I always respected Lintas as a professional organization: Pranesh Misra

Adgully (AG): How has been the journey from IIM-A to Brandscapes, please tell us about different roles and responsibility you had taken during this journey?

Pranesh Misra (PM): Joined Lintas as a Management Trainee in Market Research through campus recruitment. I was very interested in consumer psychology and human behaviour - so thought research would be a good place to start. There were few market research jobs those days - so I was lucky that I got into Lintas. Within months I realized that I had made a wrong choice - because those days Research in Lintas was not well developed. Over a period of six months I handled only two projects - so felt I was not learning much.

During my visits to Clarion Mc Cann to meet my batch-mates, I chanced upon Ramesh Thadani, who was at that time the Deputy GM of CORE division of Clarion. CORE division stood for Consultancy and Research. He had just returned after education in the US and had lots of exciting perspectives on research. So, I ended up joining him at CORE division as a Research Executive. Most of what I know about practical research, I would unhesitatingly attribute to Ramesh. He was a slave-driver, but he was full of ideas. I learnt a great deal.

Couple of years later, I rejoined Lintas in advertising side as a Sr. Account Executive in their Calcutta office. My research background was a definite plus - clients did respect my perspective. I worked on Union Carbide (Eveready Batteries), Lipton, Reckitt & Coleman, India Foils, Berger Paints, amongst other clients. Soon, in a couple of years, I took over as the Branch Manager from my boss, Stanley Pinto.

Lintas Calcutta was a great experience. We had a small team of about 35 - 40 people. We had our office in a bunglow, called Lintas House. It was like a family. Some great campaigns were launched during that time. Cherry Charlie is one of the longest running campaigns that was born in Calcutta in those years. We launched a brand of tea for Lipton called "Cheers", which later got retired as a result of brand rationalization.

Four of five years later I moved back to Mumbai as head of Pathfinders India, Lintas's research division. With this move, I was amongst the youngest managers to join the Lintas India Management Committee. The committee was headed by Alyque Padamsee and had members like Bagu Ochane, Stanley Pinto, Prem Mehta and Nandan Maluste at the senior levels. Atul Sharma, Ajay Shrikhande and I were the youngsters who joined the Mancom. Later newer members like Chintamani Rao, Noshir Desai, Jayant Bakshi and a few others also joined the committee as people like Bagu and Stanley moved on in their careers.

Pathfinders, was an exciting experience for me. When I joined we had a small team of 3 - 4 people. Alyque wanted me to make it a significant player in the market. Over the following two years, we moved out of Express Towers into an office of our own. We increased staff strength to about 40 at its peak and gathered a lot of momentum as a strong research agency in the market. Innovative thinking saw the launch of lifestyle studies like P:SNAP, brand tracking studies called P:PULSE and several other innovations. Most enjoyable days, with a young and eclectic team - all of whom have done very well in their careers later on.

Then I got back into mainstream advertising as the Director in charge of Hindustan Lever at Lintas. Couple of years later the bug to be a client hit me and I moved on.

I joined Mashreq Bank in Dubai as VP Marketing. Excellent two years as a client - learnt a lot about bank marketing and launched some really interesting bank products. But then Lintas again called me back to join them as their Regional Client Director on Unilever.

I moved to Jakarta and covered Asia Pacific from there. Ran up air miles and got to see a lot of the geography and cultures across Asia. My most memorable days were racing with P&G to be the first to launch a health brand. We beat them by a month, and launched Lifebuoy soap there, which continues to be the leading brand in the country.

Other memories were of my visits to China - in a phase of development. There were very few cars, most people either walked or rode bicycles. Construction was in full swing in Shanghai. When I go back to Shanghai these days, I cannot recognize it any more.

Few years later I was transferred back to Lintas India - looking after Unilever in the Central Asia and Middle East region. After a couple of years, I got involved with local clients as well and subsequently was appointed the President of Lintas India.

That was a journey of three decades. There was always an entrepreneurial streak in me, but I was also cautious. Did not want to jeopardize my children's education - so I stuck to a job. But by now, the children were settling down, and I thought I should take the plunge. Thus came the idea and concept of Brandscapes.

Brandscapes has been a complete re-learning experience. I realized how little I had understood about how businesses run. Brandscapes had to be built brick by brick and in the beginning it was a lot of discovery of many new things: how to register a company, how to seek financing, how to set up entities internationally, how to open a corporate bank account, how to price a consulting product, how to reach out to clients in international markets and make a credible sell, how to leverage the network of contacts that one had developed over the years, how to build a team from scratch. It was all very new and refreshing. I worked really hard in the formative years of Brandscapes.

We are still in the formative years. We now have 70 people and three international offices - apart from the global delivery center in Mumbai. Our revenue is on target and right from the beginning we have been a profit making company.

AG: When did you decide that you want to get into advertising, and what you wanted to do after your PGP?

PM: As I mentioned before, I was interested in joining Marketing Research (MR) and Lintas was amongst the few companies recruiting at the campus for MR jobs. So, I landed up in Lintas. But my interest in MR and Advertising was strong during my PGP days. Thanks to influence of faculty like Subroto Sengupta (the then CEO of Clarion Mc Cann) and Prof. Labdhi Bhandari - I got really interested in consumer behaviour and psychology. Advertising and MR were application areas that would keep me close to this area of interest.

AG: What was Pathfinders and what kind of clients they handled?

PM: I explained Pathfinders India was Lintas's research division. Our key clients were Hindustan Lever, Lipton, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, Nivea, Corn Products amongst several others. As we launched a number of syndicated surveys, we dealt with a number of ad agencies as our clients as well.

AG: In 1986 you Joined Lintas as Management consultant and spent almost 7 years over there and then you moved to Mashreq Bank, how did that happened?

PM: In 1986 I joined the Lintas "Management Committee" which was a small group of executive board members impacting the policies that ran the agency. This was when I moved to Pathfinders as its General Manager. Move to Mashreq Bank happened when I was very keen to get some client side experience.

AG: You spent 2 years in Mashreq Bank (1993 to 95) and again joined in Management consulting role in Lintas ' Jakarta, what made you come back?

PM: What made me come back was the fact that I always respected Lintas as a professional organization. And the job they had to offer was international and very exciting. Imagine dealing with ten consumer goods categories of Unilever over a geography starting in China and finishing in Australia and India to Japan! It was an exciting job.

AG: What was your biggest achievement in Lintas as President and COO and then as Global Director ' Marketing accountability, if you can name at least 3 of it?

PM: 1. Making myself redundant by building a strong team of business leaders under me. I am proud that each one of them is doing so well in Lintas today. 2. Building a Planning culture in the agency that led to a team of about 30 planners and winning Effie Agency of the Year in my last year at Lintas. 3. Delivered consistently on revenue and profit targets. At one time we were the most profitable company in the Lowe Lintas network.

You read Pranesh Misra opening his heart out and share all his memorable golden days in the industry. To know more about his experience as an entrepreneur log on to Adgully on 11th February 2010 as we continue with the second part of the interview as he talks about Brandscapes Worldwide and the Indian Market.