“RK Swamy’s journey has been inspirational. His journey into the world of advertising was happenstance, everybody who has worked with him say that as an advertising professional, he is the ultimate client service person,” said N Murali, Director, The Hindu Group while speaking at the 3rd RK Swamy Memorial Lecture on the topic ‘Emerging Global civilizational paradigm and India’.
Murali further spoke about RK Swamy’s journey into the world of advertising.
“His commitment, dedication, courage of conviction, and above all risk taking ability built the agency to where it is, he belonged to the generation of stalwarts of advertising like Subroto Sengupta, Ahmed Ibrahim, Bobby Kooka, and many more who not only built would foundation for advertising in the country, but saw its evolution at growth of what it is today,” Murali added.
He then elaborated on the present condition of the media and advertising industry.
“What would be RK Swamy’s reaction if he were to confront the present situation that the state of advertising and media industry is placed in. The ad industry of today is a totally different world from what RK Swamy believed in, he believed in a full service agency of his time. Now, the process of unbundling service of agencies has happened from the late 90s through these 20 years, it has become fragmented or beyond recognition or specialist agencies have emerged.”
He continued, “The whole ecosystem and structure of the ad and media industry has changed. What has happened is been a huge disruption not only on the structure, the disruption of the business model. For instance, during his time 15% commission was the norm. Today I can’t even speak about the same. Media agencies have taken center stage because of their clout with clients and also by negotiating with the media houses. They have put pressure on media rates and are a double-edged sword, it has affected the other arms of the ad agencies’ business and also media margin has gone down subsequently.”
