‘The only thing that supercedes creativity is accountability’ : Laurence Boschetto

Taking into account the time factor, won’t this whole process detract from the primary goal of running the business?
In today’s day and age the CMO has to learn everything, figure out how to navigate and perform at the same time. These things have made it important for us to multi-task and therefore within our organizations, 95 to 98 per cent of the people need to keep clients happy, help them keep businesses on their books and they need to attend to business as usual. The balance of us need to think strategic, while we still have client engagement and we still need to rally the troops, we need to sit down and develop the plan to understand how we are going to make it a fundamental reality. It’s a matter of how you’re going to carve it up and that is only going to be successful if the key stakeholders are aligned around the same goals and vision.

Coming to your direct charge DraftFCB, a unique feature of this merger is that the media seems to be driving the creative while normally it works the other way round. It is significant that its DraftFCB and not FCB Draft. Does this type of organization exist anywhere else in the industry?
That’s the newness of it, by which we are saying that the only thing that supersedes creativity is accountability. Art for art’s sake doesn’t exist in our business, it’s a part that drives results and it’s creativity that is measurable.

Clients today want to know the inter relationship of branding to direct, to promotions, to retail, to guerilla marketing. We can show results in below the line disciplines but it’s now time for us to apply those same scientific tools to traditional advertising and branding. There are only one or two clients that have mastered the art because their businesses are single dimensional and they are more of a marketing company and not a distribution channel.

Amex is a perfect example that can tell you the cause and effect relationship formalistically because it’s a single offering and something they have perfected over 50 years.

One of the major stories since the merger of Draft and FCB is the Walmart win. What was the killer application that you offered to outdo the others?
This was the first test drive and we were up against several major traditional global advertising agencies. In fact there were 26 agencies in the reckoning. We first took it out with a very short term vision by aiming to make it to the second round. However, we made it to the second, then the third and also to the fourth. Four major players made it to the finals including The Martin Agency, O&M and the (co)-incumbent agency GSD&M.

The key application was that of data and how it can be the driving principle guide to your strategic plan in integrating the entire creative ideation process and the measurability. That is how we came at it. You need to capture the people trafficking through your retail environment; you need to develop the database. It’s not just about attracting traffic it’s about getting them into the store to buy and then follow up at the tail end by ultimately making that store the preference. That’s how one can develop a whole CRM strategy to seduce them into coming into your store.

With the merger of FCB with Draft, you achieved what you yourself have said ‘is a balance of creativity and science, behavioral understanding and aspiration’. Now there is Initiative added to the mix. So now what? Globally how does this structure flow out?
From a DraftFCB perspective, there are two parts of Initiative – Initiative handling all the traditional media and then there is IP Media which is a separate company which handles all the direct. We have been working with both of them for all of our clients, the only difference is that the planning was done in house on both sides of the equation. We already have the media strategists, we now have the breadth and depth of access to much more if we want to bring them into a team engagement.

Over the last three weeks I have been on the road to every single region introducing them to the model, talking about the structure and meeting the four regional presidents who are experts in the their markets. It’s now up to them with their key executive stakeholders to develop a plan and come back with how they are going to do it.

The general feeling is that the Indian boat is not about to see any changes so it will be business as usual out here. This is because Initiative in India is managed by Lintas Media Services, while creative agency Lowe is a 50:50 JV between IPG and Lintas. Now that there is a global realignment, what happens to the India story?
(As stated by FCB Ulka managing director & CEO Anil Kapoor)

Initiative in India is not the Initiative internationally, yet we are all still IPG companies. When a global decision is taken about a hundred different locations, different equations in different places need to be taken into consideration while each of the four presidents pertaining to his own geography will have to look country by country to determine what to unravel. Taking these things into account and the commitments involved over the next 3-6 months things will evolve. We cannot have a cookie cutter approach.

Broadly speaking however, the mission has been announced. Thereafter, each country will have their own solutions. The balance sheet at the end of the day is that we are all IPG companies.