The time has come for agencies to go for hyper bundling: Arun Iyer

Arun Iyer, Chief Creative Officer, Lowe Lintas, speaks to AdGully on what it takes to create consistently good work, consumer engagement, hyper bundling and more. Excerpts: 

What does it take to drive consistently good work? How do you overcome the challenges for this?
It’s just a truck load of perseverance; there is nothing else to it. You just have to keep going at it and not be satisfied with the first two solutions that you come up with, because then you dig deeper and find something far greater. So that’s something we try and do quite often.

With consumer engagement becoming an important aspect of building brand connect, do you think just advertising is enough?
No, I don’t think advertisement is enough. I think the brand has to reach out to consumers in more ways than ever before, but at the same time there is a very fine line between being engaging and being intrusive. You need to know when people don’t want brands in their faces, so you should know where to draw that line. Having said that, engagement as well as creating experience are very important, hence brands have to collaborate and do it.

Do you think re-bundling of creative and media in India in the current industry scenario will work successfully?
I think so, because I feel the time has come for agencies to bundle creative and media – there is a term that we have for this, which is hyper bundling. I think in the overall market advertisers are getting quite tired of going to many, many partners and having to hold the brand together. Some of the best in the world that I respect a lot, let’s say Wieden + Kennedy, one of the key things that they do is that the media and the creative actually sit together. So I think that makes a very, very big difference.

To charge or not to charge a pitch fee – this debate has been continuing for long. Which side of the debate do you support and why?
It is a debate that has been going on for a very, very long time and I don’t think there is one clear answer, because unless we come together as an industry and take  stand, it is of no use. So I don’t think it’s an individual stance as much as it is a collective stance that we as an industry need to take and then stick to that, which is very, very tough.

MullenLowe Lintas Group has been steadily notching up metals at various awards platforms for its work. What is driving this creative?
We are very focused on the effectiveness of our campaigns and making sure that they deliver for the brand in the market – that is our single-minded agenda. And we are very clear that awards are never something that we chase. Awards are always an outcome. Because we are focused about our work and came up with the best possible solutions, that’s what I think is leading to the awards.

Going forward, what would be your key focus areas?
One of the important focus areas is to consistently deliver good work across media platforms and not necessarily only TV. It could be content for the digital world, it could be activation ideas or feedback to the content. So everything is quite interlinked. So, just consistently delivering big ideas for the brands is the key focus area.