StrawberryFrog brings its 'cultural movement' to India

This story first appeared in DNA Money edition on Wednesday, Nov 21, 2012.

New York-based StrawberryFrog, which prouds itself as the world's first ‘cultural movement’ creative agency, has set foot in to the Indian market. Founded in Amsterdam in 1999 by Swede Karin Drakenberg and Scott Goodson, the India operations of StrawberryFrog will be headed by Raj Kamble who joins the agency as managing partner.

Kamble was earlier associated with BBH India, the UK-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) Network's Indian arm. He moved out of BBH India in January 2012.

Specialising in devising movement strategies and programmes for its clients, Scott Goodson, founder and chairman, StrawberryFrog, believes now is the perfect time to come to India and take that leap — akin to a frog that can leap 60 times its height.

Interestingly, StrawberryFrog is the rarest frog in the world and comes from South America. Being a poisonous frog, the agency’s briefs, Scott said, always look for the most effective poison.

“StrawberryFrog has a culture of collaboration, fun and agility and jugad. India is a very important market for a host of international brands. Besides, a lot of Indian brands / companies are globalising and expanding across the world. I think this is just the perfect time to come to India and open up an alternative global marketing company,” said Goodson. Among the agency’s clientele include names like Mahindra & Mahindra, Google, Microsoft, P&G, Emirates, LG etc.

In addition to his role as global chairman of StrawberryFrog, Goodson recently published a new best-selling book ‘Uprising’. He has also been on the Cannes Titanium jury and writes for Harvard Business Review (HBR), Forbes, Huffington Post and Fast Company.

Elucidating on the agency’s cultural movement strategy, Scott said, the traditional advertising was primarily based on a model of providing marketing messages through television. “That’s changing. If you have a 16 year or 20 year old daughter or son, you realise there are other channels of communication that are equally important if not more important. In the United States there were soap operas, which were TV programmes created by advertisers of soap because women / mothers would watch it. All those shows disappeared about three years ago because mothers in the US (with an average age of around 24) no longer watched television,” said Goodson.

With new media especially digital and internet making a huge impact on the consumer behaviour / perception about a company or a product, Scott feels it is very important to tap each and every medium, build a movement through universal messages and create communities that will also connect with products and services being offered.

“No one wants to live in a smaller world today. Everyone wants to be in a connected world inspired with ideas, progressive dynamic thinking, they want to be alive. People are defocusing from the TV medium and a large part of the consuming population is online on Facebook etc. So how do you device a marketing strategy that’s coherent at a time when media is becoming so fragmented.

“A movement marketing strategy is all about finding an idea on a rising culture that is relevant to a wider audience across the span consuming your product. And once that’s done, you tie that idea back to the brand which then becomes central to that movement. Brands can identify, crystalise, curate, lead and sponsor a mass movement. Once you have a movement, you can do anything in a fragmented media environment,” said Goodson.

StrawberryFrog’s Indian arm is expected to get fully operational by the end of this month i.e. November 2012. While the company has already hired respective operational heads, Kamble refrained from sharing details saying, “We have some people on board but cannot disclose at this stage.” On the agency’s media strategy in terms of planning, buying etc Kamble said, “To be honest we haven’t figured that out yet.”

Talking about how has the agency dealt with this aspect of business in the past, Goodson said, “We generally work with partners and that’s what we are looking to do in India as well. Many clients have their own relationships so you can either plug into them or if they don’t then we can bring a partner and work with them.”