Industries Under Siege

Today's business newspapers reported that the industry leader in the logistics industry – Fedex – has made a huge loss this year. Apparently the number of consignments that they have been shipping around the world has been slipping continuously due to the steady in-roads by the digital media. With digital signatures in place, most organizations prefer to transmit documents electronically – hence hitting the traditional courier business quite hard.

Last week I was chatting with my cable operator – he mentioned that his revenues are down as most households in our colony have shifted to DTH as it offers clearer receptivity and uninterrupted service. At one point of time I used to think that the cable operator had an unshakeable business model because he was a monopoly operator in our area - the municipality used to allow only 1 cable operator in a particular area to dig up the road and lay the cables.

The other industry which is under siege is the old-world distance education institutes which used to thrive in the last decade by sending across bulky study material printed on paper to students. Most of these institutes (e.g. Brilliant Tutorials) have lost to the newer institutes who now offer on-line courses with the ability to interact with the faculty over webcams while sitting in the comforts of one’s home.

The publishing world – including giants such as the New York Times and Time – has been hemorrhaging for quite some time now – though consumer’s need for information continues to be insatiable. The publishing world actually is in a peculiar situation as they indeed did try to migrate to the digital world – but consumers seemed unwilling to accept the “pay-per-view” model that the large publications experimented with, and the advertising revenues generated in the virtual world by these publications was not sizeable enough to make up for the loss of revenues in the “real” world.

So the need – whether it is for conveying documents from one location to another, or for entertainment, or for distance learning, or for news – has not vanished. Those needs are still there and probably growing stronger. However, those businesses which did not see the impact of technology on their business models and did not change rapidly enough, have lost out in a dramatic manner to nimbler, swifter start-ups working to a different business model.

The Market Research industry – as defined by the venerable giants that define the MR industry today - is at similar cross-roads. Despite being in the information business, most of the large MR agencies have not been able to keep pace with the rapidly evolving consumers. The industry as a whole is still struggling to come to terms with a way to deal with social media – though the need for quick, reliable, cost-effective and integrated information continues to be strong.

My guess is that the next 3 years will be critical in determining the fate of the large agencies as they exist today. The question is whether we can make a rapid and deep enough change – or would we get swamped and throttled by the hordes of KPO and small tech-driven agencies which seem to be mushrooming all over, and seemingly innovating a lot faster.

The jury is out on this one…..

Egypt - Brazil football match

Really enjoyed watching the Egypt-Brazil football match couple of days ago. The Egypt team came 1-3 from behind to equalise at 3-3. Egypt finally lost 3-4 to Brazil, but not before they gave a severe scare to the Brazil team. My son and I were of course rooting for the Egypt team, and both of us were quite crest-fallen when Brazil were awarded the penalty kick. Watching the match on TV reminded us about the Egypt-Congo match in the Africa cup which we had watched live in the huge Cairo stadium 3 years back. The atmosphere was electric and for us Indians it was our first exposure to how intense the atmosphere is in a football match compared to that in a cricket match.

The Characteristics Of Greatness

This is not meant to be a eulogy - just a sincere appreciation of the qualities that make certain individuals stand out from the rest.

Quite a few people have asked me as to why I continue to have such tremendous respect - and liking - for a person who is no longer an active member of the market research industry : Stuart Campbell-Morris (now enjoying his retirement in a sunny locale somewhere).

It is difficult question to answer...

I don't think my admiration and liking for him is just because of his management skills. I have worked with people who have been as good managers as Stuart - though of course Stuart is the person with whom I have worked the longest.

It is not just the fact that I have learnt a lot from Stuart about good Research - how to write well, how to do good qualitative research, and how to handle clients.  I have learnt this from other managers too.

Why Stuart tops my list is because of some rare traits and qualities that he possesses - which unfortunately is now rapidly going out of fashion in today's management world. Some of these being:

- how to lead with fairness (Fairness is easy to profess - difficult to practice)
- being genuinely democratic in the way he led such a large organisation : always ready to listen to a contrarian view-point
- taking pride in understanding and teaching the craft - rather than just seeing it as a source of revenue.

But above all he has a certain humaneness, warmth and "old-world" values that is evident right from the moment you meet him for the first time - whether the way he greets you, the respect he gave to staff regardless of their seniority, and how he tried to understand and respect the individuality of each person that he worked with.

And of course : Humility, and a typical endearing British (Scottish) trait - the self-deprecating sense of humour.

And then it is the nature of 'residual impact' that he leaves - when you feel that you are a better person now after interacting with him. There are a lot of instances in my personal dealings with Stuart that I treasure, and which left me enriched in my professional outlook - whether it is in the kind of books and authors he introduced me to, or the anecdotes from his own life which gave me glimpses of how to lead my life. 

Above all I like Stuart because - despite being a private and under-stated person - he still puts in all his energy and charisma when he engages with people - something most people will find very difficult to do.

The hall-mark of greatness is when the person is no longer near you - but you still think of him whenever you need to take critical decisions.  You ask yourself : what would he have done if he was in my place today - what is the RIGHT thing to do?  I do that whenever I am at a fork on the road.

It is said that imitation is the best form of flattery. I have no qualms about admitting that in many aspects, the way I TRY to conduct myself - whether at work or outside - is closely modeled on what I have learnt from my long association with Stuart.

Our industry desperately needs more Role Models.  May there be more such people!

My Big Mouth

Stuart and I were once working on putting together a collage on a qual project that had just got completed. It was hard work – and at lunch time Stuart ordered for a couple of sandwiches from the nearby Subway joint. The sandwiches soon arrived – and I was exposed to the dilemma of having to eat a huge 12 inch burger and yet look dignified in that process. The whole problem was that no matter from which angle I attacked the sandwich it simply was too big and thick for my mouth to take a good bite. I sneaked a quick glance at Stuart as to how he was progressing on his Tuna sandwich and was astonished to find him calmly tucking-in the entire sandwich into his mouth.

The conversation proceeded as follows:

Stuart : “Please finish your sandwich quickly – there is lots of work to be done”.

Me (still trying to recover from the shock) : “I …. Um ….. eh ….”

Stuart : “What is wrong? Anything wrong with the sandwich?”

Me : “This large sandwich……” and then shockingly I heard myself blurting out “Stuart, you have such a big mouth …..”

It was Stuart’s turn to look dazed – and I had to quickly rush in and do a lot of explaining …… and fortunately my explanation was finally bought though with some amount of raised eye-brows.

English is indeed a funny language, is it not?

Job Perks

In MERAC Bahrain, we had a Filipino accountant called Sixtoe who had a very unique style of pronouncing English words – for instance when he said “Fax” it sounded as if he was saying “Fu.ks”.

He went to our GM, Stan (aka Sthanunathan, now in Coke, US) and asked him “ you know, Martin Van Herk’s hotel bill has just come in and I want to check whether we pay for his “fu.ks”. Without batting an eye-lid, Stan replied : “we pay only business expenses – all expenses for pleasure is paid for by the individual himself.“

Sixtoe did not understand the reply, but rumour has it that the 2 secretaries sitting outside Stan’s room had to be immediately admitted to the hospital. Apparently the hospital report cryptically stated that they were admitted owing to “severe stomach pain induced by an attempt to control sudden emotions felt on hearing descriptions of a humorous variety”.

Report writing skills

The 90's was the leisurely period when the final deliverable was a “detailed” report written as a WordPerfect document complete with a Technical Appendix and a Field report (and not the PowerPoint presentations which pass off as “reports” nowadays).

I wrote up my 1st report and took it to Stuart. I think the conversation proceeded as follows:

Stuart : "Interrresting. You write like Charles Dickens."

Me (Blushing with delight) : "Thank you very much. I grew up on the English classics and PG Wodehouse."

Stuart : "Excellent. Now go back and re-write this report completely – we don’t live in the 19th century."

The chastened new recruit collects the report covered in green ink and exits quickly left of center

The dying breed of the well-rounded researcher

Soon after I joined MERAC Bahrain in 1992, I was in for a major shock when a huge pile of transcripts landed up on my table accompanied by a terse hand-written note (in red ink) asking me to “content analyse”. I had come from a hard core quant agency (MBA Pvt. Ltd.) whose owners prided on having nothing to do with qualitative research – so I went into a state of deep shock. I rushed to Stuart – and gasped out – in the impetuosity of youth - that I would not like to do this as I “did not understand qualitative research”.

Peering over his spectacles, Stuart said “Young man, in this place we do not have qualitative researchers and quantitative researchers. We only have researchers who solve the client’s problems regardless of the methodology”. Chastened I went back and started on the rather difficult task of figuring out this mysterious field of qualitative research. The only thought that came to my mind was that these qualitative respondents talked too much – I mean for a simple question like “why do you like this product” the respondents would talk for 2 or 3 pages. I mean why did they not answer in a simple short sentence as they do in quantitative research – that would have simplified my life, and the world will be a much less complex place to live in.

Handling the first few qualitative research projects were a night-mare for me – but over a period of time I actually started loving qualitative research – to such an extent that at one point, there was the distinct “danger” that I would be labeled as a Qual researcher. This exposure to qualitative research was to stand me in good stead when I returned to the highly compartmentalized research industry in India where few people have a perspective of both qualitative and quantitative research.

I guess specialization is an inevitable consequences of growth – one is forced to follow global trends : compartmentalize and specialize. But somewhere at the bottom of heart I believe that the individual loses out as it narrows down his perspective.

Modes of Transportation

The MERAC office in Bahrain was located in a cute 2 storied “residential” villa. On the first day, Sam, the secretary, took me on a guided tour of the office. We started off at the entrance where there was a small car park. One of the parking spaces had a board which said “Reserved for the MD”. In that space was parked an old ramshackle bicycle. My mind started working over-time about the company that I had joined (unlike now, MERAC was hardly known in India those days). Watching my dazed expression, Sam quickly clarified that as the MD (Stuart) was traveling, the newspaper delivery boy had taken the liberty of parking his bicycle there.

Everything goes around full circle for me

It is interesting how certain aspects keeps recurring in one’s life.

When I joined MERAC Bahrain in January 1992, the Gulf War had just ended, George Bush was the American President, and Ravi – my boss – had come to receive me with a warm smile at the Bahrain airport.

Incidentally, 12 years later when I alighted at the Cairo airport in April 2003 – the Gulf War had just ended, George Bush was the American President, and Ravi – my boss – had come to receive me with – what else – a warm smile.

The world indeed had changed dramatically.

An ode to the old world entrepreneur driven MR agency

I still cannot get over the fact that none of the old world MR agencies survive in their original form - the likes of MBA Pvt. Ltd, Mode, RCG have all been bought out by the big MNC chains, and are completely transformed. It has not just been "the collapse of the middle" - it also has been a surrender of the "small" agencies too. All the MR agencies now seem alike - the professional MNC cultures, the way business is impersonally driven by bottom-lines, the sophisticated HR processes, and the homogenised personalities running the businesses.

The brilliant and talented (and often quirky) individuals who started off enterprises such as MBA, Mode etc - with a few exceptions - continue to linger on as pale shadows of themselves surviving in an impersonal and homogenous environment.

The 80's and 90's were the heydays of the entrepreneur driven traditional MR agency. The beginning of the 21st century is the nadir for the entrepreneur driven MR agency in India - the only survivors being those who recognised the consolidation trends and quickly migrated to the on-line and KPO space where size is no longer an advantage.

Somehow I feel that the entrepreneur driven culture will be back soon in India. There has been so much of consolidation now - that it is but inevitable that the small agencies come back with a vengeance in India. Just wait and watch.

Hyderabad here I come

The week I joined MBA Ltd, I was told that I along with a Field Executive called Vishwanath had to go to Hyderabad to carry out fieldwork for a study on refrigerators. MBA Ltd. did not have a field office - nor any supervisors - in that city - so we had to go in there cold, stay in a lodge (Krishna Lodge in Lakdi ka Pul), recruit a team of interviewers, train them, and get them to carry out the fieldwork.

Hyderabad was baking hot (May/June) and it was a tough job being a field supervisor. At that time the field procedure followed by MBA Ltd. was quite different - and entailed the field supervisor going to a location along with a team of 5-6 interviewers and then from an intersection sending each interviewer down a road to carry out the interviews. The supervisor (I in this case) had to then follow each interviewer, carry out surprise checks, do back-checks etc - so the supervisor had to be on his feet throughout the day following and monitoring his team. A really tough job for a chap who thought that his fancy degree entitled him to sit in the comforts of an air-conditioned office.

An incident that took place is still quite vivid in my memory. We were carrying out fieldwork in a middle class locality when an interviewer came running up to me saying that the rest of the team is in trouble as they have been detained by the residents of the colony who thought they were a gang of thieves. I went into the house to explain what we were doing, and the reason why we were collecting information about durables. The owner of the house had no clue about Market Research - and he did not seem to be buying into my explanations. Fortunately his daughter (who was preparing for her MBA entrance exams) walked in at that moment, and quickly caught on. When they realised that I had just finished my MBA degree their attitude quickly changed, and I was quickly transformed into a consultant to give advice on how their own kids can get into a good MBA course. I came out of the house with the problem resolved and with several packs of eatables that the residents had given me. The team of interviewers was quite taken aback to see the transformation in the resident's attitude - and from a foe I quickly turned into a hero in the eyes of my team.

Personality Clashes in MR

In my previous post I had described how certain individuals broke out from MBA and went on their own - leading to quite a bit of bitterness among erstwhile colleagues.

Interestingly, the other leading agency of those days - IMRB - too underwent a split around the same period with a large group of high-profile senior executives walking out to form MARG. However, IMRB recovered quickly from the shock and went from strength to strength - probably because it had a very decentralized management structure - or because the bitter feud between IMRB and MARG kept the adrenalin pumped up within IMRB and pushed it to greater heights.

Interestingly the various feuds which started between the parent organisations and the break-away set-ups are widely seen as one of the key reasons why the industry got caught up into what many outsiders to the industry describe as "an enduring petty mindedness" where the focus across agencies was - and still is - on one-upmanship rather than on the up-liftment of the MR industry. I am not sure whether this is the cause for the current dismal state of the industry - but I am sure there is a grain of truth somewhere that we allowed personality clashes to over-shadow the greater good of the industry.

The MBA Culture

Slowly I started understanding and appreciating the culture of the organisation I had joined. MBA (Marketing & Business Associates) was started by the quartet of CK Sharma, Mathew Paul, Shyam Sundar and Thomas Olapally. Thomas subsequently left the partnership and DD Karopady then joined the partnership.

CK and MP used to teach at IIMB, and set up the agency MBA Ltd. to provide what they thought was a sharper, more business orientated alternative to the industry heavyweight of those days - IMRB. And since they were teachers, they brought along with them a GENUINE academy culture - complete with impromptu class room sessions and R&D projects taken up just for the heck of it . For a brief period of time in the late seventies and early eighties, IMRB and MBA were the 2 large MR agencies in India vying for supremacy. Mode - the other independent agency which made a name for itself - was set up much later.

MBA Ltd. those days had an enviable work ethic - very entrepreneurial but at the same time highly intellectual/ academy oriented.  In today's world, these 2 values seem to be "conflicting" values - I remember we used to take on loss making projects just because it posed an intellectual challenge. For a time the founders of MBA could actually grow the agency with these seemingly contradictory values, and developed a terrific reputation among clients for honesty and intellectual rigor.  It attracted the best of talent, and even now there are lots of individuals scattered across clients and agencies who owe everything to what they imbibed from their days in MBA Ltd.

But alas those golden days for MBA Ltd. were not destined to last long.

Firstly, the dominance of the "academy" values over everything else among the founders meant weak bottom-lines.  And secondly, like any organisation structured in a proprietorial manner, the fortunes of MBA were dependent on a few individual employees who handled some of the key client accounts. When the DNA of the organisation did not provide for aggressive individual growth, conflicts were bound to arise.  Sometime in the mid 80's, a fairly large team of senior executives walked out of MBA and started their own agency.

MBA never quite recovered from this blow. It took the Directors of MBA a few years to come out of the feeling of having been betrayed. Although they put together a plan for revival in the late 80's, it was by then too late and the momentum had already slipped away.  MBA was fast slipping into a "has been",  and was being over-taken by new start-ups.

Finally MBA was sold off - very reluctantly - to Gallup in the late Nineties. It marked the end of a glorious end of the entrepreneurial age in Indian MR, when home grown alternatives actually posed a challenge to the large MNCs.  Sadly for the founders of MBA (and for many of us), this was not the way the dreams were supposed to have ended.  

1st Day jitters

When the days to join my new organisation drew closer, there was the usual "post-purchase dissonance". Had I done the right thing by signing into an unknown organisation? Does MR provide a challenging and glamorous career?

Not wanting to be shocked on my 1st day, I landed up in Bangalore a couple of days earlier and decided to visit the MBA office. The address which was 5/1 Bore Bank Road - turned out to be on the other side of a railway track near Coles Park. There was no overbridge - one should cross the railway tracks by foot. That was the first shock for me.

Then I tried locating 5/1 Bore Bank Road. The building turned out to be a small 2 storeyed house. I hesitantly walked into the ground floor of that house, through the open door and into the reception. What I saw inside disappointed me terribly. What I was expecting was all the trappings of a modern, successful organisation; what I saw resembled a small house with some hired government-type furniture arranged like a class-room. There was none of the buzz or feel of an organisation that I was led to believe was at the fore-front of the Market Research industry in India.

I approached one of the accounts guys and if I remember right the dialogue went something like this:

I : um, err, I am joining this company, and wanted to know what you feel about this company.

He (with an amused expression) : so you are one of those new trainees joining us next week? Don't worry, this company will not sink. It is a good company.

I : umm, err, ok, thanks

He : And by the way, you can remove the tie - this is not that kind of place that requires a tie.

I went home with very mixed feeling that day.

Serendipity

In my 9th standard we had to read this essay called Serendipity. This essay talked about the origin of the word (from Serendib) and how it was related to the fortuitous "discovery" of the island of Ceylon by some ancient western mariners.

Thinking back Serendipity keeps having an impact on my life - and I am sure, on others' as well.

I have been in the field of Market Research for now almost 20 years - and the incident that triggered my entry into MR can be attributed purely to Serendipity. And I am not alone in this - I have come across very few individuals who entered the MR profession as a deliberate and well thought through choice.

The Placement seasons were on at BIM, Trichy and from the notice board I understood that a Market Research agency called Marketing and Business Associates (MBA Pvt Ltd.) was coming to the campus for recruitment.

I had decided that I wanted to get into one of the leading MNC banks (my dad was a banker too) - and so did not even bother to attend the pre-placement talk.

I was woken up from my afternoon slumber by a class-mate who indicated that Prof. Arya, the charming and charismatic Director of BIM has specifically asked me to attend the interviews in the afternoon as he believed I was temperamentally best suited for a career in MR. In fact he had already put my name in for the 2.30 slot.

When Prof. Arya wishes something, it happens, so I quickly made it to the interview venue. Needless to say I had no clue of what the agency was all about as I had missed the pre-placement presentation.

I met a person called Mathew Paul who I understood was one of the Directors of MBA. My first meeting was uneventful as he gave me a "marketing brief" - I was expected to quickly write up a MR proposal and submit it to him that night for his evaluation. It was a brief on the alcohol category and featured the issue of evaluating the success of a new brand launch.

I wrote up a proposal - but not with any high hopes - and submitted it that evening.

The next day was the interview - anchored around my thoughts on the proposal. It was then that I fell under the charm of Mathew Paul. The way he dissected my approach, his interpretation of the key issues, and his sense of humour. I think somewhere we struck a chord because I was selected along with a couple of other class-mates. The salary offered was Rs 2800 per month (all inclusive) - and as this offer was significantly above the placement cut-off I had no option but to accept it - though until that time I had set my heart on joining a bank.

For me the consolation was the fact that I had got to like Mathew Paul in that short meeting - something about him - his irreverence, his sharpness or his charm - had convinced me that I was in for interesting times at MBA.