Unilever Indonesia boss warns awards-chasing agencies ‘never forget your purpose’
Hement Bakshi presents at Asia Pacific Media Forum this morning
The head of one Unilever’s most important global markets, Indonesia, said today that agencies should not forget their purpose in their pursuit of awards.
Talking to Mumbrella after making the opening presentation at the Asia Pacific Media Forum in Bali this morning, Hemant Bakshi, president director of Unilever Indonesia, was asked what he thought of agencies producing a large volume of work to help good causes at this time of year, just before the deadline for Cannes Lions.
“I personally think there’s nothing wrong with awards,” he said. “Therefore if you do quality work and it gets recognised, we all want that. But when work is done for awards and not for the consumer then that is shallow, it’s unauthentic. It’s honestly not worth it.”
“We should never forget why we’re here. We’re here to serve our consumers. Agencies are there to help us tell better stories. That’s their purpose. Their purpose is not just to win awards.”
Bakshi’s comments came after he delivered a candid presentation to media executives, warning against complacency at a time of great change.
Unilever’s target audience that just a few years ago was reachable almost entirely by television in Indonesia, has shifted dramatically, Bakshi commented.
“Sixty per cent of consumers see our advertising on TV a lot. But after that you can double or triple spend [on television], but you cannot go beyond 70% [reach]. Eighty million people [in Indonesia] can’t be reached through television anymore,” he said.
Bakshi shared a story about a meeting he had had with the head of a big advertising agency recently.
“He said, ‘I’ve heard that agencies are going to die, but business is good, I’m not worried.’ But I say to him that change is not far away, change is very much here.”
“We’ve managed change before. But this is different. We’ve never seen change like this,” said Bakshi, who added that his company, which is the world’s largest advertiser, is going through a period of significant transition to adapt to a consumer landscape upended by technology.
“Our organisation has to be reshaped. A completely new Unilever has to be ready to take on a completely new world,” he said.
It is great that a client with the gravitas of a Unilever is issuing this scam warning…we need more meaningful clients to come out and restate this, till it sinks in.
Lastly, Im sure he’s right about consumers migrating from TV is a big way…to the big, self-absorbed bubble of their social media accounts….but getting them to pay attention there is no easy job. Flooding their social media with a mountain of shit content is going to be ignored…because they have 100% control…so the only solution is, the creative HAS to be more compelling. It’s the only way. You need creatives who spend all their time cracking this challenge…not some scam brief issued by the global CCO to make him look good at Cannes.
It is worrying that the current ECDs who are mostly the product of the furiously scamming generation apply the same creativity filters of scamvertising to the serious business of real briefs.
ReplyThe change has to be in Mindset. From marketing to consumers via creativity, to marketing with consumers via authenticity and honesty.
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