Established in 2016 as a one-man show, The Boutique Agency Network is redefining the ad industry with data-driven practices and approaches that are attracting clients in Sri Lanka and overseas.
Digital Media is taking the world over one click at a time. With the evolution of digital and the impact of Covid-19 companies are looking at standing out by creating a more customized marketing and advertising approach to avoid getting lost in the digital clutter. Data-driven advertising uses automation and AI to scale the delivery of communications to customers on a one-on-one level ensuring that you get the ROI and conversions that you need. To learn more about this concept we spoke to Seninda Bandara the Founder and the MD of the Boutique Agency Network.
He founded The Boutique Agency Network to introduce data-driven advertising practices to Sri Lanka. Today, the agency is creating its own ecosystem by connecting people, brands, advertising, technology, touchpoints, art and entertainment together, keeping data at the core.
Tell us about the Boutique Agency and who is behind it?
The Boutique Agency Network was created by me to invigorate the advertising industry by introducing data-driven advertising practices to Sri Lanka. Established in 2016 as a “one-man” consultation company we were able to create a milestone in the ad industry with the introduction of war room technology in Sri Lanka. In 2018, The Boutique Agency Network was incorporated as a “Data-Driven” advertising agency and we expanded our team to a fully-fledged team in 2020. Today, our team has the perfect balance of both veterans and freshers who share the same vision to create ideas that reflect business results.
What was the need you saw to launch an ad agency when the agency business landscape is already competitive?
I have always preferred being in the blue ocean rather than the red ocean. Therefore, the whole concept of the Boutique Agency Network was to create our unique space where there’s no competitor.
Working as a strategy lead for key MNC agencies in Sri Lanka, I truly experienced the drawbacks of larger agency networks in terms of adaptation to digital transformation and the least effort on the transformation of their clients with data and technology advancements.
This was the trigger for me to think of a different business model for the Sri Lankan advertising industry, an agency model that works as a partner instead of a competitor for agencies and a business partner for clients instead of a supplier.
Why do you think clients should come to you, and what would you say is unique about your service offerings to the industry?
When I asked this same question from most of our clients, their response was “different yet factual thinking”. That’s the unique feature of our agency which is hard to copy or replace. Our thinking is purely inspired by data as we believe data stores the emotions, feelings and behaviours of people. Therefore, data reflects the truth.
Our journey began with realizing the business and the human truth that created the data. In other words, the cause of the effect. Knowing the root cause always helps us to develop strategies to change the effect. We always preferred to have a perfect orchestration of both academic routes in validating strategy by referring to relevant literature as well as inhaling local insights through knowledge sharing and observation.
We are concentrating on data-driven creativity, connections planning and data science for advertising as our key offering.
Tell us about some of the innovative campaigns you have worked on and with whom?
One example that I can share with you is the #DontSkipAcidity for ENO – GSK campaign. This simple and effective datadriven campaign was created to connect ENO with potential meal skippers at the right moment as they have a higher possibility of acidity. Using a range of “moment centric” skippable ads just asking a question of “Trying to Skip?” and relate that with a meal skipping moment on social media and Television by connecting multiple affinities and day-parts.
Also, #ResponsibleMe for Seylan Bank was another case study that became highly influential, and one of the most outstanding Covid-19 related campaigns in the recent past also came to life as a result of a data-driven study of emotions. And there are many other campaigns we have created that can be seen on our website www.boutiqueagencynetwork.com.
Where do you see the industry heading in a post covid phase where brands and firms are becoming more frugal in spending?
The post-Covid-19 macro-environmental forces are challenging businesses across the world including Sri Lanka. According to the Central Bank, Sri Lanka is witnessing a 3.6% GDP constraction and the unemployment rate is at 5.2% in Q4 2020, compared to the 4.8% in 2019. These fundamental indicators reflect the country’s situation, and the realistic challenges businesses are facing.
Having said that, there are companies which had a positive growth as well. Media consumption of people has changed due to the pandemic, according to the WeAreSocial report, Sri Lanka’s internet penetration is at 51% as of 2020. In terms of the advertising media landscape, there was an estimation of 17-20% media inflation that took place due to the increase of viewership and overflow of media inventories as a result of the higher demand of advertisers.
All these factors impacted many organisations including the state sector, forcing them to adopt digital transformation processes, resulting in marketing budgets shifting from exposure-based mainline media to performance-based media and platforms for more visible ROI.
Literally, brand owners are in the process of realizing the importance of having a connected approach in communications instead of a traditional communications approach. Perhaps many traditional advertising agencies, organisations and even media entities will be challenged as a result of need shifts in the market.
In my point of view, mainline media spends will further increase in coming years and there will be a significant growth in digital media to be expected in the future with a significant share in the advertising mix of organisations in the next few years.
What plans do you have for The Boutique Agency going forward?
We are in the process of creating our ecosystem by connecting people, brands, advertising, technology, touchpoints, art and entertainment together, keeping data at the core. We are planning to introduce a range of home-grown intelligence tools to help our stakeholders including our people, clients and strategic partners to make better and agile decisions across our business offering of data-driven creativity, connections planning and data science for advertising.
Importantly we are in the process of experimenting with a range of advanced data-driven methods such as neuromarketing techniques to make more impactful and meaningful creative development and experiences for brands.
Finally, we are focusing on expanding our services to the global market with a vision of making a Sri Lankan-born global advertising agency in the space of “data-driven advertising” and we have already provided our services to a couple of tech-based brands outside of Sri Lanka as well.