Over the last few days tributes have been pouring for Piyush Pandey. His passing away is a great loss for the world of brands and advertising. His work & legacy touched millions of lives as witnessed by the heartfelt expressions from not just advertising & marketing folks but common people too. While reading the various articles & social media posts about him, I was reflecting on a couple of aspects that he was known for: earning the respect of brand owners for his craft and love from end consumers for the output. So many CEOs, brand managers and companies have lovingly remembered his contribution to their company’s success. That is proof of the role of advertising (when done right) in a brand’s success. And how ad agencies play a critical role there.

Every profession, practice or industry changes over time. Am sure veteran journalists feel that media has changed beyond recognition today when compared to say, the 1990s or early 2000s. Similarly with advertising – it is so different from the era I was a rookie in the ad business. One key aspect: I feel the industry had much better access to the CEO or the Board couple of decades ago. One typically associates such access to the ‘big consulting company’. Beyond access, it was also about being perceived as a business partner whose words carried weight. Today, companies pay millions of dollars to consultants on several aspects of a business from organisational restructuring, diversification, portfolio management, brand positioning, product roadmap and so on. Clients behaved differently towards ad agencies too. Many had their CEOs work hands on with their ad agency partners.

At the risk of sounding like a crotchety old man, the perception of the ad agency business has changed for the worse. Ad agencies are seen as vendors. Agency-client tenures are shorter (with a handful of exceptions) and even transactional, limited to projects. Many agencies work on the same brand while the earlier norm was to have a ‘custodian’ in one agency who steered the singular brand idea.

The ad agency world is unique. It is creative but with constraints of meeting a specific brand need. It can be fulfilling yet frustrating. It is an ‘industry’ but without the need for any specific degree or it’s own universally understood ‘professional language’ (like legalese or medical terminology). The edge we bring is in deep consumer understanding, in telling an engaging story albeit in 30 seconds, being able to appeal to them in a language that results in mental and behavioural change. That’s what Piyush mastered. And while doing so, he made a difference to the brands which earned him respect and access to the highest offices in a client company.

Clients accepted Piyush’s wisdom, communication recommendations and creativity out of respect for his skills, not just for his designation. If latter were to be the case, every Executive Vice President would have it easy in terms of managing clients and getting everything approved. But that’s not the case. Most of the ad agency world struggles with re-work, unreasonable demands (mostly of what needs to be said or what all needs to be said in 30 seconds) and being able to have a clutter-breaking creative published. As we know, a majority of the ads out there are not even noticed. And outputs from big advertisers are mostly average at best, ticking off category codes with predictable story lines.

There’s a complex combination of reasons for the state of traditional advertising agencies today. It all probably started with hiving off the media departments into separate agencies and moving to a retainer fee system. It was a race to the bottom after that with rival agencies undercutting each other. It was difficult to pay well, hire and keep good talent. Yet, many like Piyush Pandey kept the faith and managed to weave magic for their brands. Today margins are probably even thinner, competition is in various shapes & forms (including influencer advertising on platforms like Instagram) social media focused digital agencies, and of course the threat of ‘AI can do that’. Agencies are partly to blame for the state of affairs. Traditional big agency is unable to match the creativity of some of the content produced by micro-influencers. On Instagram many individuals create engaging content (in the style they are known for) for paid promotions. Many of them are pretty creative and brands must be seeing it as great ROI.

In this context, we all must strive to learn from Piyush. Specifically: (a) consumer understanding (b) ‘bat on front foot’ – thinking big and being able to recommend bold ideas with confidence (c) fighting the good fight (d) weaving an engaging brand story that is relevant to the platform – be it TV, social, outdoor or radio and (e) earning the respect of the CMO as brand custodians whose advice is to be sought, respected and implemented. I am not suggesting that all of us are a match for Piyush’s talent and creativity. He was one-of-a-kind. But we can try to make the clients see the unseen and bring alive the brand’s potential. As Anand Narasimha said so well:

Piyush transformed:
A carpenter’s glue into a much-loved household name.
A chocolate bar into an expression of pure joy.
A paint brand into a canvas of warmth and individuality.
A telecom service into a voice of empathy.
And a diverse, noisy nation into one unified emotion.

At a time when everyone now obsesses over micro-segmentation and hyper-personalization, Piyush did something rarer.

He created ideas that united people. Ideas that crossed age, language, class, and region. Ideas that reminded us we are more alike than different.

All of this is easier said than done but we can do to carry forward Piyush’s legacy in our own small way. Can we resist when asked to create some ‘moment marketing’ post or film for a laminate brand on ‘Word Doctor’s Day’? Question why a brand needs to create that ‘Happy Diwali’ film if it does not make any business sense. Try a little harder to get better client briefs, sell better creative ideas and resist the insipid ones.

A crucial aspect of this will be played by those orchestrating the client’s brand communications from the agency side. Their ability to understand the category trends, consumer behaviour, their need & motivations, the role of advertising, creative strategy and direction, being able to ‘sell’ the creative and build client relationships will come into play. Many agencies have specialists in planners and creative teams who interact with clients directly to handle all of these. The relevance of the quintessential ‘account guy’ is under threat, if not vanished completely.

The agency remuneration model is at the heart of enabling this. When it feels like an account is under threat always, service businesses tend to say yes to all client demands including unreasonable ones. The relationship is one of a vendor rather than a partner. If the compensation doesn’t allow for investments in talent and training, the change to a true business partner will only remain a pipe dream. Hope we stay true to ‘kuch khaas hai’ in advertising.