We need to learn from our own data & work: Kiran Khalap

If the ad-land boast of creativity, brand consulting, industry experts suggest an equally important executive step of businesses today. Today, we learn that brand consulting has walked beyond mere brand solutions to helping the larger corporate brands scale up on minds on consumer.

Chlorophyll is one name that has grown over to be touted as a sort after dependable destinations for end-to-end brand consulting across categories. Adgully caught up with Kiran Khalap, Founder of Chlorophyll to know more about the business, strategies at Chlorophyll and more.

Adgully (AG): In the constantly changing ad-land space, being a standalone agency isn't an easy task. How did you at Chlorophyll manage to carry business for 15 years now?
Kiran Khalap (KK): To begin with, we did not hold any high and incorrect projections and to be honest, we did not do any competition study as well. When we started, it was with a thought that while there are advertisers, public relations officials, designers, we would bring in the new species of brand consulting in the business. While we knew that international brand consulting business models wouldn't work for India and it's clients demands, we devised them ourselves and have seen the success with large brands like Marico, Pepsi etc.; thus realising that indigenous and customized solutions is one thing that brands in India would prefer. Secondly, I believe another reason for success is the rate of adoption to the ever changing technological scenario. There was a time we learnt how tk right an email address from someone senior in the industry, but today, websites (our projects) created by us are winning accolades. Hence today our team at Chlorophyll is highly active on the social media to keep up pace with the changing world.

AG: Please elaborate on your statement that international brand consulting business models do not work India.
KK: It is very simple. Almost 90% of these models are devised for existing brands. Brands is essentially an association which a consumer may have with a product/service manufacturer / provider. But this association stands null when a new brand is launched. Hence new models have to be devised as per requirements of the consumers and geographies.

AG: The client portfolio at Chlorophyll is spread across categories and has some bigs brands to its credit. Point out a few things of these brands that influence the services you offer.
KK: There have been times when we happpend to use the same principles for different brands. Our first policy is that first a brand must be identified inside-out and then validated outside-in. With the different categories that we have worked for, be it NGO like CRY or lifestyle like Eternal Mewad, or most interestingly Nandan Neilekani, we r now putting in place, the experiences and learning from each brand and category and applying it on other brands in the same category.

AG: How do you think is the growing dependence of the media and advertising industry on technology, changing the we the business work- influencing a client's wish-list and the expected manner in which  Chlorophyll as a brand consultant would work?
KK: Honestly, the fundamental notion of the 20th century that a brand is build on communication needs to be done away with. As per an industry research, every year, the number of people who trust other people has been increasing gradually. This is highly counted as it directly influences a brands image and sales; which is seen social media platfw where one negative comment might take away a consumer from your brand. Thus this fundamental shift infers that there is no point in spending millions on television advertising while social Media has already informed and an influenced the new age consumer. Let me cite you an example: A couple of years back the Chairman of Lipton Tea took to Facebook to trigger  consumers to buy the product as the company will cease its manufacturing and sales in the coming months. This clearly shows that the acts of the corporate brand is directly influencing the product brand.

AG: Taking cue from you point, today we have witnessed how corporate brand have grown over to become more important than the product (brand). Share your take on this.
KK: Firstly, most product brands have now become service brands wherein, the manufacturer has to also offer you before and after sale service so that you use their product. Secondly, once a service brand, humans turn out to be the most important things over machinery and finance. Therefore, company's today have began focusing on the culture they offer as that would influence the way people would work for the company.

AG: With the growing e-commerce business in India, how do you think brands in that space are evolving?
KK: I believe e-commerce is moving too fast for anyone to understand which site is better than the other. While almost all players are doing the same thing, the question of brand trust is something that even we are working on yet. Players in this business need to understand that if there is a gap between what they promise and what they offer, it could eventually kill the brand.

AG: How would you compare brand consulting internationally and in India?
KK: For me, it's more about 'best practices or next practices'. I would say that they are way ahead of us as far as keeping data and learning from it is concerned; we need to learn it. While we are on power in understanding brands and consumers, we lack behind in learning from our own material.

Khalap started out as a schoolteacher at J Krishnamurti Foundation experimental residential schools (in Banaras) before moving into advertising in 1983. He started his career in advertising in 1983, as a trainee copywriter in Lintas (now Lowe). He then became the youngest Creative Director in Lintas, then joined Clarion Advertising (1991), became its national creative director, and ended up, in 1997, as its first ever Chief Executive Officer and Chief Creative Officer.

In 1999, he co-founded Chlorophyll with Anand Halve with an aim to set up India’s first end-to-end brand consultancy.