What Dheeraj Sinha teaches about brand purpose

India is ready for what we call the wave 3. Wave 3 is when you have the marketing story embedded in the product. Hi, Dheeraj. Thank you for coming. Fantastic to have somebody who's at the forefront of the battle for the consumer's mind, heart, wallet. I know Leo Bennett's been doing some great work. But I want to actually talk to you a little more about the agency itself. Because Leo Bennett has always been an agency which has led the way with culture, with change. This is really a moment that calls for dramatic changes in the way agencies are run. Yeah.

So, talk to us about that. Talk to us about what you are doing at Leo Bennett, what your mandate is, how you are building that culture and how you are adapting to this crazy world outside which changes by the day. Yeah. So, you know, the whole idea at Leo Bennett is we are building a new age agency. Right now, what we are doing is not something that you need to attend a new conference or read a new book to understand. I think the writing is on the wall for what the agency of the future should be like. Right.

But it needs a lot of commitment and grit to be able to build the agency that's required for the future. So, in terms of the first core definition is the kind of work that we are passionate about. And we call that the maker work or the wave three work. So, India, if you look at the first round of work was very good, you know, English copywriting-led work. And which is what the global flavor was. Absolutely fantastic order of work. The second big revolution in India was when we embraced vernacular and language and Indianness. Right.

We feel that India is ready for what we call the wave three. Wave three is when you have the marketing story embedded in the product. So, when you build Bajaj V, it's a product. I mean, the ad that you make out of after that is insignificant, really, because people are buying the story through the product. Wave three is branded utilities. It's doing a Netflix series for a brand. Wave three is building a technology platform. So, that's what wave three work is. It's not just using the traditional material that advertising use, which is words and images.

It is using newer materials. And that's what makes it the most interesting time to be in the business at this point in time. How have roles changed in an agency? For example, has the creative director's role actually become that of a curator of content or ideas? Yeah. Has account management changed? Because now the distance between information and brands and marketing and the agency has sort of shrunk so much. Yeah. Is there still a role for the planner? Yeah. What's happening to those traditional roles in a way? Yeah.

So, hugely, I mean, roles are changing dramatically. But more important, the culture is changing, right? I mean, classically, you've had agencies which are either creative-led or strategy-led or say, business-led. And we've also built personalities around departments. Yeah. And we've built cultures around departments. And I have learned that to a degree of fault. I mean, having been part of some of those cultures. So, if somebody asks me, what is the culture of planning in Leoburnet, there's no culture of planning in Leoburnet.

What is the culture of creative in Leoburnet? There's no culture of creative in Leoburnet. There's the culture of Leoburnet. Very nice. Right? And everybody is building that culture of Leoburnet where we are all heads in the bucket. You know, what we hold really dear is the sense of camaraderie, of people standing up for each other, backing each other off, and making each other better than what you are. There are no silos. I mean, there are times that I would crack a creative line.

There are times that Raj, who's my creative partner, would crack the strategy. Because we've all spent 20 years in this business. We know strategy. We know brand. We know insight. We know creativity. It has to be all fused together. And you have to keep your ego outside the room to say that, yes, I have put an idea on the table and I'm willing for 100 people to take that idea and take it to greatness. So we're building a culture where A, all heads are in the bucket. Our KRAs across departments are exactly the same.

So the KRA sheet that I have signed and Raj has signed is exactly the same. I have creativity. I have can. I have effectiveness. I have revenue. I have profit. And I have culture on my KRA. And my creative partner has exactly the same KRA. And that then goes across and goes down till the level of account executives. So creative people are now sitting with strategies and discussing, okay, we have a data point that this guy wakes up in the morning and first thing he does is check out LinkedIn.

Now what do I do with my brand using this data point on LinkedIn? That's the conversation creative guys having in the agency. And the account manager says, okay, I have this tie up with this platform. I can make this happen. Yeah. Right. So huge amount of flattening of the egos and the hierarchy. So it's very interesting that, you know, you spoke about KPIs. I've been an advertising agency guy who went and became a marketeer and realized that my clients actually had very tough lives. Yeah.

And then became a business person and I've sort of done the full round. Yes. In that sense, I've often wondered if agencies should have been and maybe now are more performance driven from the point of view of business KPIs for their clients. Absolutely. They, I mean, as a culture is Leo Burnett obsessed with the delivery of the brand's KPIs. Absolutely. They don't appreciate how tough it is being on the client side, right? Advertising at some levels has been in a fool's paradise to say that I have sexy ideas, right?

But my client is not buying, but dude, your sexy ideas are not solving client's problem. So how will he or she buy that? Right? So we've realized that very early on. So we don't do any scams. We don't do ideas which are not on clients' businesses. So all our ideas are there to solve clients' problems and business problems. So to give you an example, what Raj and I run is called a Fight Club, where Raj gets 15 executive creative directors and we get five work clients to brief us on their business problems.

And then these creative directors work on those problems and we curate those solutions over a period of month. And then we have a few years to keep a year market day where the client comes and buys those ideas. So they're real business problems and creative solutions, not advertising led, which are solving those problems. Everything at Leo Burnett is geared. Creativity is geared to solve real business problems in ways other than advertising as well. And that's what I think is giving us traction because clients just love that. Awesome.

I mean, more power to you. I just want to get to know you a little better. I want everybody to get to know you a little better. Running an agency is not an easy job. I know that. It's an all-consuming job. Right? Especially if you're passionate like you are. What's life outside of work for you? Where do you get your energy, motivation, ideas? Yeah. So I have to admit, you know, a lot of people come to me and say, what's work-life balance? I'm like, there is no balance, at least at this point in time. So it's really hectic. It's all in the bucket.

But I'm a father to two kids, a 14-year-old and a 5-year-old. So whatever time I get, so when I come back from a trip and the house door opens and my little one comes and hugs me, everything kind of melts away. So that's really the stress buster right now to spend as much time as I can with my family. I mean, I've written two books, always been wanting to write the third one. So that's the thing on my mind to spend some more time writing. Because that's writing is also my stress buster. It leads to new ideas.

It helps you empty everything that's in your mind and move on to the next piece. Wonderful. We'll wait for that book. And hopefully we'll have you back to talk more about what that book is going to be about. Absolutely.