India Will Always Be A Top Priority For JWT

For Matt Eastwood, the focus for 2017 is largely on South Asia, especially India, for its vast market potential. He, in fact, recently visited agency headquarters in New Delhi to ensure that JWT South Asia has the right strategy in place to produce award winning work. In 2016, JWT India won three Bronze Lions for Night Kills Day campaign for Sleep Apnoea India, Neurology Sleep Centre at Cannes Lions.

Talking about his priorities, Eastwood says, “The biggest focus is to keep the creative reputation we have built globally over the last 12 months. Last year we had the best year at Cannes in the 150 years of the company. My mission is to maintain that consistency.”

To be able to do that and remain at the forefront of new-age advertising, Eastwood is also trying to ensure that JWT’s creative teams have access to the latest technology. “I am pushing the idea of trying to surround our creative people with tools that they need to deliver ideas and make them try things, make mistakes and discover new things. In fact, it’s a challenge across our big network and, interestingly, India is one of the countries leading this change for us. We started a production company mid last year called Small Fry, which is built as part of the agency but it is a separate offering. I think that enables people to deliver content in a way that the old adage of good, fast and cheap is not true anymore,” says Eastwood.

The India Focus
One of the biggest challenges for the Indian advertising agencies is to consistently deliver work on par with their global counterparts. Though JWT India emerged among top winners at Cannes last year, there is still scope to do better.

Senthil Kumar of JWT South Asia says, “I think a lot of Indian creative people, especially the youngsters, look at international award show books and that’s how they pick up advertising. But not much Indian work is featured in those books. I believe that you need to be as Indian as you can be, especially when your market is India.”

India’s rich cultural diversity often helps in unleashing a unique kind of creativity. Explaining how these unique cultural elements make Indian advertising stand out from its global counterparts, Kumar says, “India has always been a place where creativity is booming; was booming and will continue to boom as we have a unique kind of diversity in art and culture. On the world stage, after US, which is right on top followed by Europe, the next you have in terms of great work is Asia — especially India and Thailand. These are two regions in Asia that have a specific kind of humour that you can amplify in your advertising and we should do more of that and use our cultural icons as much as possible. There is a line I wrote for Nike — ‘India is a journey you cannot complete in one lifetime’, and I believe in that. Even for a creative person like me or any other creative person out there, I think there is a huge opportunity because of the diversity.”

Stating how India was an important market for JWT and how it has evolved over the years, Eastwood says, “Five years ago, the Indian market was all about the need for agencies to become digital but we have moved past that now and the focus has shifted to technology. I always get excited about India as it is one of the tech capitals of the world and you can definitely see that influence in our work coming out from here. India will always be a top priority for JWT.”

Pushing Creative Boundaries
Maintaining the fine balance between the status-quo and respecting local sentiments in creatives is yet another big challenge for advertising agencies. Work that does not follow this balance is often subjected to harsh censorship. On how JWT is putting in place new guidelines to avoid such a clash, Eastwood says, “I think different countries have different sensibilities around political correctiveness. For instance, we do a lot of work in the Middle East, but we cannot do the same creatives in Latin America. So, it’s more about guidelines than censorship. We did a study last year called ‘Female Tribes’, which is about redefining the way in which marketing and advertising talk about women. Right now, I’m writing some guidelines for the entire agency to ensure that whatever we are doing, we are getting rid of the stereotypes.”

While JWT India’s Cannes performance is a testimony to the agency’s great work, it also means more expectations. Talking about his approach to make award winning work while meeting new expectations, Kumar explains, “The starting point is never about winning an award, it cannot be; it always has to be about solving a client’s marketing problem. You start off with a nice idea and then ensure that the execution is superior to anyone else. In the process, you are pushing the benchmark and when that happens, the client loves it, the media loves it, the consumers love it too. The last lap of the journey is when the award jury loves it. But if you are passionate about it, as Matt says ‘Passion Trumps Talent’, and have only little bit of talent, the combination of it can take you very far.”