AURORA: FOR CONTEXT, PERHAPS WE CAN START WITH A BRIEF SUMMARY OF YOUR BACKGROUNDS BEFORE YOU LAUNCHED VIRAL EDGE.

RIZWAN AHMAD: I graduated in 2009 from the College of Business Management (CBM), majoring in marketing. My first job was at Unilever Pakistan as a management trainee and I remained in marketing there for six years. I started by working on Fair and Lovely and then launched Vaseline. When the digital transformation began in 2010, I took on the digital lead role. I had done several webmaster courses and was really fascinated by the whole thing. My marketing foundations were at Unilever, as the company understands brands as a business. Most of the campaigns came from their global headquarters and I introduced a lot of new agencies to Unilever. However, after six years I realised there was a gap; the tech people were too techie. This made me think about starting a digital content-focused agency that tells stories that would work digitally.

NAVEED SERAJ: I started my career as a banker. From 2003 onwards, I worked for 10 years in banking. Like Rizwan, I had a techie background and worked in alternate delivery channels; apps, internet banking, credit cards – all digital payment systems. I was a part of the tech side of it for the first three banks. I started my career with Prime Bank; from there, I went to Allied Bank, UBL and Atlas. I then moved towards the e-commerce side of it, only to realise that e-commerce does not exist here. I left banking with the thought of creating an e-commerce ecosystem in Pakistan. I partnered with a courier company called Blue X and established the first e-commerce-driven cash and delivery system. As it happened, Unilever Pakistan was one of our clients, which is where I met Rizwan.

A: Would it be correct to say that although you both have creative titles, neither of you has a classical creative background?

NS: We are not traditional creatives, but we were creative in our limited space and implemented very cutting-edge solutions. Within our ecosystem, we were doing very different things because we did not follow the traditional formula; we implemented our crazy ideas and it kind of worked.

A: How would you define Viral Edge?

RA: When we started Viral Edge in 2015, the internet was beginning to boom and our thought process was that creative agencies would struggle in the next eight to 10 years because they would be too resistant to change. The thought was that we would be the future of the creative agency, although we realised it would take time. The idea was to start as a digital agency and then transform ourselves into what would become the new creative agency. Today, we consider ourselves a creative agency because we understand the full funnel. There are four extremely important core parts for an agency today. The first is the creative – which has to be digital first. The second is the digital strategy – and you need a lot of technical knowledge. The third is the ability to amplify digital media and the fourth is the influencer marketing grid. Together, this constitutes the new creative agency and we have all four verticals very well equipped as teams: that is the DNA of the new creative agency.

A: Specifically, what do you offer that is different from the other creative agencies?

RA: The first step is to make our clients understand how not to use the traditional way of engaging with their consumers.

A: What do you mean by “how not to use the traditional way”?

RA: The traditional way is based on a formula. What we do is put together an integrated media campaign for every platform separately.

A: What are the “nots”?

NS: The traditional route of doing things is to make a communication for TV and then roll it out on different digital platforms with the same messaging and that’s it.

RA: We provide customised solutions for each platform. A brand’s core campaign may have five tailor-made creative executions across multiple platforms – this is far more work in terms of consumer understanding and more complex in terms of campaign delivery.

A: When did your first big break come?

RA: In 2015 when we got the Tapal account.

A: What part of the Tapal account was it?

RA: Digital. At that point, clients didn’t understand digital. In 2015 when Tapal came up with the Fawad Khan campaign, we got them to agree to launch it on digital first, even before they launched it on TV, and it was unheard of for Tapal.

NS: Later we did the ‘chai wars’ campaign for Tapal – when knowingly or unknowingly, the competition released an ad with the same promise and this led to a brand war; Red Cup versus Yellow Cup, which attracted a lot of ‘noticeability’.

RA: We started getting noticed in the digital space and getting more and more brands wanting to work with us in the digital space. In the first five years, we worked with over 100 eateries, including Delizia, GreenO and Broadway, marketing all these eateries from scratch. Afterwards, FMCG brands also noticed us; we implemented a similar framework for them and saw equal success. Within two years, clients were bringing us difficult briefs because we were known for our ability to crack them in unconventional ways.

NS: Our content was very edgy and not at all conventional. Like our name Viral Edge, we had the virality factor from the get-go.

A: What are the major changes you have seen over the 10 years of your existence?

NS: It is such a huge truth, and I don’t know whether people are honest enough to admit it or not – consumers are so smart, that they are rejecting advertising. It is such a huge truth, yet everybody is in denial – nobody wants to watch ads anymore. Back in the day, we were forced to watch TV ads because we were watching a TV show or the news or whatever. Ads were forced on us, and we did not have a choice.

RA: According to YouTube numbers, 80% of the audience skip ads, which happens because they are exposed to an advertising model where people don’t want to interact. The way people on social media consume news or entertainment is changing rapidly, and we have to learn what is happening to craft smarter strategies. Nobody cares about high-end big productions anymore but brands still want to invest in them. However, the amount of content you need today has both increased and changed a lot.

NS: These days when we get a brief, we question whether they even need an ad because if you want to say something, you can do it without producing an ad.

A: Any other changes?

NS: AI will increase marketing output insanely, and stuff that was not possible before, will be possible now – making a million animations a day, or releasing a song by a specific vocalist in 15 minutes. All these iterations can go into the creative ecosystem today, making the output more exciting. AI is bringing us the ability to think in endless ways. There is no limit to thinking.

RA: AI is enabling speed and output, and this will drive the price of creative further down. Pop-up agencies will come saying they can produce the same output for 50% of the cost.

A: Who is doing the thinking? You or AI?

RA: Creatives will use AI to get ideas faster, but it will still have a lot of human input. The idea will still be generated by the creator, but you will also need to understand the possibilities that technology offers. Then, the power of your ideation becomes more complex and you can create more exciting work. This is what will drive future creatives – using and merging technology in ideation.

A: Do you still believe in consistency as essential to long-term brand building?

RA: The idea of remaining consistent still exists today. A brand that bought into content marketing very early was Red Bull. Yet, Red Bull has a tonality about what they say that remains consistent, and which they express in multiple different ways. Take Pepsi’s ‘Why Not Meri Jaan?’. We asked 25 different artists to create rap songs based on the original idea and this triggered 10,000 consumers to join in – today, #WhyNotMeriJaan has more than 10 million unique pieces of content. So while the idea should remain consistent, the forms of content can change. When you talk about creating more content, you don’t want to say different things; you have to stay within that umbrella. But it means having an extremely strong content strategy so that while you say the same thing within that framework, you could also potentially talk about more things.

A: Given that there are usually different partners in front of a client, who determines the ‘Big Idea’ when it becomes a case of identifying one?

RA: Generally, it comes from the marketing team. When Pepsi’s marketing team changed, they moved away from ‘Why Not Meri Jaan?’

A: Are you saying the advertising agencies have no influence?

RA: What I am saying is that the brief starts from the marketing team, and then the first go-to agency is their own creative agency. So the creative agency is still the one driving the concept.

A: How often are you in that seat?

RA: Almost 40% of the time for the brands we work on. Digital is becoming increasingly retainer-based and this sometimes gives us an advantage. For example, for Reckitt, we are the only agency on retainer. They don’t have a creative agency on board and when they want to develop a concept, they put it out as a pitch; we win some pitches, BBDO wins some and others go to another agency. Unilever follows the same model for some of their brands and we get the opportunity to pitch. However, if a brand has a creative agency, then that is where they go first. IAL Saatchi & Saatchi are the creative agency for Tapal, but once in a while, we get a couple of projects where we get the creative as well.

A: Do you have a complete complement of people or do you hire on a project basis?

RA: We don’t work on a project-to-project basis. We generally anticipate demand. Ninety-five percent of our business is retainer-based, so we know the demand. At the moment, we manage about 50 to 60 accounts and we have about 75 people; 65 are based in Karachi and 10 are based in Lahore for the Pepsi account. To service these accounts, we need to have the talent in-house. The issue is not only hiring but retaining people. For our part, we have a very high retention. We have built a culture that is accommodating towards Gen Z. The business is growing and we keep on scaling up.

A: Traditionally ad agencies made their money through big production TVCs. In those terms, digital has always been seen as a relatively cheap medium. Has this changed?

RA: Digital is a very, very low-margin business, although it is increasing.

A: But should it be?

RA: No, it shouldn’t be. In a lot of cases, we refuse to take the business if the money is not right. However, digital involves a lot of different campaigns, so there is a lot of value addition. Digital means doing influencer marketing; it also involves productions, maybe small ones, but at scale. We are also buying digital media, which involves a commission. So there are peripherals which add to the agreed retainer. However, Pakistan is still one of the toughest markets to operate in because many companies have not revised their scope of work and not pricing digital right, which is why a lot of agencies have started working for international accounts.

A: What is your ambition for Viral Edge for the next five years?

RA: To strengthen our brand and become number one in Pakistan. We want to sustain our business in Pakistan as well as focus on the GCC market by having a presence in Oman, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

NS: We want to rule the world, but for now we will focus on becoming the number one agency in Pakistan.

RA: We have been very consistent. We have worked with Pepsi for four years and with Reckitt for three years. We have focused on client retention and protected our name, and if you can do that, you can really do big business. In the last 10 years, we have not done any business development. We just get referrals from clients and are called to multiple pitches. The local landscape is a really big market, and if you can become the market leader, that is a good share.

NS: We are very passion-driven. When we get a brief for an interesting product, it excites us and we give it our 500% regardless of the financial map behind it. We have done this since we started and is one of the reasons why we have been blessed with good portfolios, a good team and a good business output. We just want to do good work which excites us. We try to solve problems with our unique DNA and that is what gives us great satisfaction. Money is a by-product of this and so far we have been blessed with both.

A: What precisely excites you about what you do?

RA: The joy of execution, and seeing your work published; now with digital, you get so much feedback, and when people notice what you have done, you get a high from seeing your work appreciated. NS: We have been challenging the status quo from the start. Even during briefing sessions with clients, we will ask them to pivot; we tell them that they actually don’t want this, what they want is that. We don’t take normal briefs. We are not cut out for formulae; we don’t do vanilla stuff.

Rizwan Ahmad and Naveed Seraj were in conversation with Mariam Ali Baig. For feedback: aurora@dawn.com