How Horses Became Camels
An industry's descent into mediocrity, and impending oblivion
Fair Warning: They say that sausages are best eaten, not seen how they are made. Or closer home as they say ‘aap aam khao, ped gin’ney ki kya zaroorat hain?’ This post is a bit like that. It delves into details of the when and the what and the how and the why of advertising as a profession; when all you should be reacting to is the end product – the ads that you see on TV and in print. You might find this post a little too specific to relate to. You may choose to stop reading right now itself. If you continue, then I assure you, you will have learnt something about a profession / vocation that everyone is an armchair expert of. At the very least you will know why you don’t like the ads that you get to see these days.
Also, apologies in advance to all my animal loving subscribers for using a quote I read in Luke Sullivan’s excellent book on advertising, “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!” that may be seen as being denigrative to camels. To clarify - I love camels (the animals, not the nicotine sticks)!
The recent news of the demise of an institution of advertising (it would be a misnomer to call it an agency) led to the proverbial storm in a tea-cup. And a tea-cup it is. ‘Cos though we advertising people have a super inflated sense of importance of what we do for a living, in reality it is not so. And news like these only confirm where we stand in the larger scheme of things. Apparently there wasn’t even a blip in the share prices of the holding company as a reaction to this seemingly earth-shattering piece of news. Us Indians are an emotional lot, and sure enough there was an outpouring of emotional responses from one and all. But for someone who spent a little more than a quarter of a century as part of the advertising industry, and after having been a part of a few upheavals, in a way it didn’t surprise me at all. It is a sign of times to come. Institutions – and I use the term as an all-encompassing one to include not just brick and mortar ones, but everything that we consider iconic that include people, brands, products, rituals, relationships, scientific findings, etc, etc – across the spectrum are being challenged, questioned, occasionally overruled and sometimes laid by the wayside. What was true in the past is no longer gospel. The past itself is becoming more and more recent, what with the warp speed at which things are evolving.
A few years back I had reflected on how my profession had changed, or rather morphed, into something that I increasingly couldn’t recognise, let alone relate to. I was reminded of it when I read about the institution’s demise. I had titled my essay ‘How Horses Became Camels’. Read on … hopefully you will see why I wasn’t so surprised or shocked on hearing the news.
How Horses Became Camels
A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Horses are beautiful creatures. Graceful. Unmistakably structured. They look good standing. They look good galloping. They look good raw. They look good with all the paraphernalia. They have style. They have class. They have grace. They have poise. They are intuitive by nature. They have a lasting impact on the beholder. Advertising was like horses.
It used to be very different at one point in time. My guess is that it was a highly simple process. Client came with a problem (or an opportunity) which most likely would have been “My product does this and it is damn good. Please tell that to the people so that they start buying it. They seem to like buying junk from others.” Agency gave a solution that told how good that product was in very interesting and creative ways. Client either liked it or junked it. If the client junked it, the agency would fight on creative grounds. Usually clients would buy into the reason. And some great work happened. It led to some of the most memorable ads, some of the most hummable jingles, some of the longest running campaigns with the same message…sometimes with the same image too. Advertising people became personalities. Clients didn’t want to become personalities. Probably because advertising was seen as some kind of indulgence. One didn’t want to be seen as an indulgent manager because the hoi polloi saw advertising as the main reason for increase in prices of products. (Hasn’t advertising always been the scapegoat for price rise?). But they surely didn’t mind the three martini lunches with their agency counterparts.
To cut a long story short life was much simpler, though it was still in the complicated License Raj era. And it witnessed some great work that is now part of advertising and marketing folklore.
Then 1991 happened.
The economic liberalization of India in 1991 brought to the fore a lot of new things and new ways of living with choices unlimited, brands, multiple cars, higher salaries, a little bit of accent, better entertainment, world class quality products, etc … While on the one hand life eased off a bit, it also got damn complicated. Ok, let me rephrase the last few words. It was made complicated. Through dint of a lot of hard work. Focus. Unwavering commitment. All towards mediocrity. Here is how…
Innocuously and completely below the public radar, liberalisation unleashed other kinds of monsters. The MBA’s. And the 15 minutes of fame. Events like the sell-off of Parle beverages to Coca Cola brought hitherto unknown terms like brand equity in the limelight. (For those who don’t remember, Parle sold of its brands - not the products, silly - for a staggering Rs. 400 crore) And voila, suddenly, marketing was the THE most important function in the organization. Which led to everyone from the CEO, CFO, other sundry CXO’s, Sales Heads, Supply Chain Managers, etc etc to become deeply involved into the public face of the company / product / brand. After all they are all the same, aren’t they? If other non-marketing types had any hope of succeeding in the hierarchy, having marketing chops became a prerequisite. Which by default made them experts on all things brand.
Not to be outdone by their client counterparts, agencies stopped hiring account executives off the streets and started hiring them from the streets outside MBA institutes (I belong to this tribe). As to why they still had to hire those who were standing outside the business school campus and not those who were inside, the answer lies in the fact that in this ever changing world the one constant is that ad agency executives have always been the lowest paid in the chain and so no one in their right mind wanted to apply to agencies. So the leftovers after Day 7 placements had come and gone, had only one place to hang out at – the streets outside the campus. Prudes that agency people have always been, they went about distinguishing between MBA’s and non-MBA’s in the salary structures too - some of them further distinguished between MBA’s for elite institutions and non-elite ones (I was part of this tribe). And the only reason MBA’s were paid more was because they were able to talk to the client in a language that made sense only to the client. If you think this is Dilbertian enough, then wait … there’s more to come.
Philip Kotler, by making statements like, “Sales is only the tip of the iceberg called marketing”, had elevated marketing to a level that resided way above Burj Khalifa and just below the stratosphere. Now this maxim of Kotler’s has been around since the first edition of his almost biblical book, but in an emerging MBA in Marketing driven economy it was a God-send. It led to the marketing species develop inflated perceptions and egos about themselves. What at one point was just a ‘publicity’ department that did the occasional TV film and some annual report brochures, was now in the spotlight. And thanks to even the CXO’s taking a keen interest in the public face of the company / product / brand (see, they still didn’t know the difference between the three much), marketing became the port key to become part of ‘management’. No wonder then that the marketing guys took themselves so seriously that they conned themselves into believing that they were actually saving the world. And since saving the world is not an easy job and definitely not a solo effort, they decided to surround themselves with armies of partners in crime.
As I mentioned earlier, life was made very complicated.
A simple brief to make a TV commercial suddenly became a loaded strategy document. To decipher it took a series of meetings. Series of meetings because the agency people usually came with little patience, and they had artworks to chase in office. Those were still the days when it was below a creative director’s dignity to meet the client. The marketing people, wary of the weight of the spotlight on them, coupled with massive budgets that started getting allocated to communication, took refuge in research. Numbers can never go wrong. They can’t be argued with. A new creature – Research Agency – became the most important crutch for any marketer. Days and days would be spent data generating. Then a lot many more days would be spent data crunching. Then a lot many more days would be spent in data mining to figure out relevant facts and figures. To figure out the intricacies of data, there began a trend of having a data analyst kind of figure in the team. Now this entity would prepare their version of what made sense to them. Only for the head of marketing to read the findings a little differently - after all that’s what they were getting paid for. And then the cycle would repeat itself. This led to a system of the marketing team generating 2-3 different versions of the same data. Which led to different objectives being met. These would then be shared with the biggest daddy of the marketing team who would then don the hat of being ‘The One’ who would take a call – the call being, “Let’s explore all as potential routes to test with consumers.”
While all of this was happening, agencies didn’t want to be left far behind. They sprang a killer app on unsuspecting clients – the strategic planner. Planners had all the patience in the world as they had nothing to chase back in office. They were actively promoted as those with a slightly off-center way of looking at things. Not only that, they brought in the consumer angle – lest anyone forgot that all the efforts were actually being directed towards talking to consumers in the most appealing, endearing manner. Planners could debate, discuss, deliberate with the clients for days together. They would then go out and meet consumers and make lofty pronouncements about what really clicks with the user of any product or service.
The end outcome of this was the brief. Which was quite ironical, ‘cos it ceased to be ‘brief’. The document would then be promptly trashed by the creative. This led to the Us, aka Creative, & Them, aka Planners, in agencies and the twain would rarely meet. With one deft and a completely slow burn move of research data overload, the marketers had successfully implemented a divide and rule policy in the agency. Whoever said that the Brits had left the building was wrong. That is where artwork-chasing MBA’s, aka Servicing, aka the Account Management people came in. They became expert masseurs. Fragile egos take a lot to massage, you see. The creative people then started demanding an audience with the client directly in order to put some sense into their head. It also became a clever way for the clients to start ‘hanging out’ with the Creative types. They could now claim their 15 minutes of fame for having ‘partnered’ with the Creative in developing some ‘cutting edge’ and ‘disruptive’ work.
While the Creative were hanging out with Clients, the Account Management people would hang around them to ensure a few things:
one being that there were no untoward incidents of either creative or client dissing off the other leading to a loss of business;
two being that if some such incident did happen then implement their expertise in massaging; and
three to keep tab on the drinks and ensure that other freeloaders (like the creative’s out-of-work friends) didn’t exploit the occasion.
Did it always lead to a resolution of the problem at hand? Well, not always. What it did lead to though was that the Creative somewhere started empathising with the Client and started seeing reason to their ask. It also helped the Account Management person to deal with their day to day run-ins with the creative and Strategic Planners by asking only one question “Do you want to have a concall with the Client?” (Well, with the wafer thin margins agencies made, three martini lunches were like urban legends - only heard of, never experienced, and hence never believed.)
After all this had been managed, it was time to get to work and develop creative.
Which leads me to camels.
What are camels? They are work-horses (see what I mean, camels do have a bit of horse in them). They look good in silhouette. But look from up-close and … . They do their job. Diligently. Without throwing tantrums. Without expectations of glory (everyone knows Rana Pratap’s Chetak; does anyone know what his camel was called?). They do their job without any overt signs of passion, remorse, joy, or any other kind of emotions. In fact, I think camels are devoid or incapable of emotions. Camels are able to traverse rough terrains. And smooth ones. You want them to walk, they will. You want them to run, they will. They will do everything that a horse can. But it will all be a compromise. They are all-purpose. No one can find fault in them. They give you an option too – want to seat one, want to seat two, or want to build a small carrier on top? No problem. A camel gives it all.
A camel can mean all things to all people. Without really meaning anything to anyone. And when you are done with a camel, you just kill it and eat it over a bonfire. And then … on to the next camel.
The development of creative, nowadays, is somewhat like this. It tries to be all things to all people. There has to be the product superiority angle. Then there has to be a differentiator to highlight. Then one has to make it cutting edge and clutter breaking and not seen ever before. Then there is a sales angle to it – so kindly put in the price too. Then there is the comparative angle. Then there is the ‘will the consumer actually understand intelligent lines?’ angle. So dumb it down please so that all can understand. Then there is the ‘is my logo big enough?’ or ‘how many seconds will my brand name remain on screen?’ angle. Then there is the ‘match the brand colours’ angle. So it’s perfectly fine to have guys wearing gaudy purple, green or pink coloured shirts just so that they can be identified as being associated with the brand. And a lot many more angles. Once this is done, then guess who rears its head all over again? Research. The camel then has to undergo further scrutiny.
Luke Sullivan in his book ‘Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!’ puts it very well -‘Testing by its very nature looks for what is wrong and not what is right. Testing assumes people react intellectually to commercials in their daily lives. Testing rewards commercials that are vague and fuzzy. Vague and fuzzy doesn’t challenge the viewer. Testing, no matter how well disguised asks consumers to be experts. And they invariably feel obligated to prove it.’
Research findings will give you a feeling – Am I living among bozos? But who will bell the cat? Or in this case, the camel! Everyone. The client needs it on the grounds that they will be spending millions on promoting the brand and they certainly cannot take chances. Plus they need to be able to answer their bosses. Consumer findings is the best cushion for all marketers to sleep on and bounce on. Research agencies feed into this fear. There are some research agencies who even give mind-numbing suggestions like ‘three seconds more of the product and it would have scored a green!’
The beauty of a camel is that it can never be deformed enough.
So the creative product goes through further bozo-proofing. And some more camels are developed. It goes on…
The Agency is left a mute and unwilling participant in this circus. It still survives, though, because there is always the hope of that occasional spark that can ignite a fire.
A fire that scorches collective imaginations.
A fire that rages irrespective of how many seconds a product burns in it.
A fire that gallops like a horse possessed, extending boundaries of the brand’s kingdom – like the horse of an Ashwamedha Yagna.
A fire that reinstills faith in the fact that marketing and advertising can also be about the grace and poise and the intuition of a horse.
And that it always need not be about committees that deform this beautiful entity into a camel that everyone rides on, but no one remembers.
A Clarification:
My piece above was written when I still expressed hope when I wrote “It still survives”. Now that hope too has been laid to rest as one institution has been subsumed into a digital first agency brand. It’s only a matter of time before other institutions face a similar fate.
My piece was also written when digital advertising itself was undergoing its own metamorphosis. In the initial days of digital advertising, it was seen as a good-to-do tick on the marketer’s checklist.
As things have gotten complicated in the digital world, the product of advertising has further morphed from a horse to a camel to a multiheaded hydra.
Digital allows multiple things to be told to multiple ‘cohorts’ doing multiple things at multiple points in time during the course of a day. The hydra keeps rearing its (often ugly) heads all the time, from every available crevice of our device led lives. The parameters of success are no longer just offtakes from the shelves. They have taken on newer avatars like likes, shares, retweets, time spent, exposures, customer acquisition costs, downloads, etc etc.
That’s a topic for another day … but wait … I am not qualified to write about it as I am still shedding tears for the loss of the horses.
Be braver. Be kinder.
What do you expect when you see a star cast comprising Eddie Murphy, Jonah Hill, Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Duchovny? For Keep watching this time I have reviewed a movie that had all the ingredients to be a horse, but ended up a camel. It’s pretty evident that its makers didn’t know, or probably knew too much, of what to do with such a stellar cast.
This is a movie on how to waste two of the best talents across generations in one movie. Jonah Hill is a white financial broker who moonlights as a podcaster with a black trans character. He falls in love with devout Muslim Eddie Murphy’s daughter. This kind of a rich set up for some brilliant pow-wow between Hill and Murphy turns out to be a damp squib where there’s just no chemistry between any of the characters. Even Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Duchovny are wasted. Just goes to show that when there’s no good script, even the best of them can’t save a movie.
You People | Netflix
You hit the nail on the head, Swapneel, when you say the reasons oftentimes lie within. Introspection comes naturally to me, as is evident from what I call my newsletter. :-))
Thanks for liking the post.
You wear your heart on your sleeve to pour out a piece that smacks one right in the face. Passionate and personal. I don’t know much about this industry but was able to live through it due to your vivid portrayal. Bravo!!👏🏼