Spirit W | Indian clients are bolder & ready to experiment: VML Qais' Tripti Lochan

Global digital marketing agency, VML Qais has recently entered India. It is one of WPP’s largest wholly owned pure play digital networks to have set up a full-fledged operation.
 
India is an important market for VML Qais. With half the country's population below 25 years old, it is the second fastest growing digital market in the world, the third largest Facebook market, the sixth largest Twitter market with 13m accounts, and it has the second highest base of LinkedIn users in the world. No wonder advertising fraternity views India as an innovation hub, setting trends for the future.
 
The company in India will be headed by Tripti Lochan in her capacity as VML Qais CEO for Asia. Tripti has been successfully leading teams in the Internet, wireless & direct marketing space for the last 22 years.  She has worked with brands such as Nokia, Sony, Singapore Airlines, Dell, Mahindra, Vodafone, and ICICI Bank. She has led projects involving Digital Strategy and Roadmap Creation, Web Consulting, Marketing Campaigns, large Website Builds, and defining as well as helping brands with their Brand Positioning and Strategy. 
 
Adgully caught up with Tripti to find out more about VML Qais plans and a lot of other topics. The following is the excerpts of the conversation.
 
Adgully (AG): Given the fact that economic conditions are tight what made you enter the Indian market at this juncture?
 
Tripti Lochan (TL): Whenever an economy goes through a down turn it has been our experience that digital can play a much more significant role in the mix of advertising because its measurable, it’s accountable and comparable to the investments. The investments that you have to make are of a lesser magnitude. So in that sense so far we have not seen a downturn. Even internationally when the downturn happened digital agencies were least affected than the big agencies.
 
AG: Between the two – digital advertising and mobile advertising, which do you see will emerge a leader in 2012?
 
TL: I certainly think that mobile is going to play more and more significant role in any kind of advertising. It requires a little more thinking and a little more planning then digital but is easily more understood. Especially in countries like India, mobile has to become more significant in the entire scene play. We have got 71% penetration of mobile v/s 28% in digital so obviously mobile will play a much stronger role in going forward in that sense.
 
AG: Can you mention some of the notable work that you have done?
 
TL: In 2010 we revamped Vodafone’s website for better user experience. The same strategy has been continued for Revlon where we become their digital agency for record & managing their social media. You can see its launch happening in August. ICICI is another big client of ours; we have been working on the website user experience kind of thing. These are some of our big clients.
 
AG: From the works you shared with us now you have been doing lots of small things as well for eg: you said the user experience of the ICICI customers. Most of agencies might not have even shared this?
 
TL: Actually the user experience initiative is not such a small thing and that’s the point. User experience is a science and an art and it’s a mix between a science and an art. Most experiences on the internet break down because people haven’t thought about it, haven’t been in the users shoes and haven’t thought about the journey that they could experience, how they would go from where they are to the goal they have set up. So we have an action plan to follow, to come up with these journeys and the actual plan builds around certain steps it takes into account learn plan. In the learn plan we are looking at the best practices in the world, we look at users research, consumer research and using tool like the common analysis. We come up with a road map of what will make a difference to the user, will they be delighted with your brand, and will they think in a different way to the new features that you have. A lot of brands tend to spend money on the things that are not important to the users at all. For example we were working for Changi airport in Singapore. They thought that getting SMS service of delays on your flight is a key component of what user would want to get from the airport. Turns out that from the research that it’s not true. They don’t want it. And the another brand that we worked for in Malaysia, there was 30% discrepancy of what the user wanted and what the brand thought that they wanted. That’s 30% of your budget going waste. So we did a research of what will delight the customers.
 
AG: What do you think are the three things that will give u an edge vis-a-viz the other Indian companies in this space?
 
TL: First we would be using actual research to drive any kind of strategies- that research could be social, you have seen how we have done it for Mahindra “The Rise” campaign. The second thing is using best practices globally and bringing that to clients in which ever geography we are in. And the third is really having a global perspective but local relevance. You cannot be big for the sake of being big. You bring the best of what is available but then you say how would I marry this to what’s relevant to India.
 
AG: What kind of growth you are anticipating this year?
 
TL: I can tell you that in the budget we plan to ramp up from 6 people. We are now to 20 people so before the end of the year it is quite a rapid growth. But we are very prudent we don’t want to be an agency who came set up a big shop and disappeared a next day. We want to grow with our clients and we want to make sure that we don’t pass on unnecessary overheads to the clients.
 
AG: How would you cope with the mindset of the Indian clients? Are they receptive or closed to ideas?
 
TL: You know the Indian clients are one of the best clients you can get they like to experiment. They have an initial barrier of getting through and they want to be convinced. That I can understand - you are doing something new and it’s your neck on the line. You want to be convinced that what you doing is in right direction but once Indian clients are convinced that you are the right partner then everything is smooth. Indians are phenomenal clients to have.. so ICICI Bank, Mahindra, Revlon all of these are ready to try, they are much bolder than other lots of clients
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