IIPM: December 2011

Friday, December 23, 2011

“Boss, kuch solid creative banao jo hila de! Ghanti baja de!”

What agency do you choose as the young, infirm, impressionable ad executive? Would you fall for the compelling promise of magic at the big brand ad agencies? Or would you take the plunge for the lucre love at the smaller sole proprietorships? I was young once – and I was courageous too. Here’s my story – but take your own decisions.

The big, burly ‘client’, chewing his favourite brand of pan masala (with three rings on his right hand and four on his left, along with various coloured strings gracing his wrist) dressed in a safari suit of dazzling maroon, seated on a massive, filmy, throne-like chair in a room filled with pictures of Gods, Goddesses, his late father, stared hard at the young, fresh-faced Account Executive from the agency they had hired. From time to time, the client sighed and nodded his head – left to right and back – indicating cosmic sorrow. Eventually, wisdom descended from those pan-masala-stained teeth. “Boss, kuch jama nahin! Kuch solid creative banao, jo hila de, ghanti baja de. Yeh sab to ghatiya, nonsense, rubbish, bakwas!!” With these encouraging gems, he flung the eight ads (which the agency had created in two hours, flat) towards the young man and began to speak again. “Beta, don’t take it personally. I like you very much and love your English-speaking and gyan on advertising, lekin kya hai, bijness to bijness hota hai, hai naa? Your boss is my very good yaar from college days. Kamaal ka tuning hai, to mana nahin kar sakta, hai naa? But you must brush up on creativity. Waise ek phone me ghumaoon to line lag jayegi Adwalon ki and you know it, lekin mind it, mein aisa nahin karna chahta hoon. Navar!” He paused for breath and another intake of pan masala. “My 17-year-old daughter Dimple can do much better. Believe nahin karoge, by gaad, she’s too creative! Angrezi poetry likhti hai, painting karti hai, aur kya GK hai, oye hoi! She only told me these designs are ghatiya, third class, not something that will hilao the junta!”

Totally shaken and bewildered at this bizarre onslaught, the young man – whose parents had invested their wholesome income into making the lad what this world would call “cultured, educated, soft-spoken” – made the appropriate, polite sounds and left the office. On the way, stopping by for a ‘cold drink’, he reflected upon his life. Who were these strange clients – completely uninformed, coarse, totally disconnected with anything to do with basics of good, effective advertising? Why was his agency boss always insisting on young, nubile, half-naked girls to be splashed as the main focus of his ads even when all the client was selling were locks? Why did these creatures never exist six months ago in his high-profile Mumbai agency, where he trained and spent two glorious years? Why did he even shift?... The lad was now beginning to feel the stress and pressure of working in an environment that was a million light miles away from where he came…

Back at the office, confusion became confounded! His boss – a proprietor who was all sugar n’ spice just a few months back while begging him to join – blew his fuse! “Yaar, who told you to give him bhashan on what is good for his product? Is he a fool? Pata hai, he is one of my langoti yaars who has successfully run his Papa’s business for over 20 years, making a huge profit. Also, by the way, he is the President of the Ad Club and active member of the PRSI and Press Club, samjhe?” And then, a sudden parallel track, “What an excursion he organised to Amritsar and Wagah border, maja aa gaya… anyway, he called me and told me not to fire you. But yaar be dedicated to your work. What are you doing? Chal, chal get back…” This was the tipping point. It all spooled over in a millisecond – his fantastic two years at the professional agency, then the rush of blood to join this sole proprietorship of an ad agency for the so-called ‘independence’, and then the nightmare – bah! The young man had had it and finally exploded. “You got me here luring me with big bucks and great promises of freedom with responsibility. From an A-lister, all I’ve become is a Z-lister! My fault is that I didn’t listen to my friends because I was dazzled by the ‘seniority’. However, I’ve started regretting my shift more than anything I’ve ever done – you constantly refer to clients as Mai Baap and Bhagwan, you continuously instruct me to improve my ‘setting-fitting’! What the hell are we here? Pimps? Ever-ready suppliers? Weren’t we supposed to be communication consultants, solution providers?!? Or am I supposed to now always be a yes-jee, no-jee buffoon? You will never, ever understand professionalism because for you, billing is god, not quality… and that is injurious to my health!” Shocked silence followed on both sides. And then the lad blurted out, “I am quitting here and now. Bye!” With that outburst that even surprised him, the young man stormed out of the office. Of course the boss was too shocked to react. No one in his 30-year stint of doing various businesses ever had had the guts to speak to him in this manner.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Experience Vs. Evidence

Evidence-based advertising, founded on experimental studies, is the only path to improving the effectiveness of persuasive advertising procedures

Prior to the 1940s, if you had a disease, it made little difference which doctor you went to. There were so many diseases and so many conditions that doctors could not learn from their individual experience which treatments were effective. This changed when doctors began to rely on evidence from experiments. Further progress was made when medical schools began to teach evidence-based medicine. And things progressed even more rapidly when the Cochrane Collaboration for health care began in 1993. It now has 28,000 contributors to serve doctors and patients. Evidence-based medicine has had enormous beneficial effects on the average length and quality of life.

Management is in a similar situation today as medicine was prior to the 1940s. Managers rely on their own experience and on the experience of other managers to decide what actions to take. This works well in simple situations in which they get good feedback. However, many management problems are complex & uncertain, and in these cases, eight decades of research have shown that experience fails. Few people are aware of this research, and, when told, most believe that the conclusion does not apply to them.

When doctors learned that some of their treatments were based on incorrect knowledge or procedures, most reacted as people often do when presented with disconfirming evidence about important topics: They became upset and attacked the credibility of the source. Nevertheless, the pressures are strong to follow best practices in health care. Many patients are well-informed about the possible diagnoses and treatments when they go to their doctors. Many doctors have been sued for failing to adhere to evidence-based procedures.

I have been fascinated by evidence-based management since I began my career in 1960. Many useful management techniques and principles have been discovered. However, to my dismay, this knowledge was typically ignored by managers.

In 1980, I visited my friend Paul Westhead soon after he became coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. After spending a day with him as he took the team through practice, it dawned on me that if we could apply management science techniques to the Lakers, it might lead businesses to follow suit. Paul was enthused about the project, but the owner of the Lakers, Jerry Buss, was not. (The Lakers won the championship that year, without my help.)

Nevertheless, evidence-based methods are currently being used successfully across the sports world, by teams including the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots and Philadelphia Flyers. Half of the 30 NBA teams had at least one statistician on their staff in 2009-2010. Those teams won 59% of the 962 games they played in the first half of the 2009-2010 season, while those teams with no statisticians on staff won only 41% of 958 games.