'Those who understand humans will win in advertising’: Ogilvy veterans Devika Bulchandani, Piyush Pandey on the future of advertising

Devika Bulchandani, Global CEO of Ogilvy, and Piyush Pandey, Chairman-Global Creative and Executive Chairman of Ogilvy India, are part of one of the world’s most respected advertising agencies. A part of the £14.43-billion WPP, Ogilvy, across the world, has been the brains behind some of the best advertising campaigns. India is no exception and its work on Asian Paints, Mondelez, and Pidilite, among others, is testimony to its creative prowess. And New York-based Bulchandani, 54, and Mumbai-based Pandey, 68, are two of the biggest names in the field. The advertising veterans, in an interaction with Business Today’s Krishna Gopalan, talk about their work, what advertising will look like, the Indianness factor and of course, that word called data and what comes with it. Edited excerpts:

Q: Devika, you are now on an already long and growing list of Indian-origin CEOs in the corner office. And you are not one from the world of technology…

DB: Once a week I get an infographic of that list. Honestly, I would just ignore it and move on. One day, I decided to take a close look at it. I realised it was predominantly tech and then there was Starbucks’ CEO or someone from biotech. There was not one name from the creative world, except me! Yes, seeing my name was a moment of pride though I still wonder why I am next to Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) or Sundar Pichai (CEO of Alphabet) since they are at a very different scale. The realisation did set in at that point and that really meant something.

I then started to look for something else… I wanted to know how many of them were clients of ours! While they all have their individual worlds—a lot of them are clients of WPP in some way—I then said to myself, ‘I got you all!’. It was my way of not feeling small.

Q: From Amritsar to Welham Girls’ School in Dehradun to St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai to the University of Southern California and now the big boss at Ogilvy, it has been an interesting ride, hasn’t it?

DB: I don’t think so hard about it. My son does get a little curious about the whole thing and says, ‘Mom, tell me about the journey,’ and I keep saying it is too boring and don’t want to reflect back in time... Living the moment is also delusional. I think of tomorrow and the best I can do is put one foot forward. People ask me for a five-year plan. I had no idea the pandemic would happen nor did I expect AI... My personality is really about figuring out ‘how to get it done’. That means you have a plan but that has to be achievable. If you create these pies in the sky, you cannot get things done. It does drive my son crazy and he wants to know about what it was like for me to grow up in Amritsar and I am not too keen on that part.

Someone asked me what it is like to lead like a woman and I said, ‘I have been doing it for a while.’ What is becoming more important is to lead like an Indian. I would not have said that, say, 10 years ago. The bit on Indian is something I now think about a lot because it means bringing cultural nuances. I live in New York City and I invite people home—[they] could be my team, clients, and everybody asks, ‘You are going to have a dinner at home?’ It’s a very normal Indian thing to do. I spent all these years trying to fit into the US way of doing things and I reached a certain point when I told myself that’s the wrong approach.

Q: What was the tipping point?

DB: The first seven years in the US were about wanting to belong (I moved there in 1993). I was not very comfortable and spent a lot of time with Indians. My son was born and I did not want to raise him in a little bubble of Indianness. If I did that, there was no point being in the US and I could have just moved back. It was important to make that effort to embrace American culture and put myself out of my own comfort zone. Then, I spent a period of my time wanting to fit in, make friends and break the boundaries. Then you reach a point where you realise you have done all of that. Now, it is time to get back to the roots since you have a seat at the table and I want to do that as an Indian.

Q: You have over 70 years of experience between yourselves. Why is the present moment so exciting as far as being in advertising goes?

PP: The opportunity to express that you are Indian and your Indianness and then be expressive about a whole lot of things is the greatest. My idea can reach people in the most unexpected places and to me that’s the big excitement.

DB: If I go back 10-15 years, advertising was a lot simpler and we did not have the media landscape of today. But we also did not have the ability to do the kind of things we do now. At a very basic level, the ability to touch hearts and minds of people is exciting. Today, we can change the course of society and culture or policy. Take Dove and the Crown Act (known as the Crown Act, it stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair to ensure protection against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles) in the US and ratified in over 26 states. We could not have dreamt of this 10 years ago. Or the kids online safety Act (the bill ‘sets out requirements’ to protect minors from ‘harm’ on social media platforms) again with Dove. In Honduras, using the morning-after pill (it was the only nation in the Americas with an absolute ban on both the sale and use of emergency contraception, referred to as the morning-after or Plan B pills) could lead to women being imprisoned for six years even if they were raped. With a creative idea, a law was changed and it was legalised. When people say, ‘Those were the days,’ my view is, ‘The days are now!’ Yes, there is a greater level of complication, but there is much more potential to do things that will have a shelf life beyond our own lives.

Q: What kind of complications are you speaking of in a broad sense?

DB: There is technology, data, plus media fragmentation. All that leads to complications.

PP: There is also too much of information. Complications mean you get so influenced by all this and you want me to follow this data. Suddenly, you forget why you wanted to use that data in the first place. That kind of slavery to technology becomes a complication.

Q: How can you get past that?

DB: I don’t think it’s about getting past data. Rather, you must embrace the usefulness of it. But we are only human and we are not talking enough on our condition. At the end of that data or technology or whatever stimulus we are putting into the world, we are all motivated by very similar things like love, friendship, care, laughter or connectivity. Those things are what drive the human condition. That will not change.

Q: Do you want to hazard a guess on what advertising will look like in the next 5-10 years?

DB: I think there will be more nonsense and crappy content. But the people who will win are those who understand humans well.

PP: In fact, when we keep speaking to each other, we agree that idea is God.

DB: IBM did a study across 1,500 CEOs. The question put forth was, ‘What are the most important values for your company?’ Integrity was at No. 2 and can you guess what topped the list? It was creativity. When I talk directly to CMOs, things happen a lot faster. As things go down the organisation, it’s about someone’s job being data or influencer marketing and I get that since it is about livelihood. But the idea is nobody’s job. Actually, jobs have become siloed channels and we have created an industry that is thinking that way.

Q: There is a spree of inorganic activity across the world with digital agencies being acquired. How do you view this?

DB: If you don’t look at it through the lens of an agency and just a business, my belief is that at the core, identifying the adjacencies is important. It must be a healthy, vital business and one that offers scaleable, sustainable growth. What’s happened in the agency world is about, ‘Oh my God, here is digital transformation and I am going to make this acquisition!’ We are constantly trying to make ourselves something else and that is where the role of holding companies becomes important.

But at a brand level or the agencies, we must think about our core and how we evolve our offering in the marketplace. Let me give you an example here. One of the questions I ask all the time in relation to acquisitions (and we have a lot of assets across the world) is who’s our buyer? If our buyer is not the marketing organisation, then the question is should we be going to a different buyer? I don’t have an answer to that but it is a strategic question. Then, I need to understand what my organisation is since all I have is talent. It’s the same thing our clients do. They want to know who’s buying their products and what am I creating since all I have is people. When I am told how our client leaders need to sell digital transformation, my reaction is ‘How?’ They have grown up doing something else. Sometimes, we forget to have strategic discussions about our own business and we get enamoured by new things because the narrative is doom and gloom. For instance, it could be panic about ‘Deloitte is coming or Facebook is here or what do I do with AI?’ Then, you stop to think strategically.

PP: We are still here and evolving. Two months ago, I went to deliver a lecture at Deloitte. I think times are changing. It was about creativity and the value of ideas. The first thing I told them was you guys are used to Deloitte and I am going to talk to you about delight!

Q: What does it mean to be a woman CEO in the modern world? Do you wake up to that thought each morning?

DB: I wake up in the morning wondering what problem I have to tackle! There is an indication of a shift but it’s not easy to answer that question. There are days when I think it’s tougher to be a woman leader and that’s not because of what the world expects of me. Rather, it’s about what I expect of myself. Perhaps, a male boss would have done something differently and there are days when I want to make myself inaccessible and five minutes later, it’s about ‘Who am I kidding?’ Honestly, it’s no straight journey and I don’t wake up to one thought. It must be a constant work in progress. The secret is just to get on with it and keep moving. It’s very important for me to show other women that it can be done and I am quite militant about it. They must get a seat at the table but I don’t stand up at forums to say that. Someone once told me about how I never speak about being a brown woman. My response was, ‘I never speak about being a woman.’ To me, you just act it by giving someone a seat at the table. My view is talk is easy but action is hard. My goal in life is to get an award that is not for women. Nothing would make me happier than being acknowledged as a professional leader.

@krishnagopalan

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