Talent needs mentorship

Talent needs mentorship

Interview By Azhar Bukhari
TALENT alone is not enough, it needs mentorship, which Pakistan lacks, stresses Brig (r) Zubair Rehan, Managing Director of Creative Junction, a noted ad agency.
In an exclusive interview, Rehan disdains the rise of mediocrity and compromise on quality, particularly in the advertising industry.
As the Managing Director of Creative Junction, he observes, mediocrity on single factor – the dearth of leadership, saying “The lack of leadership in fact the acute absence of guidance has restricted the growth of advertising to an institution despite availability of immense talents and resources.”
He observed that most of the people dealing in the ad industry inherited running advertising agencies from their ancestors here in our country, though they are incapable of seeing beyond their noses to realise that they have to return something to the system they got benefit.
“There has been no attempt to make an investment in people. To develop, nurture and groom the raw talent that we have in abundance,” Rehan maintained.
These concerns need to be taken seriously by the advertising industry, or what passes for it, as Rehan has worked his way up since he started his career in advertising “by an accident” even before his past belongs to such a profession where following the strict discipline is only way to survive. He also explains why he feels that it gives his “un-inherited” agency a “professional edge.”
Besides the lack of leadership another major deterrent to groom the talents is the economic reality itself, adds Rehan. “It is not that there is a dearth of talents. This is obvious from one simple fact: Despite jobs being in short supply everybody seems to be looking out for quality employees. And yet the search remain futile as while advertising is all about common sense, I myself did not know anything about it when I started my career with Creative Junction, there are no venues to find, develop and groom the inherent talents.
There are no schools specialising in advertising to groom the natural-born talent for advertising.
“Merit did not matter, what matters more are the connections. Things are being definitely changed for better due to wider penetration of airwaves by the satellite channels changing the way the consumers think. They have become more educated and informed to become more demanding in turn. The exposure has made advertising companies, and for that matter their clients, more sensitive to the needs of consumers realizing that old formulae would not work anymore.”
“Advertising in Pakistan still keeps reeling from the creative flair and the execution it requires. An advertising agency is good if it is sincere with its client. If a client is good agency would also be good and vice versa. However, don’t expect an advertising company to turn a concept into an affective commercial if the client is not willing to provide the environment, the people, the frame-work and the last but not the least the appropriate funds? Demanding quality output without providing quality input can hardly be expected to work. Quality has a price.”
He maintained that it is also important to understand that unlike many other countries, including India, lack of professionalism and creativity in the Pakistani advertising industry can also be attributed to dearth of technical skills. It is an established fact that advertising industry draws its strength from the film industry. We are all aware of the lack of professionalism and technical know-how in our film industry and thus our ad-industry is unable to draw the needed technical backup, Rehan said.
MD creative Junction observed that restricted growth of the ad-industry could also be attributed to the ground realities of the Pakistani market. The industry’s performance depends heavily on the performance of the other sectors of the economy and the reason for the changing role of the advertising agencies from that of mere providers of traditional services as print and audio-visuals. In the digital world of today, they have to provide a range of services like marketing, event manager and brand builder all wrapped up in one.
While the expansion has helped many advertising agencies to diversify their business to find alternative sources of revenue to achieve economies of scale it has also put an enormous burden on work on them, Rehan expressed his concerns over clients’ attitude, as they try to take an advantage of this situation by pressing the advertising agencies to do the consumer research as of it is part of the job. Is consumer research a part and parcel of an advertising campaign, he said candidly.
“Consumer research is a specialized job which requires money. Asking the ad-companies to carryout consumer research is unfair indeed. We at Creative Junction have done such researches but it’s just not fair for a client to expect an advertising agency to do it without paying for it,” he maintained.
Answering the question regarding future of advertising industry in Pakistan, Rehan observed that it belongs to ‘brand development.’ We must realize that advertising is just a part of brand building and not the other way around. Look around; even war is brand development today. ‘Shock and Awe’ and ‘Operation Liberation Iraq’ are brand building advertising campaigns. However, it must also be realized that advertising can-not sell a bad product. In fact, advertising would do increased damage to a bad product.”
“I strongly believe that the future of brand marketing lies well beyond the traditional advertising form that revolves primarily around TV spot and print ads at present. Definitely advertising will change its shape and form in the future.”
However, Rehan said that the future would be about the unusual, not the usual. Brands in the future would need liberating, re-defining brand ideas, which would matter more than the form in which they appear.
To be a successful brand in the future, Rehan believed that it is important to embrace this “beyond advertising” attitude as a marketing mantra. However, he urged the government to promote the ad-industry by giving it ads purely on the basis on merit.

Profile

Brig (r) Zubair Rehan is Managing Director of Creative Junction, a premier full-service ad agency operating from Lahore.
It has a range of services with operations running all across Pakistan.