 Thank you so much Balki, it's an absolute pleasure to have you out here. Thank you. You know in everything that we've studied about Everybody sees about 50% of Any kind of marketing ROI comes from creative But I don't know whether people are really walking the talk in less than about what a Little over a month IPL is going to start again Last year there were 71 advertisers on TV and about claimed upwards of 400 on the digital streaming piece They spent anything from in single digit crores to upwards of hundred crores What is your sense are these pop advertisers actually Putting the same amount of thought into the creative that goes into the investment into something as big as an IPL Or are they missing a trick? I'm going to leave it open to you if you talk and then I'll just keep on coming with some Chabi's in the middle Yeah, thanks Vikram pleasure being here. Hi guys Thing is that the title of not media was added by Vikram not me See actually a few years ago and there was a There's a great experience I went through he would be judging some IPL ads the ads for which came on IPL and let me tell you the honest truth is There were the trashiest ads that you could possibly find and that really shocked us because and it's become I mean, it's not become trashier, but it's remained Pretty mediocre All along and it's very surprising that the most expensive media in the country Has possibly the worst quality of ads and that's really shocking You're looking at Super Bowl, which just happened a day before yesterday yesterday, whatever and We all look forward to the Super Bowl commercials as much as Super Bowl itself Okay, why can't IPL which is the premium? advertising Let's say program or the place to be in and is watched by the most number of people in this country Why can't people produce the best advertising for it? Why can't marketers insist on? Absolute, you know top notch create of course. It's all about the brand It's all about what the brand stands for all that haven't been said Why can't the best creativity be right here because otherwise you're not getting banged for your buck You're just kind of putting being there and saying okay more people are watching my brand Somebody will remember it far more than the other kind. That's what's happening today We just they're an IPL for people to just remember you what a cost to kind of pay. I mean For that you can do so much more with it and we are doing all kinds of manipulations to get our brands to places Unlike, you know, most countries we have us. We have such a simple audience. They watch cricket and The some of the worst ads are on cricket We have a we have a captive audience right through it's just not IPL Cross the World Cup across a lot of matches which is which are happening Millions and millions of people and we are searching for ways to attack people through that medium and this medium and that medium And you just don't give it give it to them when they're watching it They're there and we spend so little time. Everybody is in a rush to make IPL ads I mean, why is this rush to make IPL ads? Shouldn't that be the rush through the year to kind of wait for IPL? It is damn expensive Okay, I read somewhere that there are Super Bowl 30 second spot whether it's digital whether it's streaming with the streaming or whether it's on television It's about seven million dollars for a 30 second spot comparatively our You know, they had spent the cost of an ad would be about 60 lakhs for a 30 second spot Little less 50 45 something I 45 lakhs in our currency now in our scheme of things is damn expensive for one spot there and how much of thought and how much of safe people are playing so safe and so Regressive on the most expensive platform out of fear You know sometimes fear makes you do the most ridiculous things of actually wasting all the money Because nobody should tell me that you know, I didn't do the right thing You did the right thing, but nobody saw it or people saw it and forgot about you or people didn't even think about you Where you had the chance of a lifetime. There are millions watching Come on. Yeah, Bombard me Can my ad be better than the program that I'm watching or as interesting as the program that I'm watching and that's a program made for that You need your ad to be more exciting than IPL. Otherwise advertising Advertising an IPL is a waste of time forget the figures forget the forget the viewership forget all the stuff that happens You are not rewarding the viewer. You are not using the viewer. It's like, you know, it's like I keep saying this it's like You know a great filmmaker a great actor People are rushing to kind of watch his movie You don't even need publicity to come of these big stars or these big filmmakers a big franchises when they kind of release a film you have a captive audio We have millions of people already wanting to see it. You just have to kind of you know Be above their expectations We're just cashing on the fact they're coming in there and say, okay, you've got our money and see screw them So say a bit more on this. What do you why is it? What do you find about today's stuff that's trashy and how do you like the brief to be given to an agency? I which makes them sort of I don't even need to say that you always see IPL ads Decoded for us because I'm sure Look, I think it's trashy. No, I think the advertising don't think no Advertiser will come and say or no creative person or a new agency will ever come and say it's advertising is trashy They will all have reasons for it They will all say the brand is going through this cycle or the brand's going through that cycle or we need this in this market There are millions of ways to kind of you know Justify anything and under the Sun, but you know a damn ad you know Yeah, of course, it should talk to consumer But is it making him interested while you're talking to him or her? It's so ridiculous. When was the great last great ad that you saw right here You tell me one that you which according to you was a really a great ad and the IPL used well I think the the last Swiggy used to use it very well, you know, Swiggy did some interesting advertising on IPL, but By and large and I'm talking of I mean I may be forgetting right now Which one or two things I may have forgotten which may have been good But look at the number of advertising Look at the amount of advertising an IP and look at the amount of things that you can remember You know and we've forgotten this entire thing we've all become afraid. It's just not an IPL Of course in all of the places they've become more and more afraid and to Shantanu's You know thing of saying creativity is I mean it's it's creativity is a bad word. It's it's actually a buzzword for things That don't work, you know for in marketer's heads creativity is something that is it's it's it's a phrase a polite phrase Given for things that don't work I actually believe it's the only thing that makes things work and I'm talking of that kind of creativity Which makes things work, but I'm saying there is a there is a Extraordinary amount of fear that is in marketer's heads today I've never seen this before and actually we've regressed in communication We've regressed in advertising like never before the quality of advertising the quality of thinking the quality quality of ideation Of course, it comes a lot of theory why it's right, okay, but it doesn't it you know It's not right. You've got to read thousand pages of theory to think it's right, but it's not right You're not making use the fundamental power of advertising Which is to charm me which is to capture me which is to make me smile which is to make me laugh Which is to make me want to watch it again and add has to be as interesting as the content first number one If it is not it's a waste of time. I genuinely believe of marketing start looking at it and if pressure is put actually on marketing heads by heads of companies To kind of really make if you're going to take a very expensive program is my create is the is what I'm putting out Crack a jack our people are going to sit and applaud Why can't we have a reel of the best IP rights? Why can't we be the soap of Super Bowl of the world here? We've got the best sport. We've got the best tournament. We're tom-tomming the whole world that you know It's fabulous and we've created history out here, but we don't have ads to show for it and most importantly Always believe in this we are a country which which gets into quality a lot later than quantity Okay, we just believe okay. We've got the numbers. We've got the figures and everything else the quality we we we You know We put it on every other aspect of life. We say our roads are bad. This is bad. That's bad. This is bad Everything's bad. Okay, we've been doing say somebody will come and make an announcement We've did we've done 1500 kilometers of roadways off roads We've built this year, but we'll go on saying this road is bad. That's road is bad. This road is bad But we never look at it when it comes to our what we are doing out there We're kind of spending tons and tons of money We are not looking at quality in the tons of money and we defining quality wrongly We're defining quality very conveniently. We're defining quality in fear and we're losing the power of advertising Which is to actually live in fear advertising is a bit of a gamble and it'll always be a bit of a gamble And it has to be that great movies are a bit of a gamble You just don't know you you think most things are right you do it as common sensically as possible and you take that leap After all that common sense and that leap if that gamble a person is not willing to take That person should not be advertising ever because advertising is a gamble You use the word fear a few times and people are trying to play safe Is the problem right now lying with the agencies or the advertisers or both? I don't I don't know If agencies have enough of a voice to be a problem today I just believe that A lot of it Of course, finally the creators are the agencies that they must take the blame for it But I think it's got a lot to do with marketeers It's got to do a lot of lot lot to do with marketeers are not pushing the agencies to kind of deliver Uh The kind of work that that is going to make people as interested in the ads as in the program because sometimes I just believe The ambition of the market here dictates the quality of advertising You know, I think the ambition is about More I shouldn't look bad Then I should fly You know and fly is a gamble you need to take gambles to fly You can always be where you are and nobody will notice you and nobody will curse you nobody will praise you You can go on very safely But if you want to fly you've got to take that gamble be willing to be trashed a bit, you know But I think 90 percent 90 percent of the time when you do take a very sense When you when you've got your thoughts right when you've got your common sense in place and when you take the leap You will fly and to me The bigger aspect of it is not so much of marketeers and advertisers. It is we have a program We have something that beats the media maze that we are in We've got a ready-made Thing called cricket in this country. Okay, which I mean we just watch cricket You're all along. We watch cricket if just we advertise everybody said I want to advertise and trigger and did the best as intriguing I think most of your problem would be solved You know, most of the company's problem would be solved. They got the right strategy did the best work on cricket I remember like for once upon a time Brands like havels and a lot of brands even even a lot of unilever brands were built on cricket You know now very few of those brands take cricket actually are not doing cricket for some strange reason Maybe because it's too expensive or maybe because They believe that their kind of advertising does not need cricket that to me itself is a little bit of you know Why is this happening? Let me get a media Let me ask you a media question which is that The to answer to you know, a lot of advertisers feel that End of day it's all about reaching people with a my message and it's maybe cheaper to reach my message By taking a bunch of spots across a lot of tv programs rather than a very expensive ipl. We from your standpoint do you think Advertising on an ipl. How's it qualitatively different from Building more reach on the same reach much cheaper through say Dramas and movies and and other news programs and so on so forth Do you think that entire environment of an ipl or Maybe a big boss does that help a brand if you have to put an ad there No, it's not so much the environment like you just now. I think we've heard enough of conversation Everybody's everybody's talking about it about the consumer attention span because he's not he or she's not interested in your message It's like almost like you're forcing something through that to that person We all know the amount of distraction that we have we all know the amount of content that we're not watching We are kind of you know flooded with content today. There is more demand than there is more supply than demand We're not able to watch we actually watching a little less than what we used to watch because there's too much of it Now in that environment if you're just talking of reach i've reached you So what a lot of things reach people, but do they ever open it? A lot of things kind of this thing. Do they ever kind of see it? Do they ever interact with it? Do they ever react to it? They may see it, but do they react to it? I think there is a difference between reach and reach successfully But each successfully means I reach. Thank you. Hello. How are you? I'd like to kind of see you again Is proper reach and for that you really need to be damn damn interesting We've forgotten to be interesting. We are actually A race that is watching so many things happening all across the world Everything's interesting bombarding you insta reels are far more interesting your reels every day You're getting things videos that are far more interesting and advertising I have seen meetings where people are laughing at a reel or videos which are fascinating Which are some really funny stuff and they're discussing a very boring ad How is it possible? How is it possible for a human to be inhuman at the same time? I mean it's like that. It's in five seconds. It's the same brain. That's going to see both It's the same eyes that are going to see both the same heart that's going to process both What's happened to our world? Why is advertising? Which is supposed to lead social change which is supposed to lead fashion trends Which is supposed to lead behavioral change which is supposed to kind of you know Give me a catchphrase. Give me a slang. Give me new things or give me a new attitude Why is it following following following so way behind culture? We're supposed to set the trends. We're not supposed to follow. Hey, what's that new catchphrase? What's that new slang that's going on on social media? Let me use that in my ad and say I'm in touch with the young youngsters out there On this entire element of be brave just be more interesting It's not just be brave. Just it's not just be brave brave is uh is is a Funny word and just not be interesting. It's about be leading. I mean think so that you can lead set trends We are following trends today. We're all about studying trends You know sometimes this whole thing whenever we have a problem in advertising a lot of people Who uh who are in all other kinds of businesses in advertising spring to make sense out of this maze Actually, the sense still isn't in the same place Sense is about beating the maze sense about beating the maze which uh maze by being more interesting We don't need so much more confusion to kind of understand the confusion Today what's happening is we're revealing and understanding the confusion with a lot more confusion Nobody's having a solution. We're saying digital. We are saying television. We are saying we understand We understand what digital is we understand what it is the same damn shit goes into all this stuff When you say digital advertising out here a lot of that would be ipl on hotstar or ipl on something else that would be digital Okay, a lot of it at least 50% of that would be that It's not going to be anywhere else. So what are we talking about? We're still saying the same damn stuff. We're just using a different kind of a thing to see it Of course, yeah, attention span is less But trust me if you have a great ad the person will say hey add dick, okay Who says that today? Who says you add dick, okay? Why are we spending crores to kind of just put that ad out there and nobody's noticing me If I can do lots of other things I'll get noticed with 100 that money Jumping poor chip imagine a company spending that kind of money. What is the logic of reach? I don't understand it. I don't get it. I don't get it that we've stopped using Just common sense So that's a clarion call for just I mean trying to lead the thinking with your brand by I mean Whatever you do on other stuff like your instagrams and all the rest of it You're not using the same yardsticks to actually do your own advertising which is so important for you True. You're not even doing that in life I mean you want to see all kinds of interesting places in the world. You want to eat great great food You want to do everything but you want to create boring stuff So my at one point I'm you know so angry or so, uh, you know Thing I said, you know there's and sam this is a fantastic business opportunity. I'm just giving it to you on a plateau but take it um I think you know I think I after after that judging process. I wanted to say, uh, let's let's start an agency It starts in november and shuts down in april Okay, which is we'll do ads only for appear the most premium stuff Most premium media how much you spend on media the creative will be absolutely premium If it's not premium, don't pay us. It's absolute premium absolute kind of thing six month agency folds up. Bye. Bye. See you in november Okay, really want to do that and sam you want to do it? Please do it Okay, and it's a fabulous thing because we are starved on the most expensive medium We are starved of ideas. We're starved. We're actually we are throwing money in the air And you're crazy We're just happy that our valuation is going up because we are seen advertising an ip l and people think we're a big brand And we just notice because we are bombarding them every Match of ip l our name comes out their ads come out everything we've done damn well rubbish imagine you've done damn good ad How much more famous would you add you would have been so the lost opportunities never kind of calculated in the final balance sheet It's always that how much we've done by being mediocre. So by the same token. I think you mentioned it, but I just want to reconfirm Do you think the advertising that you have to do say for ip l or on tv And on digital to say geo geo cinema needs to be same Or or does it Or will does just the format of a of a digital for thing change things No, of course you can do a lot more things with digital is a syntax different there syntaxes are very different The idea may not be very different Even the execution may not be different But they can do added things with that particular execution on digital Which you may not be able to television because there's there's so many other Interactive things that you can do on digital which you can't do with this stuff And there are so many more interesting things that it's an idea can develop into on digital which you can't do on television So digital is actually hugely advantages. It can actually make it a lot more creative than what it is You know strangely it's making us You know retract becomes smaller than become bigger anything that you've seen on digital that has blown your mind What I see I don't see television these days. We watch we all watch only digital So what we're watching is basically all the ads and all this stuff. I don't think I've watched First of all any ad that has been blown my mind for a long time And but on cricket I don't know. I think If maybe in in over a coffee and a cigarette I might be able to think of a couple of things Nothing's kind of just coming out hitting at me and say wow, what an ad I haven't seen that I saw 10 Super Bowl commercials yesterday all of them. I mean Costing seven million dollars to air once and the whole world has seen it What what a fantastic experience would be that if we did an ad once and And and the audience actually demanded for it to be screened again in my appeal I mean that would be the day when we won't screen it pay for it We'd be great kind of stuff to kind of do why can't why can't we just be more adventurous? Why can't we be more ambitious? We have a platform. We have no confusion. The consumer is not distracted He is watching IPL. He is watching cricket. She is watching cricket. They are all watching cricket. Everybody is watching Shantanu was talking about how It can become the entire pull versus the push where consumers with all this distraction if they can find something interesting they'll ask for it And you're saying that an interesting ad can be one such way to do that Hugely and that's what ads are supposed to be You're supposed to kind of stop in whichever environment and say wow. What is this? You're distracting it should not be able to if you're more distracted the ad is going to be even more interesting That's all it is okay, uh, just a more general question in the Years that you've been out of active agency life How have you seen the agency side? Let's not flagellate the Advertisers, but how is the agency? for the creative agency ecosystem changed I think I think I would want to say they I'm saying we because I still Believe in I'm an advertising and I will always be an advertising. We're all swimming in confusion Okay, we're using confusion as almost like, you know sound of Doomsday here that's coming there. God knows what's happening. Let's do make this person happy that person happy Let's kind of do so, you know maintain the business But a lot of people haven't changed from the way they've kind of been doing business before It's exactly the same With a few more with a few different kind of expressions in meetings and presentations or whatever But I think this agency structure shockingly remains the same That is that is that itself is kind of amazes me why it is the same And what is more? Shocking is Well, while adexes are growing while people are spending more on advertising I don't think advertising agencies themselves are growing that's shocking That actually means that people are not seeing the value of an idea people are not saying hey Only you can give me that idea people are saying anybody can give me these ideas So therefore the money is going down because I'm not able to charge a premium to a person If that person does not believe that only I can produce the idea. It's a simple thing advertising is also about It's about you pay a professional You trust a professional because a professional does a damn good job and you believe that professional is the professional I want to go with If you can say that to advertising if you say that to an advertising agency and say nobody with them can do that stuff Then you're rocking and and I thought and I think something like an IPL or something like You know a showcase where people are seeing your advertising can be a big Reboot for advertising also I also believe that a way to do it even even for IPL and I want to speak to somebody at geotube about it Is they also look at it quantity also look at 2.3 screw a cross subscribe Viewers they have that little thing at the corner of the screen. They go to 4.5 5.5 I just believe they also made it like a flagship platform for Advertising to say improve the quality reward better advertising See at the end of the year at the end of the tournament If you were to have a jury and they were to select the three best ads and they were to return Let's say if your advertising is the best I would give you 15 percent of what you spend on IPL back to you I mean, it's just a thing to push push the entire thing. It's fabulous. I mean look at the amount of people who'll be Finally the value of a platform doesn't increase just the numbers You can go from hot star you can go to geo you can go to this thing you are just depending on stuff It also can elevated quantity or qualitatively, you know, wow, I'm going to see the best on geo I'm going to see the best of ads. I'm going to see the best of matches. I'm going to see how do you how does a platform Also guarantee that you can do that too. There are ways to kind of incentivize Advertisers to produce better advertising. You know the word trust has been used twice. Shantanu talked about a drop talked about it if this entire The brave new world of advertising that we would like to get back to How do we get the clients to to trust the agency? I mean because somewhere along the line, it's how do we make it from a vicious to a virtue? See, I don't I don't think that there is a process for this Because they can't be a they can't be a pro process for this entire thing I think that's to be done by one example The moment you have one example of something you will see lots of people following the moment you have one kind of One incentive I really believe geo can do this I really believe geo can actually say this year We're focusing on the quality of advertising and on ipl We will reward the three best campaigns right you will see a marked change in advertisers suddenly. Oh, shit The the entire logic will be reversed and saying something something something to justify the same logic Okay, but it has to be done by example somebody has to fight the system somebody some advertiser has to fight Their system internally some advertiser has to take it will happen It's going to happen very fast because this kind of blowing up of money for Absolutely low returns like this is it's not it's not going to it's not going to be tenable for too long So it will happen, but I just speed it up I sincerely hope that somebody really slogs their butt off pushes the system And fights the it's it's it's actually requires a lot of resilience to fight the system to get that breakthrough And set an example and I on on cricket or ipl on cricket a lot of people Like look at what a phone look at a lot of stuff that happened before look at I Idea was in cricket. What a phone is in cricket all these were built on that stuff. They were flagship Advertising cricket that's not happening on ipl. Somebody has to fight the system today be resilient enough It's going to take a lot of stuff effort both from the advertiser as well as the agency But once that's done you will find The floodgates open you will see people coming on it's not that we had suddenly become A creative list kind of an industry. No, there are fantastic brains all all over there are fabulous people Somehow the system has gotten to a shell of saying we don't know really what's happening Does advertising really work and they're still spending cross while still asking the same question Does advertising really work? They're saying it very softly, but they're still spending money because they don't know the truth Of it because you can't say it doesn't work because they may lose a big opportunity So it does it work it works. It doesn't Okay, if we spend a little bit money, let me not pick put too much of effort Look into too much of brains and creativity and all that shit that word creativity has gone out of the system It doesn't exist anymore. So that that thing and all that stuff is there. We just kind of pass the thing just sail through Ladies and gentlemen wake up call from balki rebel with a cause. Thank you guys together