Cheil needs to maintain a geographical distance with Samsung: Bruce Haines

afaqs! catches up with Bruce Haines, global chief strategy officer, Cheil Worldwide, on the agency's plan to shed its 'Samsung Shadow', amongst other things.

This witty and charming gentleman created ripples in the media when he unexpectedly quit his position as group chief executive officer at Leo Burnett London, to step into a global role at Cheil Worldwide.

Edited Excerpts

A few weeks ago, we were discussing the future of Cheil in London. There were six of us in the room. Besides me, there was another Englishman, an American, a Spaniard, a Frenchman and a German, and there was no Korean in the room. Three years ago, it was unimaginable that the future of Cheil could be discussed by non-Koreans.

The fact is that in the last three years, we have made enormous moves to localise our talent leadership. Not only that, we have made conscious efforts to ensure that Cheil moves out of the Samsung office, and we have done that in many parts of the world.

Three years ago, 100 per cent of Cheil's revenue came from Samsung. Now, the ratio between Samsung and non-Samsung businesses would be 80:20, depending on the market.

We have been successful in shedding the Samsung tag in some markets, but there are many more markets where we need to do that. That's a big challenge for us.

Cheil's moving away from Samsung would benefit Samsung more as Cheil would then attract better talent to work on the Samsung brands. So, we needed to move away from Samsung geographically, but not emotionally. We have already done that in markets such as New York, London, Madrid, Bangkok and Beijing. We need to incorporate the same in other markets as well, so that we can be our own mass and not just a division of Samsung.

Even Samsung has adopted the same strategy. In many markets, it has hired local talent as CMOs because that was the need of the business. And, many of these local CMOs are not used to the in-house system. We believe we can enhance our service to Samsung by maintaining the geographical difference.

I agree, in India, we haven't got to that point where we have separated ourselves from Samsung. But, I would like to grow the Delhi office geographically away from Samsung. And, that way we can get the quality of talent we want. However, in most markets, the local Samsung president has been reluctant to see us move. Even if they have, they have done it with a kind of heavy heart.

When I first arrived In India, Prathap (Suthan) had just done the 'Next is What' campaign with Aamir Khan. It was a great campaign and it also generated lots of interest from potential new businesses. But, when these clients realised that they'd have to come into the Samsung building to visit their agency, it just didn't compute!

I would specify that 80 per cent of Samsung's spends is still routed through Cheil. We are doing a lot more than what people generally estimate. We do all kinds of work above and beyond what a normal advertising agency might be doing, be it sponsorship exhibition or re-segmentation work.

In fact, the work on Samsung has increased by many folds in the last few years. Few years ago, Samsung had few product lines vis-à-vis today. Previously, two-three major campaigns in a year sufficed.

On the Indian market, last year, Cheil managed about 18 ATL (above the line) campaigns against Leo Burnett's two.

We certainly have plans to take the Cheil brand to other markets, and I don't think of India as one market or one country. Even if we service only Samsung, we would need a separate office as Samsung sales comes from different festivals, in different parts of the country, at different times.

However, when it comes to Mumbai, I'd rather develop BMB Mumbai first.

We don't want it to be viewed that way, either. However, I would introduce BMB to Samsung, maybe a little later.rkets like India.

My experience is that Samsung is a complicated client -- its brand is so well-defined in global terms that it becomes quite difficult sometimes to match the global brand against local expectations of the brand.

Besides, Samsung is often very sales-driven, rather than having a brand-building mindset, so it takes time to get used to it. But, each local president has his own sales targets and we accept that.

However, I think if Samsung wants sophisticated advertising or a different voice then why can't that be a bunch of people in Mumbai at BMB.

In London, there are three agencies that serve the Samsung business. These are One Agency, Cheil and BMB. Together they are 'Team Samsung'.

The combination of three different agencies (all part of the Cheil Group) can completely service the client needs. I would like it to develop in the same way in markets like India.

I spent six months trying to convince the Chicago management that what they wanted me to do was the wrong thing, and I didn't succeed. So, I said, I won't do what you want me to do...I'll leave. And, I did.

I think two things happened simultaneously -- one was Galaxy, and the other was just the development of Samsung's flat screen business.

All of a sudden, you had cases where people would think they were going to buy a Sony, but then somewhere along the purchase decision, they'd change their mind and buy a Samsung! That was nice.

In many markets now, that's not even a consideration. People now know that Samsung looks beautiful and works beautifully. The whole LED/3D launch, I think, was one way of pushing the Samsung brand towards a more premium nature.