Global Mergers, Local Ripples: Consolidations reshape India's ad land as clients seek 'single-window' partners

We will continue acquisition-led strategy in India: Havas Chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré

Consolidation or Collision? How ad land’s mergers create crisis of overlapping of leadership roles

Meta’s policy shift could spark 30% surge in RMG ad spending in India

Digital Entertainment Summit 2025 to debut in Delhi as India stakes its claim on the future of global media

Nobody’s Perfect Retro Porsche Ad

In Conversation With Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard

Shahid Kapoor And Varun Ganjoo Speaks On PokerBaazi's Campaign

In conversation with IHCL’s Puneet Chhatwal & GroupM’s Kate Scott-Dawkins

Why are brands including e-sports in their sports marketing itinerary?

Storyboard18 x The English Nut: How to pronounce these 10 brand names

Experts' Take On Reinvention Of Ad Campaigns Through Technology

Experts Speak On Key Emerging Trends In Cannes Lions Entries

Leaders of the future have to be outstanding human beings: Nestle MD

In conversation with VMLY&R’s Hari Ramanathan

By Rayomand J Patell

At the time of writing, we’re smack bang in the middle of the Cannes advertising festival.

Apparently if you go there, you instantly become a superior human being. 

God forbid you should win, for then, chances are, you will become an insufferable creative person, which to my mind is even worse.

Don't get me wrong. I love awards. Especially if they're won for real work on real brands that did tremendously better as a result of the campaign you created. A certain campaign I helped create even managed to get my community who's faced with extinction to have 400 babies (and counting). Got a few shiny gold things and even two blue pachyderms for that one. But I digress.

Somewhere along the way the purpose of winning awards got changed.

And not for the better.

The thinking by the Bean Counters went like this. If you could get your minions in Creative departments to routinely set targets and win awards, then they'd unalive themselves over it and on a good day you may even win a few of those gold plated Lions.

And you know what that does? Kicks up the stock price of the agency network or holding company. And allegedly even (lol) gets clients to choose agencies basis their rankings.

Imagine that. You're now effectively, a little hamster, churning out 'proactive' work, prostituting your God-given talent, for someone else to get rich with. 

It's not even like you're going to get rich, at best there'll be a Town Hall where your achievements are lauded for about five minutes. You may get an unprecedented seven percent hike even. Hurrah!

Stock options? Perish the thought.

Share of profit? blank stares will follow

Creative people have got to wonder if this is really the system they want to be a part of.

Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-26-vive-la-independents-67800.htm">InspiRAYtion 26: Vive La Independents!</a> 

To me it reduces and diminishes us to the worst form of sweatshop worker. To not have talent is one thing, to wilfully ignore the immense power you truly wield but seem to have forgotten about is another.

You have the power to change a brand's destiny.

For it is you that tells the people out there, what to do with their money. It is you that shows them what it means to be a better man, a better woman, a better parent or a better friend. It is you, that gives them a dream. And what is life without a dream?

Instead of working with utmost passion to figure out what you need to say and how you need to say it, will you put the cart before the horse and bother about how much of an award you're going to win?

There's a word for that. Four actually. A lack of integrity.

It's why your client views you with suspicion. Are you trying to make his brand win or yourself win?

There's a place and a time for awards. On a beach with plenty of firecrackers and definitely after the work has already won staggering results in the marketplace.

Do yourself a favour. Tune in to yourself and realise you have two choices. Find yourself and be a great advertising person or lose your self and be an 'awardising' person.

Watch the seminars. Share the work. Critique it. Celebrate a friend who wins by all means this week.

But remember this. An award is just a mirror to your Creative soul, the Sorting Hat so to speak out of the Potterverse.

You Cannes go over to the Dark Side, or you Cannes be a Jedi.

Choose wisely, young Skywalker.


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekly column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 27 - You Cannes do it, but ought you?

As the large networks continue to fold in on themselves, like large Imperial Starships of the Sith from Star Wars, there is a ray of sunshine, the Jedis, oops, the Independents. 


From Raj Kamble’s Famous Innovations, to Ashish Khazanchi’s Enormous, both established Independents in that sense, to newer home grown start ups like Yash’s Atom and Aalap Desai’s TGTHR. It was a joy to cheer and clap for them winning and winning big. 


If there was ever a watershed moment in Indian Advertising, this season of award shows proved that creativity matters ever more to Indian clients and they’re not afraid of going to what might be considered “small” shops to get it. 


Personally, I believe it’s not the size of their offices, but the largeness of their ideas that the finest clients are resonating with. 


The wins represent something bigger than just awards. It’s almost like these agencies collectively got together and said, “hey here’s a radical idea… what if there were agencies that you know… were bothered about creating magnificent Advertising?” 


The era of those who cannot create is over. If you’re not actively adding to the product that ships out the agency door, you’re over too. 


[caption id="attachment_67878" align="aligncenter" width="2560"]<img src="https://images.storyboard18.com/storyboard18/2025/05/Marci-2025-05-6388b33f76be8363d072dfda30156dc4-scaled.jpg" alt="The author with Youri Guerassimov, CCO and CEO, Marcel, Paris" width="2560" height="1923" class="size-full wp-image-67878" /> The author with Youri Guerassimov, CCO and CEO, Marcel, Paris[/caption]


Clients don’t want tedious processes, endless vacuous strategies that aren’t cohesive on the same deck, or teams that were mediocre before AI amplified their mediocrity. Clients want people who get their problems, and who come back to them with elegant solutions that create outcomes that are valuable. 


It’s not the billable hours clients are interested in, we’re not lawyers after all, it’s what we’re creating for the brand that matters. Independent agencies tend to intuitively understand this better than the large networks and place creativity at the centre of everything. 


Interestingly, R/GA my favourite independent agency has been acquired by a private equity firm and they’re more sensitive about keeping things the way they are creatively, than a network would have been. 


Private equity firms dealing directly with creative leaders will be a new path for the independents to scale and perhaps in time be bought out for vast sums of money. Looking forward to seeing this play out in India. 


In the more traditional structures, from Youri Guerassimov who’s both the CCO and CEO of Marcel in Paris, to David Droga who’s responsible now for both creative and business at Accenture Song in NYC, it’s a new era in Ad Land for Independents and the Creative Leaders that run them. 


Just one more step towards making the Roaring Twenties roar ever louder. See you next Thursday! 


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekly column on everything about advertising and marketing.


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-25-a-jaguars-last-song-66068.htm">InspiRAYtion 25: A Jaguar’s last Song</a>

InspiRAYtion 26: Vive La Independents!

By Rayomand J Patell


If you’re on LinkedIn, you would have seen endless marketing bros opine upon the Jaguar rebrand. Some weren’t sure if it was a rebrand, or a tabula rasa. Most, were scathing in their criticism. The ‘Meta’ Opinion sorts pointed out that if it had people chatting about Jag for the first time in forever, that alone proved the work was a spot of genius. 


If you’re on Car Guy Instagram, the absolute collective hissing against this couldn’t have stood in more stark contrast. While LinkedIn Marketing Bros were more measured in their critiques, the Car World had a collective paroxysm. From boys of eight to grown stalwarts of eighty, the new Jag campaign was very clearly something to be *Jeremy Clarkson’s voice* “burned with fire”. 


In both worlds, there were the holdouts - those who held off on their opinion till an actual car would be forthcoming. This too came to pass, and the result was another vitriolic bunch of people moaning about how something so august as Jaguar could have made this misstep. It seemed there was absolutely nothing to save the situation. 


A few days ago, news filtered in that Jaguar had resorted to the oldest trick in the book; throwing their agency under the bus. And I felt that having ignored this entire issue thus far (well except for sharing a few juicy memes on the subject), it was time to share a point of view. 


No agency, not even Song, can hold a client hostage to putting out a campaign. The client commissioned the work, they possibly directed the agency towards this direction and even if they didn’t, they signed off on it. Now to call for a new agency, reeks of expediency. To me, this was even more toxic than a) the rebrand itself and b) the utterly horrendous car put out. 


I live in a bubble, and like to imagine people doing the right thing but it happens so rarely… but it would have in my humble opinion been a time for the brand to own up to a misstep and stand by their agency. Along with them they could have publicly craved for forgiveness, and gotten back to the legacy Jaguar brand and cars that we know and love. 


Change is a good thing. But brands live in the hearts of your consumers. Break them and they will break you right back. On that note, see you next Thursday! 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-ten-whats-the-value-of-what-inspires-you-44792.htm">InspiRAYtion Ten: What’s the value of what inspires you?</a> 


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekly column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 25: A Jaguar’s last Song

By Rayomand J Patell


Been a minute since my last article, got busy with a couple of pitches and you know how that goes. Well, I’m back and this time, in a departure from the usual, I’m here not on a Sunday morning but on a Thursday. It’s a holiday this time but going ahead, Thursday is the new Friday as they say. 


So let’s get down to it. I’ve been a Juror for a while and whether it’s one of the top shows in the country or some of the newer ones, I notice some anomalies when people enter. So if InspiRAYtion 23 talked about how to put a portfolio together, this one comes in at the other end of the spectrum - how to win an award by entering correctly. 


Here’s a tip - all Jurors are hoping to God, someone somewhere has done something cool AF to make judging worth the time and effort. We want to as Gustave says in Ratatouille, be a ‘friend of the new’. We want to say something is a breath of fresh air and mean it. We want to celebrate something that shouldn’t exist, we want to delight in something that was birthed against all the odds. We’re looking for magnificence so that we can reward it with as much gusto as we can. 


And along come the offenders. The piece entered in the wrong category. The piece that makes you wonder if the entrant understands what the category even is. The film case study sent in for… a normal print ad. The exact same case study entered in infinite categories. Because, why not? 


Please, I beg. When you’re entering a category, consider what the category even is and if your work does NOT fit, do NOT enter it in there. It’s soul destroying to have to slide it out at the short list stage for being incorrect. 


And if you’ve made a case study hurrah, but submitting the same case study in categories as diverse as Integrated to Print Craft… it’s enough to make the most optimistic of us want to head to the nearest bar. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-advertising-is-a-discipline-that-uses-many-mediums-37570.htm">InspiRAYtion: Advertising is a discipline, that uses many mediums</a> 


When you’re entering a category, try to pretend you were paying for the entry yourself. And then ask yourself - should this really be here. If the answer is no - don’t waste money, your CFO is bound to thank you. I’m all for maximising a piece’s chances, but someone with experience and awareness of its real chances is a prerequisite. Youth and optimism are wonderful but they are always beaten hollow by age and treachery. The selection of award show categories is a sniper’s game, not that of Rambo armed with multiple machine guns scattering fire all over. 


When you do a case study, ask yourself if it just must begin with ‘In India…’. Be nice to Jurors everywhere and stop using that phrase. It really grates on our collective nerves. 


Some people say your award case study must have a large budget. I say so long as you very quickly establish what the problem was and then demonstrate your awesome solution for it, you’ve got a Juror’s eyebrow perking up. If the rest of your case study is cogent, coherent and gets to the point of what you did first and foremost - you have a chance of it being studied deeper. But if you’re going to waffle about it, you risk running up against the wrath of Jurors bored out of their minds. You don’t need to outspend you need to outsmart and that, my young friends, can be done on a shoestring budget too. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-the-second-coming-of-suits-37970.htm">InspiRAYtion: The second coming of Suits</a> 


On another note, a lot of work at the shortlist stage is nothing to write home about. There’s a large body of stuff but even after the shortlist, the wide valley between a shortlist and a Merit, is Grand Canyonesque. If an idea could be done by any other brand in the category, it violates the first and foremost rule of differentiation. If in an integrated category you choose to show stuff that just ran in different mediums rather than integrating them meaningfully and driving traffic from one to the other beautifully (example The Bear and the Hare) there’s just no point. A piece of illustration may be killing it in a Craft category but have absolutely no merit in winning as an ad per se. 


If your agency has a series of Creative Reviews please attend them. You’ll understand how your ECD or NCD or CCO reacts to a room full of work. You’ll see what they pick up on and pick on. You’ll know when they lean in, that stuff is about to get real. Having the idea in the first place was about 1 percent of the work. The actual 99% of the work is in packaging it and giving it great context, so that it looks like the piece of genius a Juror is hellbent on finding. 


As we run up to Cannes - in a year when the networks are having a hard time, with the Independents running rings around them, it will be interesting to see what wins. My vote is on a return to or an elevation of Jury choices for work that operates at the human level. Using AI to talk to multiple people is so tech bro. But harnessing all that AI out there into something that touches the soul, that’s going to win big. At least, that’s my fervent wish. It is up to Jurors to celebrate the iconic each year and define the path advertising takes in the twelve months ahead. Make sure your piece, is something they want to celebrate for all the right reasons. Till we meet again! Have an inspiring week.


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 24: How to enter at an award show

By Rayomand J Patell

This is going to date me, but I began with a portfolio that was actually a large physical black case that held Art Pulls. These were very, very valuable because they had been professionally printed on high grade paper and would have your work in all the analogue glory the Print era could muster. Much later high res (short for resolution, not raise as some say) printing changed all that but I’m beginning at the beginning. 


Along with Art Pulls, came VHS tapes for the few commercials you’d done and audio tapes for the few radio spots you’d done and that was the analogue era which then slowly shifted to DVDs for films and then suddenly we entered the Mac Book Pro era to show off our work on a clear screen as jpegs or pdfs and we all hoped to God PPT wouldn’t crash (it would always, because Microsoft on Apple was always dodgy till fairly recently). 


And from lugging our Mac Book Pros around, some embraced having a website of their own work carefully curated and then everyone moved on to Behance and ilk. And suddenly, everyone became formatted into boxes on Behance. 


So here’s the thing. It’s not about the form of your portfolio. It’s about what’s in there that you’re showing, that sells the ultimate product: you. 


And I see a lot of portfolios where that just doesn’t happen. 


Here’s how to play it. 


Take the top ten mediums. Do work (if you read my past week’s column, you know it’s about what you can create, rather than what your agency can sell) that displays your mastery over the medium singularly. 


A film spot. A radio spot. A print ad. An outdoor campaign. A website design. A mobile app. A banner ad. An Instagram reel / carousel / static post. An SEO idea. And so on. Do ideas for each medium that demonstrate you get the discipline of Advertising and understand how to mess about creatively and push the envelope in each medium. Really push it. Like in Outdoor you should be at the level of the ‘It Also Sticks Handles To Teapots’ Araldite static version or the British Airways boy waves at airplane overhead innovation. And so on. That way, the person on the other side of the table knows you know your advertising history and have tried your best at going up against the greats. 


Once you’ve done that and you’re happy, turn your mind towards integrated work. 


Take a brand, get a core idea like “you’re not you when you’re hungry.” Get your own idea like that. No pressure. 


Now, go to town with it. 


What’ the film that leads people to the website. What’s the social that kicks in. What are people seeing on digital out of home, at the mall, at the airport and on their mobile screens… how are you bringing it all to a crescendo at launch and then taking it into digital conversations that pan out for the rest of the quarter or year even. 


Really master the art of bringing the same core idea together in an integrated manner and you’ll learn what being a creative leader is all about faster than any school or course can teach you. 


You may botch up on some mediums. But you’ll learn an invaluable lesson. How to think across the board like a General of Creativity, marshalling his Army, Navy and Air Force to win in the marketplace battle. And if you can demonstrate that convincingly in your portfolio… of individual ideas that showcase the strength of your craft followed by the magnificence of your ability to think up core creative ideas and deploy them in an integrated manner, why then this world and all it holds, will be yours. Just because you’re young and doing only banners shouldn’t stop you from playing CCO. Because how else are you ever going to be one?


Till we meet again! Have an inspiring week ahead, plotting and planning the most banging version of your portfolio. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-22-the-portfolio-show-me-what-you-can-create-not-what-your-agency-can-sell-58682.htm">InspiRAYtion 22: The Portfolio - show me what you can create, not what your agency can sell</a>


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 23: How to put together an inspiring portfolio

By Rayomand J Patell


So there I was, a five years in the biz Cub writer in front of Kersy Katrak himself. 


Since nobody will know who he was, let me say it was like being in front of an older Anselmo Ramos. 


Kersy’s agency had dominated the desi scene in the Seventies. He’d won everything there was to win at all the award shows of the time. When MCM, his uber hot agency came to an end, at least 10 new agencies that became mainstream giants were born out of his agency folk. So yeah… no pressure on yours truly! 


He had almost entirely retired by the time I met him at the Worli office of Rediff where he sat then, a legend enjoying the autumn of his life but yet very interested, very keen, very sharp. 


I’d gone to him to show him my work as a way of figuring if I had long term potential or whether I should just pack it in and be the lawyer my parents always thought I should have been. 


And so on the phone he’d told me to come by with some of my work. 


This drove me into a complete tizzy. 


All of it, was suddenly not worth showing. I had a complete panic attack and called him up to tell him so. 


And then he completely disarmed me by saying, “show me what you can create, rather than what your agency can sell, Rayo!”


OH man. That one line changed my life and in turn I’ve used it in every interview ever since when on the other side of the table. 


I walked into Kersy’s cabin a complete bag of nerves and was trembling more than a jelly bowl does. He put me at ease and from four p.m., we spoke till about nine or maybe ten p.m. 


It was the single most inspiring meeting I’ve ever had in my life. 


We talked abut life, the universe and everything. We talked of cabbages and kings. We talked about lyrics of songs. Beatles. Dylan. Hendrix. Jazz musicians. History. Art. Culture. Science. Innovation. Cars. Jack Kerouac. Beat poetry. Politics. Countries. Cities. His fondness for food. My fondness for food. (Put two Parsis together and this is bound to show up.) Who he admired. What they were currently doing. Everything under the sun. But, advertising. And that was the greatest lesson of them all. That it was life and all of it, that drove the best advertising. 


Somewhere at the fag end of it he asked me to show him my stuff. I could scarcely breathe as I showed him all my stuff that hadn’t gone through but which I was very proud of all the same. My little Rotomac campaign. Some bits on Parle. Some scripts on Tortoise mosquito coils. And when he nodded enthusiastically my heart thumped and when he pointed out a fly in the ointment which I hadn’t seen, it was SO gently done, I felt I was in the presence of a great Master, so evolved, that I couldn’t at all feel any ego. I was learning at the speed of empathy if that’s possible. 


At the end he said, “you have a gift with words.” Please use it all your life. It will always make you happy. Don’t worry about selling just now, keep writing. Hone your craft. 


I had walked into his room an advertising novice of five years roughly. I left his room with a feeling that I belonged. That one meeting changed my life, it made me never doubt ever again that advertising was going to be my lifelong career - and it changed my job because it gave me the courage to eventually move on to SSC&B Lintas, the hottest shop of that era. 


In the next episode, I’m going to write about what a modern portfolio should contain, but this one was abut remembering and cherishing that one meeting, that showed me what inspiration really means in this business. I hope that you find a similar Kersy who builds you up in your life. 


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 22: The Portfolio - show me what you can create, not what your agency can sell

By Rayomand J Patell


We recently picked up a large business for which I had to hire about three teams of Senior Copy and Art.


I was in a tearing hurry to fill the positions, so did what came naturally to me as in the past - fire up the ol’ LinkedIn account and put a post out. Here’s what it said: 


“Looking for six baby sharks. That's three Sr. Writers and three Sr. Art Directors who know, love and are obsessed by their craft. I have 6L CTC for each. 


We're at Parel East where McCann and Famous are at and we work out of our office most days of the week. 


Mainline experience preferred but so long as the writers know how to write - and the art directors have actually been to Art Schools like Ecole or JJ, I'm happy to meet you and hire you asap. 


This is for building out an A Team who will need to bring their A game to the table daily, for a client who's one of the largest in India. 


No pun-filled level of juvenile writing or non Art School candidates please. If you don't have released work, that's fine, show me what you can do. Show me what you wanted to do. Baby sharks just need an opportunity, I'm here to do that for you. 


Mail me directly on (my office email id) because I will not let AI get in the way of hiring no matter what.”


My inbox got hit almost constantly for the next couple of days from over a hundred aspirants. A few observations:


1. Nearly all mentioned they were so happy to be dealing directly with me rather than an AI empowered HR. I made it my business to respond to each and every email that came in and even when I was saying I’m sorry this skillset isn’t what I need at this time, they were so pleased to hear back and though it was a rejection, even then, they were happy about it being a clear no. 


Some took it very well and asked for specific feedback on their books, which though I didn’t have the time, I made the time to reply and that in turn won me some new friends. So I have to wonder - in all this keyword blah blah and all this AI blah blah, have we completely thrown the baby out with the bathwater? Hiring is one of the most delicate things you can do for your company. To leave it to tech to sort out and leave people guessing, seems to have become conventional practise. AI is categorically NOT to be used where the human touch matters most. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-twenty-pearls-before-swine-56064.htm">InspiRAYtion Twenty - pearls before swine</a> 


2. Many seemed to think I would now want them to do some assignment. Which really threw me. Your portfolio and interview are really enough to get you hired. When did we start adding this extra leg to things? I can understand a Copy Test for absolute cubs, but they all seemed to look at me expectantly about some real world project to be flung at them. So for the ones I did hire, the lack of an assignment seemed to almost be a disruption in the process. 


3. Despite the requirements being very clear, a fair amount of people wrote in who were just not what I needed. Shooting their shot as it were. Which is also fine at some level, but it wasn’t even the sort of person who might be an unconventional choice; it was maybe someone who was far more expensive or far more senior in terms of position. That bit made me worry about what’s going on in our economy for this cohort to write in. Finally, I had to edit my original ad with this:


“EDIT: Appreciate all the people writing in. But if you're a) not able to be in the office five days a week b) above 6L c) not a writer or art director first and foremost, please don't write in. This is a hardcore writing gig for digital, website, etc with the occasional film needed.”


4. The completely out of left field comment that came in from more than one person was a query - is this a real job posting or are you just doing it for the engagement? So after a little probing I got told that some agencies post fake postings for jobs, just to create an aura around them that they’re always hiring. You could have knocked me down with a feather. It was sad and funny at the same time. Who even does this? No wonder candidates are so sceptical. I asked them to scroll through my LinkedIn for a previous hiring post many moons ago to assure them this was the real McCoy. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/ghost-job-listings-in-advertising-a-fad-or-phenomenon-50331.htm">Ghost job listings in advertising: A fad or phenomenon?</a> 


5. For all of the vastly off the mark candidates, there were those few diamonds in the rough who wrote in and got hired pronto. They made the entire process worth it. I haven’t filled out the entire team yet but it’s a matter of time. Which made me feel happy that even in 2025, your vibe still attracts your tribe. But what if tech had gotten in the way of these people and their very charming emails to me? I’d have completely missed out on some of the finest options. Do yourself a favour. 

Try hiring people yourself the next time you do a round of creative hiring. It’s one of the most inspiring things I could have done, meeting so many interesting minds out there in a fortnight. Somewhere as creative leaders, we need to institute guardrails around tech getting in the way of the perfect candidate getting hired. Intuition, is everything. More so now than ever. 


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion 21: Is hiring broken?

Sometimes I get feedback that I write of an idealistic world, either one whose time has gone or one whose time should be there, but just isn’t, in 2025. 


And so the question arises. When you’re in a place that doesn’t value what you bring to the table, what should one do? 


Advertising is a meeting of minds. That creates a culture of optimism and out of that is born brave work clients want. They pay well for said brave work that really moves the needle and thus to quote the first Everest Creds Slide, “in our clients’ success, lies our own.”


So what do you do when your environment changes? 


Either there’s a new CEO who doesn’t care about making great Advertising; it’s just about taking on any client at any price to make the books look good rather than the work of the agency. 


Or the great agency of yesterday gets a super massive account and suddenly bloats three times its original size. Suddenly there’s fear and insecurity in the corridors. Politics rears its ugly head. What if we lose all this overnight? And from being an agency focused on great work, it descends into an agency focused on processes that allegedly minimise risk rather than getting the best ideas out there as before. 


Either way, when the vibe changes, what should you do?


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-19-work-from-how-about-we-all-just-work-53858.htm">InspiRAYtion 19: Work from? How about we all just… work?</a>


Umesh Shrikhande, my much beloved ex CEO always said, 'All of life’s problems have only two responses. One can get up. Or, one can shut up.'


Getting up is easier when you’re younger. Your CTC isn’t a problem. You have no responsibilities besides your own bills in that sense. And yet, some of Advertising’s most enduring successes are people who have gotten up when the occasion demanded that a line be drawn in the sand; a rubicon of thus far and no farther. 


You can also choose to shut up. Buckling down and focusing upon the work is always going to earn you the respect of the client, if nobody else within your system. Eventually, good things happen to good people and the clients follow them wherever they may go. 


Life is short. Be in a place where what you bring to the table is much respected. Money comes and goes, but your integrity can’t be bought. Should porcine laughter be filing your ears, comfort yourself with two thoughts; it’s not for much longer and once you’ve moved on, the place tends to crumble under the weight of its own hubris. Till next Sunday!


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

InspiRAYtion Twenty - pearls before swine

By Rayomand J Patell


WPP has been in the news lately with their return to office mandate. Right on cue, employees protested hard. Wasn’t this the same WPP that had braved the pandemic and smugly said productivity was actually up despite not being able to get out of our homes?


What gives? The conspiracy buffs on LinkedIn promptly got into overdrive claiming WPP wasn’t interested in keeping employees on and wanted to sack er right size. Whatever be the truth, time will tell as this is an evolving news story. 


Buttttt… almost simultaneously came the news that WPP having spent three months pitching for Starbucks also (and this is actually rather tragic) lost it in under a month. The wags have been having a field day about Mark Read switching to chai and so on. But, who did they lose it to? Anomaly, that’s who. 


I’m not doing the David vs Goliath thing because that’s not my point. 


But, there is one, the one I’m leading up to. 


2025 is the year of agile “creative first” nimble agencies. This term is fraught with stress for the average Suit and Planner, so let me call it the “work first” nimble agency. You heard it here first. 


Great teams are focused on the work. They get it done. Regardless of whether they’re in bed, or at work, in a plane, at a shoot, or on occasion, even in a client’s office. 


This whole fracas about returning to office is extremely myopic to my mind. 


How about the industry focuses on returning to do great work in the first place? 


Instead of asking for schedules, ask for how much the work rates on a Good Work Scale. The venerable JWT 10 Point Scale instituted by Craig Davis is a great place to start.


Support people and put processes in place to bring the A Game of your A Team to the table. If your star hitter is in traffic more than in presentations, a nimble agency is sure to poach her. 


Presenteeism in the office doesn’t really give birth to killer work. What does, is a meeting of minds. And that, can happen online, in a coffee shop, in the Metaverse (hello 2022s wet dream) and yes, in the office too. It’s for your team to decide. Why hire talented adults and treat them like Industrial Age factory workers? 


Size doesn’t matter. If everyone puts the work first, be they 10 member teams or numbering in the gazillions, you’ll hit many birds with one stone. Delivering Client winning work. Award winning work. Happiest Places To Work. And, that’s no er, Anomaly.


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-ten-whats-the-value-of-what-inspires-you-44792.htm">InspiRAYtion Ten: What’s the value of what inspires you?</a>

InspiRAYtion 19: Work from? How about we all just… work?

By Rayomand J Patell


What’s 2025 going to be like? Since everyone and his uncle have put out their wraps for 2024, here’s my entirely subjective bunch of opinions about the year to come. No bottles of vodka were opened during the writing of this article, I promise. 


We’re going to see WPP fold into itself. The venerable network will take good ol’ Ogilvy among others behind the barn and pull the trigger as they did with JWT, giving us a world in which OmniPublic (or whatever they choose to call the freshly merged Omnicom and IPG entity), WPP, Havas, Publicis and Dentsu are the only players left. From the Big Six to the Big Five. Will the Euro based Havas and Publicis start courting each other? Or will the very French Havas find love with the demure Asian beauty that is Dentsu? Time will tell. You read about it here first though. I see a future in which there are only the Big Four left a la the accounting world. 


AI is going to be simultaneously the next big thing, the next small thing, and even the completely forgotten about thing. Hold that thought, let me explain. It’s going to be the forgotten thing because it’ll be like electricity, which lets fridges cool Coke allowing a billion dollar business to flourish. What we do with AI (my favourite example so far has been the work on missing children and what they might look like when grown up after all these years have passed). Interesting things that far outshine the genie in the bottle that’s making it happen. 


As for the next big thing, I believe we’re still at iPhone One of equivalence. When we reach iPhone 4, that’s when we’ll be able to interconnect things in much more powerful workflows to create micro organisations and AI agents that will make billion dollar companies with under five employees possible. 


Read More: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/inspiraytion-17-will-the-biggest-agency-network-be-the-best-50471.htm">InspiRAYtion 17 - Will the biggest agency network be the best?</a>


And finally, as with apps, AI will also be the next very tiny thing but one which adds an incredible amount of value to your life. It is my belief that the Internet Of Things once AI enabled will finally give birth to products we haven’t seen yet. Digital Cuckoo Clocks that change the way the cuckoo animates basis the weather. Schtoopid but fun all the same. I’d love one. 


From the high falutin’ to the low brow of crass commerce, what course AI takes when the Copyright Lawyers get in on the action in the largest class action suits seen since the days of Big Tobacco, is moot. While it is tempting to be a complete Luddite and say AI shouldn’t be trained upon the creative efforts of others, we’ve seen this picture before, of Limewire versus the Music Industry. Money always makes everything work, and so artists who get paid a la musicians on Spotify or Apple Music may well agree to have their work in public domain. Alternatively, should they choose to opt out, their exposure might be curtailed. We live in interesting times for sure, on this score. My bet? That money and a lot of it will change hands and creators will be given their fair due to let LLMs learn upon their output. 


Moving on, I believe Meta and Google as the world’s display networks will face a significant disruption. Aside from oceans of ad fraud. Yes they can serve the right message to the right person at the right time. But advertising is about generalisation of awareness to large oceans worth of audiences, rather than micro targeting at this ‘bottom of funnel’ nerd holy grail. If you were going to buy something you’d buy it anyway. Personally, if Microsoft suddenly finds a new leader to rally around, owned digital assets in the form of websites really can make both social networks and display ads sweat for ad dollars in 2025. Make websites great again in 2025 is what I feel someone will work hard towards. It still gets my goat, that Meta is essentially charging you to talk to your own hard won followers. 


It is my belief that DOOH and Mobile in particular, will hook up and find everlasting passion. Outdoor has been enjoying a quiet resurgence over the last 12 months and with DOOH and the possibilities it offers, when given an overlay of things you can do that complement the brand message, through your phone, with a little bit of generative AI in real time even… we’re going to see some mad magic happen. The future is here and at the Laqshya Group yours truly is working hard to harness it for clients. If you’d like to know more on the power of merging large spectacle with tech personalisation for your brand, hit me up. 


And last but not the least, agencies are going to reorder themselves in terms of quality. At the very top end, will be the hand made Swiss watch equivalents. Humans making ads for humans will be a luxury only the top end of the market can buy. Then, there’ll be a vast ocean of the middle, all the way from the Omegas to the Timexes. And right at the bottom, will be novelty timepieces. Rubber alarm clocks you can fling about the room in frustration for example. Time, (no pun intended), will tell. 


Have a lovely Christmas and see you in 2025!


Rayomand J Patell is an advertising veteran and InspiRAYtion is a weekend column on everything about advertising and marketing.

INSPIRAYTION