When T Gangadhar (Gangs) joined Quotient Ventures in February 2023 as Co-founder and Group CEO, it marked his return to a creative agency and to some former colleagues from Lintas, where he worked last in 2005. They included Quotient’s Founder Joseph George, Co-founders Shriram Iyer and Rajiv Chatterjee.
After two years in TV with Sony and 14 years thereafter at GroupM starting 2008, he was mulling over the next opportunity.
“When I thought about what next, I was very clear that I do not want to go into media, and I do not want to go to a network agency. I am an advertising guy. Throughout my years in the media I have always felt like an outlier. Which in a way sort of helps because it gives you the licence to ask the right questions. So I have always seen myself as someone slightly on the fringe, looking in,” recalls Gangadhar, in conversation with Medianews4u at Quotient’s Mumbai office.
While he underlines that he had a fantastic run at GroupM, he did not want to operate in a large network ship again. “It’s not really any sort of criticism of network agencies. It’s just that they are large and sometimes when you want to do stuff, it feels a bit like trying to move a super tanker with your hands,” he states.
Organic conversations on the possibility of his joining Quotient soon became serious. One thing led to the other and they collectively said, “Why not?”
“Here were people I respect, people who were doing good work, people who are as fiercely independent as they come. So what’s not to like about it?” he notes.
He adds, “Every day is new and different. My actual day is quite different from my calendar for the day. I love being in the thick of things. The ability to work across a diverse set of clients, with a diverse set of people… I feel my learning curve is going up again. I am rediscovering the advertising business.”
From Tilt to Quotient
Quotient Ventures is the parent company that houses Tilt Brand Solutions, Vector Brand Solutions and StudioQ, a production company. Collectively, the team is just over a 100 today.
“Ultimately, we want to be the one-stop destination for everything that’s about consumer engagement. Whether it is advertising, design, digital, you name it and we should be a destination for that. That’s the end game,” explains the Group CEO.
Gangadhar emphasises that the journey of five-year-old Tilt and group predates him, but offers some insights on the founding team’s run.
“It’s just taken off like a rocket ship. We all start out hoping that we are able to build a successful business. But I don’t think anyone could have planned this – the force with which it has taken off is actually quite humbling. It also puts some good pressure on you to live up to that reputation,” he explains.
He terms the journey ‘work in progress’ with a few things the team wants to do.
“We started off as Tilt Brand Solutions. That ‘Brand Solutions’ part is something we want to keep going at. We are not excited about coming back with an ad to a client brief. Our ability to interrogate the client brief, the business and brand challenge, is actually a lot deeper. A lot of times our recommendations go beyond just making an ad film,” he adds.
Going forward, the team would like to see aspects of the group like consulting and design gain more traction.
“What you will see is a unique form of an Indian holding company. Anything about consumer engagement, end-to-end, we will be a destination for that,” he reiterates.
The Differentiation
So how will Quotient be different from what exists in the market? The Group CEO contends that what separates the entities is an obsession with ‘Brand First’, also directed by the background of people.
“In some ways, advertising is in need of an overhaul. Earlier, it was relatively simpler. There was a brief, there was a creative output. Clients lived creative output to creative output. Consumer journeys have become more complex now. An agency’s ability to think about the consumer journey is itself at a premium now. To be able to understand the challenges and opportunities in the context of that journey is very, very important. Like I said before, the response to a challenge may not be a TV commercial. It may need a very different intervention and we are not afraid to make those recommendations. Our starting position is not to make a TV commercial. Everything is coming from what the brand challenge is,” he explains.
At Quotient’s heart is ‘full brain thinking’. The creative part is a given, but there’s more to the offering.
“All of us come with a lot of experience. But clients are not here to hear our opinions. We believe in recommendations that we can back with data. I believe we are among the few agencies that subscribe to a lot of tools that enable us to imagine and interrogate the brief. Our recommendations and presentations look quite different from that of a typical creative agency. You will see a lot of data; you will see a lot of inferences on the back of that data. When you don’t have perfect data, you are able to triangulate between different sources of data, make intelligent assumptions,” elaborates Gangadhar.
Projects vs Retainers
At a time when project-based arrangements with clients are par for the course, the CEO makes the case for retainers.
He says, “We have a healthy mix between retainers and projects, but we prefer to work on retainers. All of us are very, very passionate about building brands, having a point of view on brands and shaping them along with clients. Projects allow you limited scope to do that. You would love to be accountable for the work that you do, but projects can be fleeting – they come and go. What we prefer is retainer businesses where we have continuous engagement with the client. We believe that is actually where we are able to add the fullest value.”
That said, not all projects are about creative. Many lead to a creative output, but the agency also gets a lot of projects which are about strategy – consulting is a key part of what the agency does, underlines the CEO.
“The one big change that I noticed when I came back to the creative agency is how much the agency world is pivoting around retainers and projects. Suddenly there is this animal called projects and clients are engaging multiple agencies. I am sure they have enough reasons for it, but if a client is working with multiple agencies – with different agencies at different points in time on the same brand – I am now sure how consistent brand thinking is being delivered. In which case, maybe the client feels that the brand thinking is at their end and they just want someone to execute it,” contends Gangadhar.
In several instances, Quotient entities started with projects and ended up working on retainers for the same clients.
Tilt, Vector, Studio Q
Vector is not a second agency created to handle conflicting clients. It is targeted at ambitious brand owners who are at an early stage, but still want to invest in the brand. Vector is a full funnel agency that is tailored for these clients.
Gangadhar explains, “I’ve seen from my days in the media, that only when people got to a Series C or Series D (of funding), did they see beyond performance media. Until then, they pretty much operated in the mid and bottom of the funnel. Suddenly they realise that they need to open up at the top. At that stage, they focused on brand building. We believe that the ability to build a brand and need to build a brand starts a lot earlier. Earlier, being on TV was equal to building a brand. All that is changing now. Now, there are also a new breed of entrepreneurs who understand and appreciate the power of a brand early – its ability to differentiate from the competition, ability to charge a premium. For these clients, Vector is a very good choice.”
Studio Q is largely in service of Tilt and Vector clients now. There’s enough demand within, explains the CEO.
“It’s an opportunity that the client has and a choice. At no point are we going to shove our production capability down our client’s throat. Yet we have ended up doing a lot of repeat jobs at Studio Q for a lot of our clients. That’s proof of the pudding,” he adds.
The cornerstone of Studio Q is transparency with partners and clients, he underlines.
Growing Responsibly
Gangadhar does not want to put a number to growth in the headcount in a given timeframe but emphasises that growth is imperative.
“We want to grow responsibly. Everybody seeks growth. But you also have to be responsible about the way you grow. You don’t want to blow the guardrails. Joe, Shriram, Rajiv, we are all very passionate about building this as an independent consumer engagement company. What consumer engagement looks like will evolve as we go along. We’re already seeing AdEx evolving. Digital is now more than TV. We have to be nimble enough to change shape and form to adapt. Things are changing rapidly. AI has now become part of the discourse.”
“The challenge for anybody is to be able to imagine how advertising and brand solutions look like in a hybrid world of human and artificial intelligence. It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about. What does it mean for the future of an agency?” he poses.
The other challenge he refers to is talent. But Quotient has been fortunate to attract some of the best talent that is there in the industry – and they stay, he claims.
“In fact, our attrition rate is 12 pc, which is unheard of in this industry. Since the time I have come in (six months ago), I think one person has left. It’s something we value a lot and we don’t take for granted. We will continue to focus on making this home for the best talent,” he notes.
Gangadhar refers to the opportunity given to talent to get good work out quickly as one of the reasons for them to stay. It has also helped that the group led by Tilt has created some very visible work.
“There is some very good talent sitting in some large agencies. Because they are lower down the rungs, they struggle to get their work seen and heard and thereafter get it out. A lot of the work that you have seen from Tilt is not necessarily created by the senior people. Even people who are relatively junior have seen a lot of their work come out. For a creative person or a planner, to see their work actually see the light of day, is a big thing. You would imagine that it’s par for the course but in many agencies, it takes months and months for a certain piece of work to come out,” he explains.
The stated intent is to attract talent from the top network agencies and offer them what the top agencies do – and beyond.
The Media Experience
It is perhaps the right time for professionals from media to move to creative and vice versa and it has been witnessed across organisations. But few such shifts have happened at the topmost level.
“I think my last 14 years in media in some way uniquely equipped me in this role. When we are designing a solution, we are able to pull back a bit and see a much bigger picture. Because I am genuinely curious as to where my client is spending the money.
“When you are in media, you have a set of tools for targeting. Here, I am okay with tools for insights. My background has helped evaluate the suite of tools. Spending time in media, my mind is constantly thinking ‘signals’ and what they mean. That thinking is something we are now trying to embrace across the agency. At the end of the day, signal is behaviour – you try and understand what it leads to, what the root cause for it is,” explains Gangadhar.
It’s not just the Group CEO. Quotient is home to people from analytics, social media, media and more. And that has a bearing on the end-product.
The spokesperson explains: “We have people coming from diverse backgrounds and experiences and deliberately so. That’s what really makes the end product interesting. I am a huge believer in diversity of every kind. We usually end up speaking about gender diversity and stuff, even diversity in terms of people from different backgrounds adds great value. It makes the recommendation that we make that much stronger. We encourage that.”
As far as digital goes, the agency handles media planning in-house while working with a partner for buying. There are no plans to launch a dedicated digital offering – for now.
“It is important to imagine ideas for digital. But we believe that should sit naturally with the team coming up with these solutions. We have the capability to think ideas in digital. So do we want to build a digital-only agency? That’s not what we want to do right now. But none of this is written in stone,” says Gangadhar.
Unapologetically Premium
The CEO rationalises that clients aren’t going to give the business because an agency is the cheapest. Clients give the business when they believe we are the right partner for them, he reasons.
“We are unapologetically premium. We believe in approaching things in a certain way. When you are making high quality recommendations, I don’t think you should be undercutting. Undercutting ultimately becomes an industry issue. We don’t want to be playing that game at all. We want to be winning businesses on the back of our intellect, our reputation, our work, our credentials – not because we are the cheapest,” he adds.
A ‘Fail Fast’ Culture
Speed is something that is valued at Quotient. If the information to base your decision on is on the table and no further information is going to be available, why delay the decision, questions Gangadhar.
“Discussions are faster, you make calls quickly. All of us are firm believers in ‘Fail hard, fail fast’. Try things fast, if they fail, move on. I believe we have the culture for that. I believe it’s also a reason for stickiness of talent,” he adds.
While on culture, Gangadhar notes that people have each other’s back – it’s not uncommon to see impromptu huddles to help someone out. “These are the things that you want to preserve no matter how big you become,” he points out.
Despite all good intents and purposes, scale comes with its set of challenges – on people, on the ability of the senior most talent to remain hands on, and on culture.
Gangadhar cedes but believes one can scale without losing the ‘founding flavour’.
He adds, “It can be a challenge. As a place expands, to preserve what made them special in the first place is definitely a challenge. People are the ones who dictate culture. It’s not about good people and bad people – it’s just that certain kinds of people flourish in certain cultures. So we try to look for those kinds of people. Even today, I interview everybody who enters this company, even at the junior-most position. I am evaluating for the cultural connection. We are trying to keep it tight.”
The leadership and senior talent remains deeply engaged in many client businesses, he reminds us.
“We will always make sure that there is the right experienced oversight on any client’s business. We don’t want to end up in a situation where there is a long tail of clients who don’t get any attention from the people who matter in the agency,” he adds.
In the words of the Group CEO, to preserve what made Quotient special in the first place will be the challenge as it grows.
