Contract Advertising seeks opportunites in the downturn

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the current economic scenario has certainly provided agency heads with an opportunity for making employees think out of the box. Contract Advertising recently held an internal initiative titled ‘Let’s make a difference- Recession friendly ideas,’ aimed at identifying ideas that would have the potential to directly impact the client’s bottom line in times of a downturn.

The exercise was kick started by an internal mail sent out to all Contract employees by the chairman of the agency, Ravi Deshpande inviting them to suggest ideas that would have an immediate positive effect on their client’s business. Inviting ideas from Contract’s four offices namely, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, the initiative was open to employees in the creative, servicing, planning and even the financial department. 212 entries were received overall, which were then filtered down by an internal panel consisting of the agency’s chairman and chief creative officer Ravi Deshpande, the CEO Umesh Shrikhande and the executive vice president, Rohit Srivastava to 90 entries. Where it was felt that two different ideas had some commonality of thought or execution, the teams were asked to collaborate and work together.

The final phase had senior clients of the agency evaluate the work and filter the number of entries to about 57. The work was judged on the basis of parameters like measurable impact on business, cost effectiveness and the ability of the idea to enhance the brand-consumer relationship.
 

Deshpande adds, “Among the work that we judged, there was a clear emerging trend of using non- traditional tactics which have greater engagement and have the ability to contribute significantly to the bottom line.” 
 

Shrikhande added, “In these challenging times, you need ideas of an altogether new breed. The relevance of this exercise is that it keeps everyone agile and on their toes. It helps re-focus on a newer set of problems and to keep finding ideas that are freshly engaging. The fact is, no matter how iconic the brand is, and how long it has been around, the longer and more intensely you stare at the reality of the brand and the consumer, the flow of ideas seem endless. There is no end to what you can keep exploring and discovering.” 
 

Explaining the fundamental thought behind the initiative, Srivastava further added,“The premise was to identify ideas that can pull forward a purchase, an idea that drives frequency and enables brands to make a specific pitch to a particular TG. In a recessionary environment, with budgets shrinking and ATL spends coming down, brands are on-air for lesser periods. In such periods of silence, how do marketers continue to maintain their levels of marketing communications, without it costing the earth? We were therefore looking for cost effective, scalable ideas.” 
 

Deshpande says they plan to make these internal initiatives more of a regular exercise where everyone will be invited to contribute their ideas on regular intervals of time. In the final analysis, the team consisting of Raghu and Manish Bhatt won the Grand Prix for their idea for Dominos Pizza.