Don’t settle for Boutique

One of the strangest things in my life has been the ability to remember a number of things my late grand father shared with me before he passed away. I was barely four when he died.

To the pain of most of my team at REDHILL and some of our clients, I keep repeating some of his sayings at meetings.

One of my earliest memories of my grandfather is going on a walk with with him. I was holding on to his index finger while we made our way through paddy fields just after planting season. The Kerala monsoons had just started and the sun was about to set. We reached a mount in the middle of the paddy occupied by a lone coconut tree.

He pointed to the big red circular sun dipping into the horizon, looked at me and said, “You see where the sun is setting? It’s all our land. Always remember you can come back here, wherever you go, and you will not have to stretch your palm out to anyone for anything.”

Shortly after my family left for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and then several other countries. Every-time I faced bullying, a tough situation, I imagined squeezing my grandfather’s wornout index finger and remembering his words. I don’t have to settle, stand my ground. If all fails, I will have somewhere to go to.

The PR industry is a tough one. It’s based on relationships and you frequently come across situations in which it’s easier to stand down, settle and be content with your size of the pie. Not for us. From the day Surekha and I started this agency with one laptop between us, we knew we were not going to settle for being a small or boutique agency.

This brings me to the another of my grandfather’s quotes. I am not sure when he told me this, must have been during one of those uneventful lazy afternoons when we used to sit on the veranda and watch the world float by the Pamba.

“Always aim for the stars. Incase you fail to reach there, you will at least land on the tallest coconut tree.”

This year (2017) we won the Holmes Report Sabre Awards for the APAC New PR Agency of the Year. We were shortlisted for Global New PR Agency of the Year, that award went to Vested. We are now a team of 30 in 13 offices across APAC, North America and Europe.

Last week while I boarded a flight to KL from Singapore, almost half the office were on planes too, flying to Tokyo, Bangkok, Colombo, etc. We have come a long way in a short period of time - just over three years.

We got here because our business goal, our North Star is actually a star. Everyday, we take aim at it, everyday we fail but everyday, we land on the tallest coconut tree.

Every time we are introduced as a small agency, boutique agency, startup agency, I make it a point to correct them. We are not boutique, we are not small and we are start-up. Every major agency today started small but they decided not to settle for boutique.

In the top 250 PR companies according to the Holmes Report, there is not a single agency from Southeast Asia. You find so many agencies in the region but they all seem to limit themselves to the extent of their founders’ capability and vision. Most of them die when the founder dies or moves.

What’s the harm in thinking big? If this is truly going to be the Asian century, shouldn’t we in Asia be claiming the narrative and playing the lead role?

Our aim at REDHILL is clear, we want to be a global agency with strong Asian roots. We are PR led but want to offer 360 degree marketing services.

We constantly go to battle with large agencies. RFPs of large companies are biased in their favour -requirements for offices in markets, experience in a particular sector but at the same time not having conflict, having a certain size of business. I can understand why this scenario can be intimidating and it’s easier to settle and be boutique and fight with other small agencies for the scarps.

We don’t. And fortunately for us, we have found clients who are willing to bet on us. In return, we have delivered in style. In some cases, we have gone beyond the tallest coconut tree and landed on some planet.

A key factor of thinking big is also money. It’s easy to think big with other people’s money but that usually come with strings attached. We are a bit old school in our thinking, we have run REDHILL as a business that depends on profits to keep going. We have no debt and we have no outside investors. What this enables us to do is have immense “Fuck you power”. You see, as long as we make $1 profit, it means all our bills are paid and we don’t owe anyone anything.

This means we can take a stand, draw a line and tell bullies to back off.

We can choose people who we work with (clients and journalists), we can build long term relationships and not worry about timesheets and quarterly P&L excel sheets to be submitted to CFOs.

In the recent years, the cost of communication has dropped, as has travel, and there is an entire generation of young people who are raised tech enabled and ready to solve problems for clients without being trained for two years as account executives and a further three years as senior account executives.

What this means is that now you can have a boutique agency infrastructure but your vision and canvas doesn’t need to be boutique. You can hire younger people who will come with new ideas and solutions, and they will grow with you.

Disruption is all around us. The only way to survive is to be the disrupter. Don’t settle, aim for the stars.