MAM
FCB India announces its newly elevated C-Suite leadership team
MUMBAI: FCB Group India recently announced the restructuring of its creative agencies and a new three agency structure – FCB Ulka, FCB Interface and FCB India. FCB India, the newest agency in the fold, led by Swati Bhattacharya as the creative chairperson, has now announced its newly elevated C-Suite leadership team. FCB India will be led by Debarpita Banerjee as chief executive officer, Surjo Dutt as chief creative officer and John Thangaraj as chief strategy officer.
In an increasingly digitised marketplace of ever-increasing options, influencing consumer choice has become more complex than ever before. It is this tremendous complexity that informs FCB India’s belief system: that siloed, medium-first thinking is no longer enough to build powerful brands in today’s world. FCB India aims at bringing a multi-disciplinary approach to creative ideation, drawing from fields as varied as design and data to media and marketing, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
FCB India creative chairperson Swati Bhattacharya, said, “When Debbie, Surjo, and John enter the room to solve a problem…you know it will be done. Very rarely do you see such chemistry and energy in the boardroom. They can afford to be terribly honest with each other, and that directly makes the idea shiny and the brand shinier!”
Debarpita Banerjee joined FCB in 2016 as president- North & East and now heads the agency as the CEO. A seasoned business leader with prior experience in both marketing and advertising, she headed marketing for National Geographic India in her previous role. She is a content enthusiast and also leads Fuel- the branded content and production arm at the agency.
Surjo Dutt joined FCB in 2016 as national creative director. In his previous role, he was heading creative for specialist digital agency Sapient Nitro. Dutt combines over two decades of advertising experience across both mainline and digital with a strong focus on filmmaking and creative disruption.
John Thangaraj joined FCB in 2016 as executive planning director. In his previous role, he was head of strategy- North for Mindshare. Thangaraj brings close to twenty years of marketing communications expertise to the table, having worked across the ecosystem- from qualitative research & brand marketing to account planning, media strategy, and advertising.
Speaking on this new developement, FCB Group India chairman & CEO Rohit Ohri said, “Hybrid thinking truly begins with hybrid talent. Debbie, Surjo and John’s diverse experience across content marketing, media strategy and digital storytelling, respectively, uniquely positions them to deliver to the challenges of building and growing brands in today’s complex, ever-changing marketplace”.
“Debbie, Surjo & John have been instrumental in growing the FCB brand across new clients, categories and markets. Having spent half a decade working with each other, they play off each other’s strengths, bring multiple perspectives to the table and form a formidable base from which to further consolidate the tremendous equity they have already built. I wish them the best in their new roles and have no doubt that they will lead FCB India into a new era of success,” Ohri added.
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.
