsay Pattison

Maxus India launched ‘Maxus Kaleidoscope’, a mood-based planning tool, earlier this month. This is Maxus India’s second initiative on behavioural mapping, the first being Moribus – first-of-its-kind behavioural sciences lab by a media agency in partnership with the Mumbai University.

The tool was launched by Lindsay Pattison, Global CEO, Maxus at a media round table held in Mumbai.

Commenting on India, Pattison said, “India is a benchmark market for us. In 2016, we are looking at a growth poised in double digits, fueled by innovation within the trinity of data, digital and content. India is one of those unique markets where traditional media and digital media are growing together. We are most excited about developments in mobile media and advertising, and have a lot to learn from this mobile-first market. Our focus in 2016 is to develop a diverse skillset that will be future ready for all our clients and brands."

In conversation with Adgully, Pattison speaks at length about how Kaleidoscope can provide an advantage to brands,

Adgully: How feasible do you think it is to base audience segmentation on something as subjective as moods and feelings?
Lindsay Pattison: We have a whole number of different tools to understand what people are saying, how they are registering emotions. Kaleidoscope is one way of us thinking about how to be smarter at understanding audience’s sentiments. It’s about demographic mapping, of placing all our segmentation, and way of understanding behaviours in a scientific way. In the social sphere it understands what people are saying, what words they are using, the social sentiments that they show, the types of emotions. This gives us an understanding of how people are feeling and how receptive they are to brand messages. This helps clients to serve creative messages that are more receptive to people’s moods. So we are in a sense thinking about the brain than just the media.

AG: But people undergo various emotions under different circumstances and at different points in time. How will Kaleidoscope gauge such variations?
LP: The whole point is that it is close to real time, what people are feeling right now at this moment. It’s all about doing it here and now and how receptive people are feeling right now.

AG: Do you also take into consideration cultural intricacies in different markets and different regions?
LP: Yes, we take into account all of these. There are so many different ways to tap these demographics, we look at past buying behaviour and consumption patterns. We use a combination of them all of the time. This is just an additional layer because in the digital world we are able to understand sentiments and emotions quickly and in a fairly accurate way and we can then serve advertising that people would be receptive to.

AG: How exactly can brands utilise this data and incorporate it into their media mix or marketing strategy?
LP: For brands that want to be active in the social-digital space we have ongoing social conversations. By understanding the sentiments we serve much more appropriate messaging, therefore there is a higher return on investment because we can make it more emphatic and have a high level of engagement. So that’s the basic premise. Moreover, for clients we can also understand on a campaign to campaign basis how people are feeling about the brand. As I said earlier, it is all about understanding human sentiments and feelings and then delivering the right messaging – be it on a continuous basis or on a campaign basis. We can make it more effective because we understand the mindset and activity of the person we are trying to talk to.

AG: You have earlier said that India is a “benchmark market” for Maxus. In what way does India become a benchmark market and how do you plan to leverage it?
LP: We are a few areas where we look to India for excellence; the first is entrepreneurial – we are continuing to invent new products, new partnerships, new ways of thinking. Kaleidoscope is part of the long list of things that we have introduced in India. We have a partnership in Bangalore; we have a product called Mesh, which is a marketing command centre; we have Synapse, which helps us understand what TV ratings do in the digital sphere in terms of search, traffic and work out technical solutions. I wish that more of our markets would do that.

The second area is creativity – Maxus India is the highest awarded agency in any of our markets, because they have a culture where when they work on a creative idea they write a case study immediately so that they can examine, understand and explain what worked in the market. Maxus India has enjoyed 6-7 years of double digit growth, so they are very focussed on growing topline and converting that into margins.

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