In terms of content creation, first party data and programmatic advertising, Bhasin feels that data is prevalent in everything we do these days.
“Our digital
footprints provide enormous amounts of data for marketers, and everyone is
talking about big data, but does anyone really know what this is all about?” he
asks.
“There’s a famous
phrase in advertising that goes something like this, “50 percent of my
advertising spend is wasted, but I don’t know which half is it,” he states.
With data,
targeting is a lot more efficient and advertising is thus greatly focused to
the desired demographics.
Programmatic
advertising is based on this premise, and in the digital age, its simply
impossible to plan campaigns over a million websites, for example, in a manual
fashion.
Everything is
interdependent, as data is being generated, those who are able to analyze it
and use it in more efficient ways stands to benefit greatly from it.
DAN made a huge
investment in acquiring Merkle, a data-driven
performance marketing agency that specializes in the delivery of unique,
personalized digital customer experiences.
“We
are heading to an era of hyper personalization, with minimal wastages,” he
adds.
Some
quarters have stated technology
and data driven performance metrics could cause the creative work being produced
becoming less compelling. Bhasin agrees to disagree.
“Look, we are in
the business of ideas, and that’s never going to go away…everything that we
have these days in terms of data is about making our understanding of the
subject matter better, and making the communication of certain aspects much
sharper to the consumer,” he added.
“The fact is,
some things just do not change..when it comes to human emotions, we still
laugh, cry, and there are things that warm the very cockles of your heart,
while some things may just leave you unmoved,” he explains.
At DAN, he states
that creativity is still at the heart of everything that they do. They may have
best in class technologies, experts in each chosen field and so on, but their
ethos is fundamentally grounded in creativity.
“At the end of
the day, the business of advertising has to be creatively led,” he states.
Bhasin thinks that there is a need for advertising agencies to fundamentally
change the way they serve clients today.
“I believe at
least 50 percent of agencies today will no longer be around in the future. Some
are just still stuck in the past,” he stresses.
He thinks it’s
time for businesses to buck up and face the reality of the evolving
marketplace.
The recent news
of Accenture acquiring the fiercely independent Droga5 advertising agency is
also something that Bhasin feels need to be touched upon in this discussion as
well.
“Globally, when I
listen to the CEOs of holding companies saying that consultancies are seen as a
threat to the advertising agencies, I do not necessarily agree with that
assumption,” he explains.
He feels that the
consultancies do the strategic part very well, as they have a larger
relationship with the client.
In his opinion, these
consultancies in turn charge hefty fees for the expertise, but they are not
good at the last-mile in terms of implementation and getting it all done in a
cost-effective manner.
“Clients in this
region have no appetite for this as they want scalable implementations in a
cost effective way,” he added.
“In India for
example, we opened DAN Consult, and rather than waiting for Accenture to eat my
lunch, I’m going to eat theirs first,” he states.
They have added a
layer of consulting expertise made up of strategic planners and other
specialists to offer something different to clients.
He feels that it
is going to be harder for consultancies like Accenture to do battle on the
advertising front as they will struggle to make sense of it all.
“In my opinion,
if advertising agencies show more guts and courage to step up to the plate, it
could really be the start of a new wave of advancement for the marketplace as a
whole,” he explains.
Advertising
agencies that make the investment to offer this extra layer of expertise will
also have the opportunity to charge more for their premium offerings in the
future, which in turn will create more profitability to their balance sheets in
the future.
“In terms of
DAN’s revenue generation, almost 60 percent of it comes from the digital space.
It’s all about being dynamic, nimble and agile in this day and age,” he
declares.
The shift of
power is always evolving and the shift towards digital is blurring lines
between media, creative and account management.
“In short,
clients don’t really care about where and how the ideas come from, it’s just
about results, and that’s the real deal,” he concludes.
