I am just proud about the fact that I am damn curious: Ravi Kiran
Today Ravi Kiran enters 21st year of his professional life and today we discuss about his days at Starcom.
AG: How did Starcom happen ?
RK: When I joined in December, 1998, it was not called Starcom then. It was called as Chaitra Leo Burnett Media. This company must have been one tenth of the size of Initiative. My boss said, it was a team of only 18 members and I couldn't make it worse and that everything I contribute would make it better no matter what I did. So I thought that's good to start with ' I couldn't make it worse.
Somehow there's joy in building a start up, there are no rules; you set your own. Every single impression made for the organization is made by you. The charm of a start-up is different. It's fascinating to know that when you joined in there were 18 people and now when you see it as 250+. It's bigger than what it was then, but still it's really small if you see companies like Infosys and Tata ' compared to them we are nothing.
From 2001-2009, eight years, the brand that we used in market for media was Starcom. That's why even today it is better known as Starcom. Last year we finally set up the Mediavest brand. The growth has been good. If I have to compare, I would say that the first five years were more like, stabilizing, consolidating, servicing and planning while the next five years we really focused on growth. Most of our growth has come in the last five to six years.
Through the first five years, the growth had been low single digits. The last five years have been showing high double digits. Around 2002, we realized our biggest competitor was WPP's Mindshare which set up shop roughly after we established Starcom Mediavest Group. They inherited a lot of volume from their creative agency O&M. We too inherited from Leo Burnett but it was very little. They dint have the biggest clients. In fact their clients like Bajaj and Coke had already moved their media elsewhere even before we set up Starcom.
On the other hand WPP had the advantage of inheriting big-volume clients like Pepsi, and a lot more. Together with O&M, they had Vodafone, Pidilite, Asian Paints, Unilever, so we realized the volume of business they represent. If I am not wrong in 2001 when they formed Mindshare and Maxus, they were about 1800 crores in billing and we were 200 crores, this was the difference. This also reflected in the market and whenever we went to clients there was always the question about our company being small and whether we'll be, and what we will be, able to deliver to the clients.
In January, 1999, we decided to go to L V Krishnan (now CEO TAM). We gained Godrej as an account after a multi-agency pitch and that gave us a lot of confidence. Sometimes despite your temptations to go for the smaller ones the right thing is to go for a big guy. Godrej stayed with us for a year and they were very happy with the services that we gave them but unfortunately after a year it shifted all its business to Mindshare without a pitch.
We learnt an important lesson with that ' sometimes, no matter how good you are, pitch decisions or agency decisions may not be as objective as you might think it to be. So we realized that Mindshare or Maxus became the way they are not because they fought for it but because of what they inherited. Then we decided to continue doing regular business but also started planning for something that the competitors were not doing that would help us become big.
So we started doing something for which we are famous now ' setting new and several non-traditional disciplines, which was beyond the classic approach involving TV, print, radio and cinema. We wanted to define ourselves not as a media agency but as an IMC agency. Integrated Media Communications agency, that is. We learned in the business, if you don't create the difference aggressively you are just one of those guys.
AG: In the past ten years, what are the changes that you've seen in the domain of Media?
RK: There are lots of changes on positive as well as negative sides. Positives ' I just told you about IMC, that clients don't want anything that is just Vanila. They are sick and tired of it. On the whole clients want a strategy with some holistic thinking. The second one is that media owners are much more creative than they used to be. Everybody is under pressure and it forces you to be creative. But it should not be like a treadmill, that we are running very hard but are exactly at the same place. It has to move on.
On the negative side, clients have become much more transactional. So, it's very funny when you say that on one hand they have moved from media to IMC and on the other hand they have become more transactional than what they used to be and, it's a global phenomenon. This is partly because a lot of clients don't stay long enough with an agency. They may stay for two or four years and then move on. Not only clients but agencies have also become transactional. "Time to market" is the new buzz word. From the time you conceive the idea to the time you hit the market ' how quickly you can hit the market.
AG: What, according to you, are the latest trendsetting media elements?
RK: To me it's not about new things, it's about new ways of looking at things. Like in the old days, if somebody had shot a video of mine and it appeared on some news channel and never got uploaded on YouTube, then how would you have seen it? On YouTube, it's going to stay there until YouTube decides to shut it down or remove it.
So it's not about new things but about new ways of looking at the same thing. People ask me what would be the next big thing. To me there is no one big thing, its lots of small things that will transform the entire definition of business. How big is twitter? 140 characters. People must have laughed thinking what will people write and now gurus are being created out of twitter. The fascinating thing to me is not what is new but creating new behaviour, new ways of connecting, telling each other things and sharing.
AG: Everybody is going regional. New shows, marketing and advertising focus on individual regions, why is the focus shifting there?
RK: I am a big believer of regional targeting. In fact it's not only regional it's local targeting too. It's like sea ' from top you see nothing inside but once you keep going down, the deeper meanings come out. Local marketing matters more than global. Actually local marketing means much more to all of us than global marketing because the latter doesn't touch us as much as the local. I think in the past, and even now, our urge to drive simplicity and look for homogeneity which doesn't exist has been the blind part.
AG: What is Starcom working on currently?
RK: The Sparkle project is worth talking about. For a long time we had a dream of influencing brand mangers and persuading for IMC (integrated marketing communication). We realized that a lot of the B-Schools actually don't teach that and Media is not taught at all. So recognizing this we went to the top B-Schools and told them we could invest eight weeks in teaching that nobody will teach if they'd like their students to learn about the business of media industry. We have got 990 responses from IIM Ahemdabad, IIM Banglore, Shillong, Somaiya, Jamnalal Bajaj and FMS.
We took 23 people, the biggest ever intake we have taken for summer interns. At the end of eight weeks they will get a certificate. They will learn in classrooms here and also undergo intensive training in all the nine sections and field trips. They will also learn rural marketing and entertainment marketing. I don't think any other institute would have been able to do that. Now, these students will become brand managers and it's a nice feeling to know that we were somewhat responsible in creating an inclination in their minds for marketing.
AG: How would you define yourself in all but two sentences?
RK: I would describe myself as an aggressively curious student of marketing. Sometimes my curiosity pisses off other people. I don't think I am teacher or an expert; I am just a regular guy. Honestly, I am just proud about the fact that I am damn curious.
And so it was time to shake hands and take his leave. But even after we left, in fact, even after a few days of this interaction, this powerhouse of a chap still makes us smile. He still makes us ogle in astonishment at his honest statements about the industry. There are just a few good men, Ravi Kiran is one of them for certain.
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