If you are on Dr. Shirodkar Road in Parel, Mumbai, it is not tough finding the two storey office of one of the most awarded advertising agencies in the country, Leo Burnett. The office’s facade may not strike you as particularly impressive but the name of the building does – ‘Big Apple’. That might seem a bit quaint and a puzzling moniker for an office building but not to those familiar with the agency’s history and heritage. With the name still playing on my mind I walk into the building and head for that part which is occupied by Arvind Sharma, Chairman of India Subcontinent, Leo Burnett. Among the many workplace paraphernalia what catches my eye is the large dummy of a big, red-coloured apple on the center table in his office. Barely managing to conceal my curiosity I settle down to talk and as we exchange our business cards I am once again struck by the design creativity of the card in my hands. It has Sharma’s signature in a pencil mark with the print of a black pencil embossed under it.
Sensing my wonderment at the symbolism of it all, Sharma proceeds to give a brief lowdown on the history of Leo Burnett. The agency was started in 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, by its iconic founder Leo Burnett, who was also named as one of the 100 most powerful persons of the 20th century by TIME magazine. When the first office opened on Madison Avenue, Chicago, people said that there will be no business and founder Burnett will soon have to sell apples on the streets. “A highly determined Burnett took this as a challenge and put a bowl of apples at the reception. Even today, apples are a de rigueur at any Leo Burnett office worldwide and stand as a symbol of the global success and hospitality of the agency,” explains Sharma. About the business card, he says, “the big, black pencils symbolize creativity and fresh thinking that we at Leo Burnett highly value.”
With creativity as its guiding gospel, the offices of Leo Burnett – over 97 in 84 countries around the world – are marked by the conspicuous absence of walls and doors. The layout is emblematic of the culture of openness and free flow of ideas within the organisation. Thanks to this stellar tradition of promoting creativity and heterodoxy, the Leo Burnett network – owned by the Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s three largest advertising holding companies (the others being Omnicom, and WPP) – has more number of offices that are No.1 in their markets for creativity and effectiveness than any other advertising network. In India, Leo Burnett operates through close to 500 passionate brand-builders working in four offices across the country – Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai – who offer services in advertising, direct marketing, CRM, interactive marketing, promotional marketing, retail, shopper marketing and POP-related services.
Leo Burnett’s focus on creativity cannot be overstated given that the agency is wedded to the creative success of its clients to fuel its own growth. “The more creative successes our clients will enjoy, the more they will come to us with work and that will help us grow,” says Sharma. He and his team have not only helped to establish Leo Burnett among the top five advertising agencies in India but have also created an agency that wholeheartedly follows the tenets and ideals of its founder. Founder Leo Burnett always believed, “The work of an ad agency is to warmly and immediately humanize deals with human needs.” He stressed on the importance of understanding the people behind the consumers in order to create great, relevant advertising, leading to the company’s ‘Humankind Approach’. According to this approach, an agency should put a brand’s purpose at the center of communications to truly connect with people. Understanding people is the key to creating acts, not ads, that can impact consumer behaviour. Hence the Leo Burnett philosophy that “Insightful creativity has the power to change human behavior” is based on ‘Humankind’ where the filters of creativity are human insights.
In deference to this philosophy all of Leo Burnett’s creative focus is aimed toward fostering a culture committed to understanding human behavior and clients’ businesses – and creating ideas that capture the intersection of both people’s and brands’ needs. This approach, of churning out new and compelling ideas rooted in human understanding and behaviour, has helped Leo Burnett to establish itself among the top five advertising agencies in India in a short span of time. Though it was only in 2000 that Leo Burnett acquired a 100% stake in ‘Chaitra-Leo Burnett’, the joint venture that was its vehicle for entry into India in 1992, the agency has been able to bag several global accounts such as Coca-Cola, Fiat, Heinz, Kellogg, Pillsbury, Hallmark and Toyota and prestigious local accounts such as Bajaj Auto, Dabur, Godrej, Pfzier, Thums Up and many more to its kitty.
On the agenda of Leo Burnett India is to continue growing at twice or thrice the rate of the market and become the no.1 creative agency in the country. While the Rs.30,000 crore advertising industry in India is growing at 5%, Leo Burnett has been clocking 12 to 13% of growth. But the kind of growth that the agency is looking at is qualitative, which will help it to prepare for the future. As most of this growth will come from new and non-traditional areas, it will demand the kind of work and communication that is very different from the past. “We will need to produce communication and content that is very different, that connects to people in a fresh, new way, and leverages technology,” says K. V. Sridhar aka “Pops”, Chief Creative Officer, India Subcontinent at Leo Burnett. To be able to meet the emerging demand, the agency has over the past couple of years built a very significant activation and events business that now contributes over 30% of the agency’s turnover. With non-traditional media growing faster than traditional media, clients are spending more on marketing activities such as digital communications, ground activation and events that give a better return on their investments. Over the next couple of years the split between below-the-line advertising (BTL) and ATL (above-the-line advertising) is expected to widen further and tilt the balance in favour of BTL. Already, the ratio of ATL to BTL stands at 49:51 currently but in countries like the US, BTL scores between 75 and 80 in some categories. Moreover, in a scenario where the advertising landscape is marked by high clutter and a fragmented media environment, advertisers are allocating more money to consumer contact initiatives rather than mass media advertising in order to connect better with customers.
So while TVCs will remain its forte, Leo Burnett has sharpened its focus in the areas of activation and events besides also working towards developing its business in the digital and retail space. Last year, it acquired the full-service interactive and technology agency Indigo Consulting as part of its broader plan to make digital Leo Burnett’s core strategy. Over the next two to three years, agencies believe that digital will become central to marketing plans as TV and print are today. It is apparent that in the future brands will need to be ‘always on’ on the digital medium. To make sure that it has the right infrastructure in place to meet the needs of tomorrow and to synergise the media, Leo Burnett acquired Indigo. Currently advertising and marketing online represents less than 3% of the overall ad spend in India but the sector is expected to boom, according to ZenithOptimedia. The agency estimates that over the next three years, India’s digital ad spend will increase by roughly 30% a year, driven by the spread of smartphones and the youth culture of social networks.
But whatever the medium or channel of communication building powerful brands is something that Leo Burnett has kept doing with great success, be it making Glucon-D the most trusted brand in its category, making Thums Up the most successful cola brand in India, or partnering Tide in its journey to overtake Rin. “I strongly believe that an agency is only as good as the work it produces. My focus has and always will be the power of the work that we create, and its capability to connect strongly with local consumers,” avers Sridhar. “My key focus, therefore, is to maintain this standard and take it to the next level,” he adds. Apart from producing traditional TVCs that convey the brand’s message in a powerful way, the agency is also now deeply involved in creating communication that is markedly different and new-age. The branded content and entertainment work that Leo Burnett has done for Coke Studio and Sony are good instances of the kind of communication that is typically tailor-made for today’s digital age.
To keep pace with the way the world of communication is changing, the agency has chosen to go down the path of specialization and integration. With pressure mounting on agencies to become stronger partners in reaching advertisers’ marketing and sales goals, agencies have undergone their own reengineering, adapting to the environment in which they operate and to the clients they serve. In the process not only have agencies changed their operating structures, but many have also gone ahead and gobbled up specialty firms in areas such as health care, online, mail-order, interactive, and promotions in the bid to become fully integrated providers of communication services. “Though all our growth in the advertising field will be done organically, for our new ventures we are considering acquisitions. We have identified public relations, digital and Internet as interesting areas where we would be ramping up our presence through acquisitions,” says Sharma. Leo Burnett already operates in the media buying, film promotion and ground promotion spaces through Starcom media, Leo Entertainment and Leo Activation. Besides these, advertising agency Orchard also falls under the Leo Burnett banner.
Taking measures to spot and exploit market opportunities and shifting trends reflects only a part of the transformation that Leo Burnett is taking to prepare for the future. The agency has also been quick on the feet in fulfilling the growing needs of new clients and calibrating its responses to the many transitions in the way marketers approach their agencies. From TV advertising as the core of marketing plans and specialist services bought from smaller independent shops, Indian clients have become much smarter and much more proactive. They are now looking for different innovative solutions for approaching advertising suited to the rapidly changing environment. They are demanding advertising platforms which will be helpful to integrate their brand communications across channels as diverse as traditional media, digital and modern retail. “This transformation is extremely challenging as well as exciting. Changing our core while growing fast requires foresight, meticulous planning and its relentless execution,” says Sharma. With the client-agency relationship changing to a great extent over the last few years, clients are now equally concerned about the short-term benefits of their association with the agency. Amidst the growing competition many clients are searching for tailor made solutions to their needs, which can make space for them in the cluttered marketplace. These clients demand offbeat strategies which are reached at after analyzing the insights from ground research and supported by robust logic.
In such a demanding and changing environment, many agencies find it difficult to hold on to their clients. “We have remained successful in retaining almost all key clients as our partners. This requires a lot of understanding, continuous communication and efforts at driving synergy”, points out Sharma. He is absolutely right when he refers to the special efforts that agencies have to make to keep clients happy. These clients do not accept anything thrown at them by the agency but rather use many quantitative tools to analyze the cost-benefit relationship of such solutions. One such client of Leo Burnett India is McDonald’s, which has completely redesigned its ad campaign in the last few years to convey its message of affordability. And thanks to the power and impact of the campaign that was designed by Leo Burnett, McDonald’s has been very successful in grabbing the eye balls of its target audience, i.e. youngsters and the middle income group.
Apart from McDonald’s, Leo Burnett’s powerful campaigns have also helped turn around other brands – Bajaj motorcycles, Thums Up, Coca-Cola being some of the best known examples. Among its most memorable and insightful campaigns are those for Complan, Glucon D, Thums Up, Maaza, Perfetti, Tide, Whisper, Samsung, Uninor, Tata Capital, Tata Salt, HDFC Life Insurance, General Motor, and Bacardi among others. People at Leo Burnett believe that they are in the business of ideas and storytelling. “Some of the memorable stories that I have been part of are KBC’s Koi bhi sawaal chhota nahi hota and Koi bhi insaan chhota nahi hota, Tide’s New Pinch, Reliance Mobile’s Bol India Bol, Apun ka Sapna and Ye India ka cricket hai Bhidu, HDFC Life’s Singapore and Car badi ho gayi aur beti bhi, Creamfills Alpenliebe’s Papa office mein, Chocoliebe’s Broken Arm, McDonald’s Boyfriend Girlfriend and Romantic Walk… to name a few,” says Nitesh Tiwari, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett India. With such high quality work to show for, Leo Burnett India has gone on to win several International and National awards year on year. It became the only Indian agency to win a metal at New York Festival’s International Advertising Awards 2013. The agency was awarded a Bronze World Medal for its campaign Ink Pad for Door Step School under the Direct and Collateral category. At the prestigious Goa ADFEST 2013, the agency won seven gold medals, the highest number for any agency this year. Besides these accolades, Leo Burnett has also been declared the ‘Global Agency of the Year’, across Burnett’s 86-nation network twice.
But creativity and continuous march into new business areas are not the only key elements to Leo Burnett’s glorious success. “The most essential key to our success is our culture. I love to call it Leo Burnett’s culture, says Tiwari. The culture at Leo Burnett India is geared toward the generation of new ideas and new ways of thinking and the agency is famous for going to great lengths to keep alive its “ideas” culture. Apart from bringing together the right collection of talent, the agency has perfected the art of psychometric testing to recruit and select exceptionally ideas-fluent people. “We are perhaps the only agency that trains its people formally in ideas management,” says Sharma, who attributes his agency’s stellar growth to the huge changes in how it goes about creating the work. “It isn’t about creating silos, but understanding that brands are going to be built differently.”
So over the years, there are two things that Leo Burnett has done very clearly. To equip itself to face the challenges brought about by the rapid advances in technology, changes in the way we communicate and in responding to the needs of a younger consuming class, the agency has gone about tapping the power of youth. “The Indian consuming class is demographically only getting younger, and agencies who get this target audience right, will ultimately win in the Indian market,” believes Sridhar. No wonder, the agency has invested a lot of time, effort and money in gathering information on the youth of the country, which is why Sridhar proudly announces: “We can say that we understand Indian youth better than anybody else.” At the same time the agency has empowered its own younger generation and reduced the portfolio of brands they handle so they can partner with the client and tell the story across channels. In fact, Sridhar stresses time and again the essence of having youthful exuberance as “nothing succeeds in advertising except for your child like enthusiasm”.
To keep that enthusiasm alive and kicking, the agency also takes great pains in bringing its people together in a fresh way of working and revamping its approach to work, without comprising on its rich culture. In doing so the agency has laid the template for a new generation and the next chapter of its India story. “We are very serious about our work and at the same time we are very serious about our fun. These two aspects develop the sense of belonging and passion in the people which goes a long way in ensuring that the quality of work is very high,” says Tiwary. That the agency is equally committed to ensuring the fun factor in the work environment gets confirmed when you see the premises in the after-hours. It is very hard to recognize that you were at the very same place sometime back. The multi-gym in the basement doubles up for workouts and chit-chat and the workstations change to party stalls. Come Friday evening and the party fever goes many notches higher and the mood turns distinctly merry. It is these light moments and care-free interludes that help keep the creative climate of the place cranked up at all times and makes the agency and its admen tick.
It is thanks to such innovative initiatives that Leo Burnett crossed a turnover of Rs.35 billion by the end of FY13. And despite all the concerns of an economic slowdown, the agency is expected to continue growing in double digits over the next three years, which will be more than the 7% jump expected in the Indian ad spend in this period. Overall, the agency honchos are absolutely bullish on the future. They have done everything from foraying into new business areas to getting their client relationships right and from ensuring the right training and mentoring environment for their employees to leaving their distinct creative stamp on the campaigns they have signed off on. And given their track record so far, there is no reason for the agency not to become the ‘Big Apple’ of marketers’ eye.
