MAM
Hari Krishnan joins Cheil Worldwide SW Asia as COO
MUMBAI: Hari Krishnan has joined Cheil Worldwide SW Asia as chief operating officer.
Krishnan joins from WPP where he was head of the global team on the Ford account. The team members were drawn from JWT, Mindshare and Wunderman.
Krishnan will start his new role from January 2013 and lead Cheil Worldwide SW Asia’s growth agenda. He will aim at enhancing the agency’s record for delivering diverse communications solutions and make it a strong integrated agency.
Krishnan’s career in advertising and communications spans over two decades during which he has held senior leadership roles with JWT India, Grey Worldwide and Bates India, among others. As the head of WPP Global Team Ford he set up the first co-located office of three different specialist agencies for WPP in the Asia-Pacific Region.
Cheil Worldwide SW Asia president and head of regional HQ John Koo said, “We are delighted to have Hari take charge as the COO for the region. He has a proven track record in developing corporate strategy while managing on ]going operations. His strength in building teams and people development is a perfect fit for Cheil. Moreover, his extensive knowledge and experience will go a long way in driving the business forward.”
Cheil Worldwide global CSO Bruce Haines added, “Having Hari on board demonstrates our resolution to take the Indian market, which we identified as strong growth prospects. Our team in India has been very successful in both attracting new clients and providing good creatives. I am thrilled to have Hari lead the winning team.”
Krishnan said, “Cheil is an innovative, forward thinking communications agency which has carved out a niche for itself through its integrated service offering. The recent acquisitions of The Barbarian Group, Open Tide and its partnership with the iconic Beattie McGuiness Bungay make it a powerhouse solution provider for brands across categories in India. Also, 12 Cannes Lions this year demonstrates the Agency fs commitment to idea excellence. I see exceptional potential for leveraging Cheil fs credentials for growth and look forward to working with the stellar team to make this vision a reality.”
Prior to establishing WPP Global Team Ford India, Krishnan was at JWT India as executive business director, PepsiCo Beverages, where he led agency teams on the PepsiCo portfolio comprising Pepsi Cola, Slice, Mountain Dew, Mirinda, Tropicana and Aquafina. At Grey, Krishnan led the agency as general manager and branch head of its New Delhi office. Prior to that at Bates India, he played a pivotal role in consolidating the teams after the Bates takeover of Clarion. Preceding this, he was with Ogilvy & Mather, and Anthem (now TBWA).
MAM
The Merit of Madness: How AI is Changing the Game in Advertising
By Ritz Malik, founder, Ritz Media World.
MUMBAI: When it comes to growth in a competitive landscape, a businessman always has to be a firm believer in Darwinism. You either need to bring a better product, or a better price, or both to the table to get customers and scale. Without this value proposition, you remain unnoticed, and staying unnoticed is not something that a brand wants to do.
You have to do all this and also make sure that you stay cashflow positive at the same time. Otherwise, you’re at a real risk of becoming a large hollow balloon that your competitors are just waiting for to explode or implode under its own weight.
As we’ve entered the era of AI, the notion of a product’s efficacy, cost efficiency, marketability, workflow management, and logistics reliability has become increasingly relevant and prevalently impactful. None of this is background noise anymore. It is the difference between bleeding money on traditional media and actually engineering a profitable campaign.
For example, META’s AI Algorithm has finally given us the ability to measure the ‘CREATIVE’ for a business’s promotions. The best part is that we can do so organically. Content that is actually relevant to the target audience gets more views through reach. This tells us exactly how the audience is reacting before we even scale the budget. This is how we have been gifted the ability to provide merit to the madness of the creative process.
So, our process is as follows:
A set of creatives is built for social media
Their performance is closely monitored for reach and engagement.
Based on the best organic performance, we choose the creative.
Make micro adjustments to add a sales proposition and CTA (but keep it subtle)
Publish the modified creative as an ad.
There’s a lot that goes on in between, but this is the basic method for getting it right. And this is just the AI that’s being used by platforms across the world.
AI utilisation is something that has greatly made the creative process a lot easier. As an agency that thrives on coming up with ideas that are out of this world, we have made the most of leveraging AI to bring ideas to life without spending a fortune.
So, this way, the ability to create high-impact brand stories is no longer under the tyrannical gatekeeping of large budget organisations. It is now that merit solely falls on the storyteller.
Now, AI-powered content production and the AI algorithm on Social Media platforms are asking the question: Is your content compelling?. If yes, the audience will watch your content, share it, and engage with it.
And when it comes to keeping budgets down, we can surely say that it holds the capability to execute million-dollar shoots at a fraction of the cost.
For example, we recently came across a creative challenge by a major Real Estate Developer from Gurugram. They had signed a celebrity couple for their brand ambassadorship a few months ago. They were now about to launch their new project, but for some reason, they could not get their shoot done.
What we came up with was to use the likeness of this celebrity couple and place them throughout the project’s feature video. With the help of AI generation, we were able to rebuild a completely new feature video with their brand ambassadors in 2 days, and no additional physical shots were required.
Imagine being able to save 50-60 lakhs in production costs, 15-20 days in production time, and comfortably be ahead of schedule to launch the project.
This has changed the game entirely. With AI, you can now just acquire the likeness rights of celebrities, and you can just build environments and scenarios with them. The balance between creative and artificial intelligence isn’t a battle for control; it is simply the ultimate tool for survival and scale in a landscape that rewards the fastest and the smartest.
