Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Indian ad agencies: fear of the web

We’ve given rise to the phrase “Bangalored”, thanks to the skills and abilities of India’s IT professionals. The IT sector probably does business with over 80% of the companies on the Fortune 500 list. A number of IT companies are listed on Nasdaq. Silicon Valley has any number of dollar millionaires with their roots (and parents and grandparents) in India.

And at Cannes, only one Indian entry makes it to the Cyber Lions shortlist.

With an explosion in the number of Internet users, why is it that Indian advertising agencies are so incredibly unenthusiastic when it comes to designing communication targeting the webizens?
Fear? Fear caused by the losses of those advertising agencies that dabbled in Web 1.0? If the fear is not overcome, India will continue to be a laggard when it comes to Cyber Lions.

And there’s a parallel somewhere in history. When every agency worth talking about launched an events division. And lost money. And the failure froze their brains. Instead of figuring out what went wrong and correcting mistakes, they threw the baby out with the bathwater – and got out of the events area. Today, Omnicom and WPP are talking to all major event management companies in attempts to buy them out – at valuations that will make many an event management entrepreneur take up golf.

Watch this space two years from now. When every small Internet design shop gets an offer from the biggest advertising agencies in the world. And many a web designer will consider golf, too.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with you completely! Wish that it'd happen sooner rather than later. I'd love to learn golf ;-)