<b>Chetan Sachdev</b>, Regional Director, Craft Worldwide India

India is far more complex, if you had to compare it with Europe. Yes, there are cultural differences in Europe as well but by and large the imagery is fairly consistent and homogenous; because the social stratification and education is such that you can have communication that works across the board. You regionalise it for bits and pieces and language, but you are not looking at the lowest common denominator when you are creating communication. So, India is complex from that point of view, which is why the extra science helps.

Chetan Sachdev, Regional Director, Craft Worldwide India is responsible for building and driving the organisation's strategy in India. It is his second stint with McCann Worldgroup, having previously worked for 19 years with the company.

Prior to returning, he was Managing Director for Tag Worldwide India. He was responsible for building the India operation, with fully-integrated centralised operation servicing clients across South Asia, Europe and APAC.

Sachdev’s primary experience and reputation comes from creating robust, scalable execution and delivery platforms that are bespoke to client and agency processes.

Craft Worldwide, a unique adaptation and production business unit of McCann Worldgroup, launched globally in December last year, aims to optimise savings for clients with an innovative, client-centric operating model and an emphasis on the craft of execution.

Talking to exchang4media’s Priyanka Mehra, Sachdev talks about the Craft model, place and need for the model in the India market, learnings, project mix, 2013 plans and more…

Q. How does the Craft model work? What is the place for this model in the India market?

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Traditionally advertising agencies are have always been full-service agencies. The Craft model actually comes in and questions the integrated model. It gets the execution space to a far more specialised and focussed area. For e.g. normally studios are relegated to the backend; they are never the focus area despite the fact that they are at the hub of the creative execution. Craft is not into creating a big idea but crafting that thought into various executions. It is still integrated, as we are part of the McCann Worldgroup and all disciplines are integrated, it takes from being a straight linear process to saying advertising or creative becomes as specialised in a way as the execution needs to be.

The second place where the Craft model works is when you look at global clients such as Mastercard, Coca-Cola, Unilever, etc.; they start from developing a main thought and what is globally the brand footprint. The same thought then gets adapted in different markets. For e.g. Dove advertising is all about candidates speaking to the camera format. So, the format exists and the adaptation means you regionalise it in the Indian context.

When a client chooses a network agency, it chooses one for its geographical presence. If a client is in 90 different markets, it would look for an agency that would have presence in majority of those markets. The strength of Craft is we can actually centralise the entire thing and say you don’t need to operate from these many markets. The way we are structured, we can still get local stimuli and insights, and create and adapt work for the rest of the world.

Q. Do you seeing a growing need for such a model in a market such as India?

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The model becomes important for India for two reasons. India is a continent by itself, with the varied number of languages it has. When any advertising is created, it is normally created in English or Hindi and then gets translated in other languages. There are chances that the messages could be sub optimal as it is a translation, and not been scripted in that language. The essence and context could be right but the flavour might be missing. Transcreation or translation is a large part of our business. So, we will take thought and instead of translating it, we will transcreate it. So India presents a huge opportunity.

Secondly, because we are global and while we bring global campaigns to India and adapt, in the same way there are lot of Indian companies that are going global. Dabur for e.g. has got a fairly large Middle East footprint. There are other companies that may not have a large global footprint, but have a fairly large Indian Diaspora. Canada, for example, may need support with Punjabi language for certain brands. This is the manner in which we are working on getting Indian brands international.

Q. What is Craft Worldwide’s focus for 2013?

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India is very strategically important to us, which is why we had our launch event here. India, for us, is also a large hub where we will do work for the other markets; lower cost being one reason while the talent here is the larger story.

We are setting up a fairly large broadcast facility – the only broadcast facility for us globally and it is going to be in India. We are also creating a big translation hub in the country both, for domestic as well as international clients. Other than that, going after new opportunities and consolidation of our businesses, improving processes and giving more returns to the client is our focus this year. Currently, we are 85 people; we could look to go to about 150 in the coming quarters.

Q. What is the kind of mix of the work coming from Craft Worldwide currently?

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We have inherited all the production business of the McCann Worldgroup – 60-odd brands. We have added another 20 projects. We are pitching for new businesses. Also, the international business is starting to come in. The last three to four months have been fairly intense with conversations with both, domestic and international clients.

Q. What have been some of your learnings from the Indian market?

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India is far more complex, if you had to compare it with Europe. Yes, there are cultural differences in Europe as well but by and large the imagery is fairly consistent and homogenous; because the social stratification and education is such that you can have communication that works across the board. You regionalise it for bits and pieces and language, but you are not looking at the lowest common denominator when you are creating communication. So, India is complex from that point of view, which is why the extra science helps.

The Indian market is starting to get more organized. It still doesn’t have the processes of the western world; we tend to do more things thinking on our feet rather than have a planning cycle. A little process and technology can go a long way in this country. The model has a place overall in the global scheme of things and more so in a country like India, and other growth economies like India.

Also, price sensitivity is present in other markets but their curve of reaction is different from a growth economy like India wherein within weeks you could lose a fair amount of market size.

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