Adgully Exclusive | On changing landscape of Advertising: Cheil Worldwide's Alok Agarwal

In an exclusive interview with Adgully, Alok Agarwal, COO, Cheil Worldwide, SW Asia, discusses the changing landscape of the advertising space and the future plans for Cheil Worldwide.

Cheil Worldwide provides focused services to a single client, Samsung. This is not so common in this space and the agency also offers a single window integrated planning and solutions across all ATL and BTL services. Some of their work for Samsung Mobile is highly acclaimed and hugely successful for the brand, especially most of the work that was done with Amir Khan. A lot of it changed the way brands use celebrities. Agarwal urges everyone to watch out for some of their clutter breaking campaigns in the near future.

Agarwal said explaining this point further, "The last 3 years I have spent at Cheil have been quite exciting. Both the agency and our brand have grown significantly. For me the most satisfying aspect is always brand success. Especially satisfying is the growth of Samsung from a less than 3% MS player to today being a close to 24% MS brand. While a lot goes into building such a massive success in a category like mobile, there has been a significant role the agency has played in building the brand at every level."

He also added, "The other gratifying accomplishment has been the growth of our talent and team over the years. Today we have some of the best in the industry and we have evolved a truly integrated team under one roof, unlike any other network. We have grown in size, manpower, our clients' success and in building a completely integrated communication network."

Talking of the challenges that exist for the agency today, Agarwal is of the opinion that the biggest challenge for them like everyone in the Industry is being prepared for the future. "In an increasingly connected world, the old paradigms of advertising have been tested to the limit over the last decade and gathering momentum by the day. We have been trained to broadcast but the consumer has moved on to multicast. Traditional media solutions are proving to be less and less efficient. Making sense of the evolving consumer and media and finding ways to engage consumers hold the key to future service offerings of agencies," he explained.

Adding on he said, "We have a process whereby we keep consumer experience and engagement at the core of our consumer understanding through the Cheil LifeShare„¢ model and apply it to the solutions we offer to brands. Our primary focus is not just limited to building mindshare but to energize our consumers into action, which we do by developing an integrated plan with a single brand strategy."

Agarwal then discussed how brands have changed their outlook to their communication and marketing strategies in the last few years. "While brands have started to look out beyond the 30 second spot, the other activities are always just "add on' and "budget dependent'. Most brands today understand the need for integrated and multi-contact communication but few do it strategically. I believe unless they start looking at brand building blocks fundamentally in a new light right at the stage when they set out to understand consumer or strategy, the results would not be significant," he said firmly.

"This is the reason why a lot of brands experiment and then go back to the old ways. After all TV is still the most important influencer to consumers and its going to remain so for some time in a country like ours. Having said this, the beginning has to be made in the way we read consumers. Most existing research techniques are designed to measure the mind ' recall, persuasion, consideration. We need to start understanding behavior and what influences it a lot better," he further explained.

According to Agarwal, creativity is what others see not what the creator thinks. A good creative idea inspires people into action. "A lot of times people confuse art with creativity. In our business, creativity has to be an effective solution to a tough problem. If people had infinite resources, they would not need creativity. Creativity is not just the prerogative of creative people. Every person in an agency needs to be creative in their own ways," he stressed.

Although today people complain about creativity going out of the business and that there is not enough good creative talent, Agarwal feels differently. "I think the situation is different. We have let the business become process and finance driven. Also the creative orientation needs to change. Creativity can no longer be limited to or measured by the next 30 second spot. Fundamentally I believe, out of all other creative led industries, advertising business still has the potential to harness creativity far better than any other. Ability to judge an idea is as important as an ability to think one. If the industry provides more freedom within and demonstrates more bravery outside, it will continue to remain a haven for top creative talent. Enough independent agencies around the world have shown this over the years," he explained in detail.

Elaborating on the new initiatives at Cheil Worldwide, Agarwal said, "Ongoing expansion of the team enhancing our integrated offerings is one thing. Implementation of the Cheil LifeShare„¢ model is the other new initiative. Building an end-to-end retail capability and Strategic implementation of effective Social Media and Mobile strategy ' going beyong a FB page or SMS burst are some of the others."

The focus at Cheil Worldwide is to build themselves as a highly competitive agency network of the future. "We are driven by Ideas Engineering in developing new age solutions for brands," Agarwal said.

On an ending note, Agarwal advises the young entrants of this space to chase growth. "If you want to be paid for fun, fame and freedom, there is no better place than an advertising agency. However I find today most youngsters want to grow without adequate learning. With the result they hit a wall pretty early in their careers. My advice would be to stick it, learn to channelize your creative energies and then chase growth. Ambition is good but not at the cost of foundation," he further emphasized upon.