Iconic Indian Ads: Can India's Ad Industry take on the world?
By Lopa Patel, 5 February 2010

India's burgeoning entertainment industry is likely to create global opportunities for more than films, video games and TV shows. Its advertising industry, drawing upon the themes and iconography of Bollywood, is also set to take on the world. The move was brought to light this week when a twitter trend, under the hashtag #iconicIndianAds, became the second most popular topic on the social networking site, attracting over 500 tweets per hour - it even surpassed 'Haiti' and Apple 'iPad' as the most popular twitter topic at one stage.

Started by Dharmesh Gandhi (@dharmeshG), who was reminiscing about the Indian adverts of his youth, #iconicIndianAds quickly saw hundreds posting taglines from their favourite ads like 'Dimag ki batti jala de' (smart thinking) for Mentos sweets to the catchy 'Doodh, Doodh Doodh' (milk, milk, milk) for milk marketing. The irony is that twitter has not been popular in India until recently when the take up of mobile phones and the wide variety of available applications (apps) has seen the number of Indians tweeting soar. Many attribute this to the mass celebrity culture that Bollywood attracts with Indians wanting to follow and associate with their favourite stars online and via their mobile phones.

Role of Bollywood in India's Advertising Industry

The Indian film industry has long played classic song and dance routine out in advertisements. Indeed, many of the most well-known Bollywood stars like Amir Khan (Coca Cola), Aishwarya Rai (Coca Cola, Lakme), Irfan Khan (Vodafone), Salman Khan (Limca), Hrithik Roshan (Pepsi) and Shah Rukh Khan (Hyundai, Fair & Handsome) have earned thousands from performing in short 30 to 60 second commercials. Recent research by global agency Mediaedge:cia (MEC), conducted among over 1000 adults in India, revealed that celebrity interest among consumers is high: almost a third of consumers (32%) said that celebrity endorsements influence their purchasing decisions and over one in four (27%) have bought a product because a celebrity was promoting it.

Jon Wright, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, MEC MediaLab says: "The popularity level of celebrities in India was on the whole higher than the global average, and endorsement remains a powerful tool for marketers in India despite the potential over-exposure. Significantly, people in India were more likely than the global average to want to interact with celebrity content online demonstrating the depth of involvement people want to have with celebrities, and therefore the opportunities for brands to extend the effectiveness of communications."

Beyond Bollywood

However, the role of celebrities in advertising is complex. MEC research showed that what celebrity endorsement doesn't appear to do is build brand trust or belief in product efficacy, nor does it encourage word of mouth - this is where traditional advertising and marketing methods prevail. So perhaps what has revolutionised the advertising industry is the growth of media channels and the creativeness of its agencies.

India's advertising agencies

Many of the ads listed in #iconicIndianAds trend were produced by Ogilvy & Mather India. British advertising icon, David Ogilvy, launched Ogilvy Benson & Mather in New York in 1948 with the financial backing of two British agencies: Mather & Crowther and S.H. Benson, though the Mather name had been prominent in London advertising since 1850. Ogilvy & Mather India was founded in 1928, the first advertising agency in India, and has over the years helped create some of India's most successful brands like Asian Paints, Cadbury, Fevicol, Perfetti, Hutch (Vodafone), Close Up and many more. The Indian agency came into the Ogilvy stable in 1971 and then in 1989, The Ogilvy Group became part of Martin Sorrell's WPP Group Plc - the world's second largest communications network. This helped to propel O&M India into the No 1 slot as India's largest ad agency.

Hutch/Vodafone Campaign

O&M India's iconic campaign for Hutch Telecom (that later became Vodafone) was one of the most heavily tweeted campaigns on the #iconicIndianAds trend. "In the mobile telephone network Hutch faced the challenge of building brand preference, having to rely on a generic promise of a good network, in a highly competitive mobile telephony market. Using the metaphor of a boy and his dog's unconditional support to highlight the omnipresent nature of the Hutch network, the agency team was able to create 360-degree communication," highlights the campaign notes. "It not only succeeded in creating brand preference far in excess of its nearest competitors and increased the subscriber base by 20%, but also generated incredible buzz that gave the campaign an iconic status in Indian advertising." The boy and dog campaign created in 2003 went on to become the ABBY 'Campaign of the year'.

The agency's iconic advert for the Cancer Patients Aid Association with the strap line "Be nice to smokers, they don't have much time left" also won it many admirers and the Silver Lion at Cannes in 2002.

Asian Paints campaign

The agency has helped build strong campaigns for the even the most mundane products, like paint. O&M India explains how it contributed to the building of the brand: "Asian Paints is a great example of how a brand operating in a low involvement category like paints carved a strong place in the hearts of consumers. A beginning to this was made somewhere in the late 1980s with the 'Khushi ke rang' campaign, which aimed at building a strong emotional connect with the consumers. This progressed into appropriating emotions around festivals & not just capturing symbols & rituals around it. The advertising reflected different cultures to connect with consumers in their own language. So in the South it was Pongal, while in the East it was Durga Puja and Diwali in the North. The next evolution in the brand's communication came towards the second half of the 1990s where the brand evolved to stand for 'celebration of life', thus breaking the ritual of painting homes only during festival season."

This ability to capture basic emotions of love, hate, humour and combine them with the family values that are still at the core of an Indian's psyche could help catapult India's advertising onto the world stage.

Explosion of India's Advertising industry

Jay Rai, co-founder of Indoor Media, the UK's leading online advertising network, has personally witnessed the explosion of the Indian advertising industry. "When I went to India in 1993, advertising was still largely dominated by billboards, but when I went back ten years later in 2003, I noticed a marked increase in TV advertising", he explains "although it was still reliant on celebrity endorsements and fairly simplistic in its creative approach".

"When I went back to India in 2006, though, it had become totally professional. India's advertising agencies are full of bright, young, creative people who have a Westernised approach. By 2006, many of the global agencies already had offices in India. Media buying and planning had moved to India, search marketing has gone to India and I predict that in the next couple of years, display advertising is also going to go to India".

Following the trend East, Haymarket, the Michael Heseltine owned UK-based publisher of industry titles like 'Campaign' and 'PR Week', launched 'Campaign India' magazine in September 2007 to focus on the exploding advertising, media and marketing verticals in India. Since the launch, 'Campaign India' has grown to be the authoritative voice of the media, marketing and advertising community in the country. Online, it is part of Brand Republic, Asia's leading media marketing, PR and advertising trade portal which tracks the growing scope of Asia's advertising industry.

Western Agencies Go East

Jay Rai and co-founder Murly Tiwari, both Indians, have a great deal of experience in the broadcast and online advertising industry. Before founding Indoor Media, the UK's leading online advertising network in 2007, Tiwari was a media veteran with 25 years experience, he started his career sending out blue and green books while at AGB followed by stints at 24/7 Real Media, Adtech and Universal McCann. Jay Rai entered online advertising in 1995 with experience from ComputerWeekly, ITN, PDV, Fish4 and Cricinfo. Both agree that they see a clear move towards India. "The Indian film industry has been exerting its influence in Hollywood in recent years with acquisitions and joint ventures" explains Murly Tiwari, "so it is only a matter of time before Western advertising agencies, looking for new business models, will look to outsource the production of display advertising to India."

Jay Rai, who is shortly to visit Indian advertising agencies in 2010, agrees "creating global campaigns as cost-effectively as possible makes a great deal of commercial sense. The O&M India campaign for Vodafone (Hutch) featuring the dog and children has universal appeal. So too do the Cadbury adverts and those cheeky ads for Mentos - although producing adverts in India is cheaper, I don't think it is just about cost" he adds. "It really is about the creativity that India's bright young things bring to the table."

Creativity is rife

India's creatives have long been winning prizes for their creativity. Among my favourite adverts are the Vodafone adverts featuring Irfan Khan, the funny 'Mentos life' adverts and even the obscure adverts for Camlin markers and whiteboards. Virgin Mobile's 'Think Hatke' campaigns are funny in any language! Observing the Limca adverts one can detect the trend towards much better production values: the ads which in the 1970s focused heavily on India's cultural identity, progressed to a more sensual, textural feel in the 1980s and 1990's - even using the talents of Oscar-winning music maestro A R Rahman for one advert - to the very Westernised underwater theme of the 21st Century. The latest advert could readily be aired in the USA or Europe with small changes to the track and final message (currently in Hindi). Could the convergence of media channels and the growth of global platforms - many of these adverts are readily viewable on video sharing platform YouTube - help grow the market for Indian agencies?

Convergence of media to play to India's strengths

"The convergence of media channels - like broadcast, print, and online - also plays to India's strengths", explains Murly Tiwari "Western advertising agencies have already seen the value of India's tiger economy, predicted to have 300 million middle-class citizens soon, and have been busy setting up shop there in recent years. In turn, if India's ad agencies can look beyond their huge domestic market, then they really can take on the World".

For further information visit:

Mediaedge:cia (www.mecglobal.com)
Ogilvy & Mather India (www.ogilvyindia.com)
Campaign India (www.campaignindia.in)
Indoor Media (www.indoormedia.co.uk)