The Battle To Own Digital In India

I was at the Effies the other night, and something struck me hard.

We, Jack In The Box Worldwide, were the only digital agency shortlisted in the category Digital Advertising.

We got a bronze. But the golds went to Ogilvy and Taproot.

It's time those who claim that mainline agencies don't 'get' digital shut up and take a long, hard look at the awards tallies.

Image Courtesy: rotane.deviantart.com

At the Abbys, Ogilvy's Fox Crime campaign swept the Digital Grand Prix. The same story was just repeated at the Effies last Tuesday.

And media agencies, the third wheel of our growing ecosystem, were nowhere to be seen.


Let's face it - at both of India's premier award shows, where digital agencies and mainline agencies compete in the same field, the mainline agencies have come out ahead. 

They may not have won as many awards as the digital and media agencies but they have won the top prize twice in a row now.

The disparity in the number of medals can be explained by the fact that mainline shops get much fewer digital briefs than digital and media agencies.

In fact, the only place you'll find digital and media agencies competing and winning are at specialist digital award shows - Campaign India's Digital Awards, the IDMA, etc.

But, and not very quietly either, mainline agencies have been working to catch up and get past the competition.

Lowe, as Joseph George announced in a recent interview, is working to 'mainline' digital.

Ogilvy presents and executes an integrated campaign for almost every brief.

JWT has, under Bobby Pawar and Max Hegermann, set up a very capable pan-India digital team.

Leo Burnett's Creative Directors are, in their own words, asked to crack the digital idea before the TVC.

BBH is competing with their clients' digital agencies, pitching digital ideas along with their mainline campaigns.

BBDO has integrated so closely with Proximity that the latter even pitches (and executes) TVCs, on occasion.

It won't be long before they're winning digital duties, either as part of an integrated package, or stand-alone.

They have the clients, they have the money to hire good digital people, and they can play the long game more easily than small digital shops. 

They also have better creative folk than media agencies, whose key business is in the planning and buying of media space, not creative solutions.

And which client wouldn't want to give their business to a place that has proven their understanding of the brand time and time again, and shows that they can do it in digital as well?

Us digital folk are fighting a battle we haven't fully realised we're in. And we have two options in front of us now.

One: Sell out. Every network agency is shopping for digital agencies in India. There are at least two digital shops I know of in serious talks, and another that has already been stealthily acquired. Integrate with the network agency and play in a larger field, quicker than you would've otherwise.

Two: The option former Campaign India editor Anant Rangaswami suggests in his tour de force, The Elephants In The Room. Hire people who 'get' brands, across servicing and creative. Show clients that digital agencies can act as brand custodians too. And once you've consolidated your digital business, start attacking the mainline agencies by pitching for their mainline business.

What started off as a niche industry has become a full-blown battleground. It's the Jedi versus the Sith, and it's unclear, as of now, who's going to emerge the winner.

The Future Of Web Design

On 26 October 2012, the digital world changed forever.

That day, Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 to the world. A revolutionary reimagining of the world's bestselling OS, one which blurred the lines between the computer and the tablet.

We've known for some months now that it was coming. And I've believed for some months now that Windows 8 heralds a complete reimagining of web design principles.

More and more, people are accessing the web using their mobile and tablets. Most of which are touchscreen devices. We've seen the stats for other websites we've built and maintain, and the ComScore reports too.

Microsoft realises this. That's why they've built an OS that supports touch gestures on laptop and tablet screens as well as laptop trackpads.

Yet, websites continue to be designed for the point-and-click generation. They're "optimised" for the mobile, and display on a tablet as they would on a PC.

But is that the same as "designed for touch"?

I would think that if a site were designed for touch, it wouldn't have tiny hyperlinks you can't put your finger on.

It wouldn't force you to pinch-zoom to select text or a link.

It wouldn't have plugins that don't work on tablets and mobile phones.

It wouldn't make you touch-and-drag the site around so you could see what's hidden in the margins.

There's clearly a big difference between "works for touch" and "designed for touch". 

The strange part is, the same publishers design mobile and tablet apps that are absolutely gorgeous and work the way a touchscreen user would want them too.

So why should the touchscreen experience on a website be anything less than gorgeous? Or different from the experience on a computer?

I believe that it's up to publishers and digital marketers to drive a change. A new language of web design for the touchscreen generation.

A few days ago, we at Jack In The Box Worldwide took a small step towards that change. With the launch of the all-new Louis Philippe website, designed using HTML5, jQuery, JavaScript and CSS. A site born from the belief that web design needs to keep up with changing technology and user behaviour.

When we were designing the site, we threw all standard website references out of the window. And immersed ourselves in the world of mobile and tablet apps. 

Every element on the page, the way the wireframe has been planned, has been adopted, from tablet apps. As have all the little usability cues.

The site is responsive. It smartly resizes to fit any screen. Or any orientation.

There are no tiny text hyperlinks. Only buttons you can press comfortably with a finger or a thumb. 

On a touchscreen device - tablets, mobile phones, Windows 8 hybrids - you navigate with swipes. Swiping horizontally lets you navigate between sections; swiping vertically lets you explore a section further.

We wanted to keep the user experience consistent across devices. So you can also swipe through the site using the trackpad on your Win8 and Apple laptops, which support multitouch gestures. An aspect that should build familiarity through consistency and sheer novelty.

We haven't sacrificed basic usability, however. You can also navigate by clicking through the links. Or using the arrow keys.

We learnt a lot about touch UI while working on the site. Every few days, we'd have to get together to solve a design or usability issue that popped up while developing. There are still features we need to add and problems we need to solve. That's why we're still iterating, and will be constantly trying new ways to solve old problems.

It'd be interesting to apply this thinking to other websites - like news media, for example, or e-commerce. Each of those will have their own problems, and we'll have to find new, interesting ways to solve them.

A first step...and in my mind, a necessary one.

Confession And Inspiration

Advertising is supposed to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

But somewhere down the line, you tend to forget exactly how much fun it can be.

It begins when you allow yourself to get sucked into the quagmire of briefs, deadlines and client issues. Before you know it, the term "fuck-all" has become a part of your daily lingo.

"This is a fuck-all brief!"

"How can I crack a great idea with this fuck-all deadline?"

"What a fuck-all client! He just doesn't get it!"

The attitude you develop in your formative years is the attitude you take with you into your middle years. 

At some point, you realise that your Creative Director is being paid a lot of money. And you start thirsting to reach that same level. The journey is forgotten - all you think about is the end destination. You lose the Zen, the ability to focus on the here and now, and life suddenly becomes about hitting a target. And whining when someone hits that target before you do.

Along the way, the nature of your work changes. Gone is the edginess, gone is the humour, gone is the youth. You end up trying to play Creative Director when you're not ready to yet. You may not notice. But your bosses do. And in that process, all you do is push that end goal further and further away.

The time comes when you manage to put out a significant piece - or pieces - of work. Or you take a path less travelled. A couple of jobs later, you're where you wanted to be. The designation. The salary. The cabin overlooking the sea. A bunch of bright young people reporting in to you. And the ego boost to go with all this.

Then you find yourself in a rut again. Caught up in "senior management" things. Targets. Results. Client relationships. Processes. Evaluation. Playing mentor. Board meetings. Visions and missions. The whining begins. Again.

Slowly, it begins to feel that your job profile is, very simply, to deal with shit.

Where's the fun in that?

Sound familiar?

A few days ago, I finished reading Dave Trott's Creative Mischief.

Creative Mischief. Available on the Kindle store: http://amzn.to/NrBh2p

Dave Trott is one of those names you've seen in the award books fairly often. A former CD at BMP, he's now at CST The Gate, a London-based agency with a global presence.

Creative Mischief isn't the best primer on advertising there is. But it is by far the best primer on the attitude you need in the advertising business.

It's exactly what you need when you're feeling mentally jaded at any point in this exciting, fun, dirty, all-consuming, incestuous, joyful, overworked, underpaid, vain, glorious industry of ours.

It's certainly reminded me of the mindset I had when I joined Lowe fresh out of college. It's made me think, once again, of how much fun this business can be. It's made me want to feel the fun again. No matter how long it takes. No matter what stands in my way.

It's made me write this blog post. And, for the first time, write on this blog as the Creative Head of Jack In The Box Worldwide.

To all those young men and women in my team, I say this:

Find the fun in your job.

The fun isn't about joking with your teammates and colleagues, or downing a beer with the boss on the terrace. It's about the fun of coming up with an idea - under extreme stress, for a tough client, without a clear brief - that'll solve a business problem. A headline that'll make people laugh or cry. A web design that you'll be proud to show off to your mom. The process is fun. The idea is fun. The joy is infectious. You just have to want it to be.

If you can't find the fun in your job, maybe this isn't the job for you. Maybe you'll be happier doing a similar job in another agency. Maybe your fortune isn't in advertising. In either case, I will be very sorry to see you leave. But I will be the first to encourage you to find something that makes you truly happy.

Don't crib. About deadlines or briefs or clients. Look at it this way. Somebody out there is giving you the license to get creative by developing a campaign for their brand. Without them asking, you'd never have gotten the chance to show off your creativity. Yes, you need time and clarity to create the work, you need support to sell the work. But remember: the shit will always be there. It will only increase as you grow up. Whining won't clean it up.

Don't get bogged down by rules and restrictions. Yes, your work will always need to be on-brief and on-brand. You can't do a sob story for Happydent. Or an adult joke for Surf. But ask yourself, "What are the boundaries and how far can I push them today?" If your idea isn't doing that, push harder. Boundaries only expand when you push them. If you don't, they'll close in and strangle you.

Don't knock the mundane processes. Job lists and job status meetings exist to make relatively unimportant tasks mindless and easy. Every ounce of your attention should be devoted to one thing and one thing only - pushing that boundary to create the best work you can. Work that solves the problem and makes you happy. Make the job list the mundane, not the job.

I could go on, but I'd rather advise you to buy Dave's book. It's the best $9.99 you could spend. 

Happy people = happy work = happy clients = happy people.

We all have big dreams. For ourselves. For our company. And we can only achieve them if we're happy while achieving them.

And if I seem to be forgetting these thoughts at any point in time, you have my express permission to whack me over the head and remind me of them.

Let's do this.

#TomatoGate: How Twitter Got A Restaurant To Change Their Business Practices

The Story
It all began on Saturday, 5th May, when my wife, a friend and I decided to drop in at Burgs, a gourmet burger restaurant in Bandra. 


In a nutshell, they refused to remove the tomato slice from my burger, stating that it was against their company policy. 


Feeling rather angry, I wrote a blog post about my experience on Sunday, 6th May, and put it up here for all the world to see. I urge you to read that story before continuing to read this post.


How It Spread
I was so angry that I didn't want to just vent through a blog post. I wanted to make sure that everybody who googled up Burgs saw my review of the place. I spent an hour posting my review to websites like MumbaiBoss, Zomato and Burrp, as well as foodie blogs like The Big Bhookad.


Around the same time, I picked up on Burgs' Twitter account, and reached out to them as well. My wife, sitting next to me, started scrolling through @BurgsIndia - and was shocked to see that their attitude existed on their Twitter account as well. Here's a selection of their tweets.


That's about when some folks on Twitter picked up on my story, and started tweeting back. Here's how it unfolded.














A glance at their Twitter profiles will tell you that these guys are popular, influential on (and off) Twitter, and have possibly been rubbed the wrong way by Burgs. The reply from Burgs was the last straw.

Within the hour, most of Twitter had started chucking virtual tomatoes at Burgs. They flayed Burgs alive for not customising my burger and for their couldn't-give-a-fuck attitude. And  also started cracking tomato jokes all around. The Tomato Tweeters included stand-up comics like Tanmay Bhat and Rohan Joshi, journos like Ashish Shakya, foodies like Adarsh Munjal, Sahil K and Aneesh Bhasin, fashionistas like Latha Sunadh, and the ones who'd started it all off - Nik, Rahul Chawra, Mithun K, Roopak Saluja, Roycin D'Souza, Ranjit, One Black Coffee, et al.


Soon enough, 'tomato' was trending on Trendsmap Mumbai. And if Satyameva Jayate hadn't hogged the Trending Topics pane on Twitter, 'tomato' would've been up there for sure.


It got better. Somebody went and created the official Twitter account of the tomato in the burger.


Finally, Burgs India responded. Announced that tomatoes were now  optional. Put it up on their Twitter bio even.

But even then, the attitude persisted. And the Tomato Tweeple picked up on it.



Finally, around evening, the story died down. And Burgs could breathe a sigh of relief.


Why #TomatoGate Went Viral
Two reasons, in my opinion.


One: Who hasn't been at the receiving end of poor service from restaurants (and other service businesses)? We hear stories from friends and acquaintances about their experiences every day. My story was no different - but it was completely relatable. It became all about sticking it to 'the Man'.


Two: Burgs India shot themselves in the proverbial foot. They were rude to guys like Adarsh and Roycin. And too proud and insensitive on Twitter overall. Their reply to me was the icing on the cake. And they still haven't apologised to me. Nobody trolls someone who's made one mistake and shows that they want to rectify it. But if you're going to persist in being a smartass...be prepared to have your ass handed to you.


Lessons learnt, I hope.