In the Spotlight: With Focus on Brand Commerce, Madras Global Sets Eyes on the World’s Stage

We help clients cost-effectively drive Brand Transformation, Media Amplification, and optimize through Content Automation: Fred Schuster.

Eager to expand your client base and spread the word about your products and services? Wondering if you should even bother with marketing programs if you don’t have thousands of dollars to spend?

The answer, of course, is yes. It’s financially riskier for a business not to market. And there are literally hundreds of cost-effective ideas you can use to increase your revenue.

In light of the above mentioned, we are thrilled to present Madras Global. The company aims to overcome the prime obstacle faced by marketers today – developing marketing solutions that are both innovative and cost-effective – by replacing the linear agency-client model with a continuous engagement.

Madras Global was established in 2017 and is headquartered in New York City.

Interview Excerpt: Fred Schuster, CEO

Why was the company set up? What business challenges do you solve?

We believe every brand touchpoint is an opportunity to drive business, so we built Madras Global to be the first and only Brand Commerce agency of its kind. 

We seamlessly weave emotional brand building and the application of data to drive business performance and build continuous content engines for our clients that enable them to remain relevant and provide value.

We believe for a Brand to compete today, it must constantly inspire, engage, and reach its customers and, therefore, we developed a new business model that provides creative solutions in near-shore hubs of London and New York, then cost-effectively execute via our off-shore creative and production teams in Bangalore and Chennai. All powered by our proprietary technology platform, JDX.

Tell us about your first product/service that was launched? 

As part of our Brand Commerce platform, we help clients drive Brand Transformation, Media Amplification, and optimize through Content Automation.

To start, we develop strategic and creative ‘Bundles’. Each bundle cost-effectively packages together strategy, creative, planning, and execution across various media channels that best suit each client’s needs. The individual tactic might include anything from traditional TV and Print to Customer Engagement and OOH, to Social and Digital Optimization.

We then leverage our technology platform and our resources in India to develop optimization models to execute multiple assets and monitor their in-market effectiveness.  

The model is flexible, scalable, and most importantly cost-effective in response to the current demands many marketers and companies face today.

How successful was your first project roll on? Describe a successful client initiative.

For Shark/Ninja, we launched a performance platform for America’s best-selling vacuum brand, DuoClean.

The vacuum head had not changed in over 50 years. And no one seemed to notice. Except for Shark, that is. They realized that many of the problems people took for granted while vacuuming could be solved if they engineered an entirely new structure. It was a brand new technology called DuoClean, and it changed the game. But how do you tell the world about an amazing innovation that literally no one was waiting for?

Our solution was to go in depth. We used CGI and motion control cameras to create a TV spot that explained common vacuuming problems, and then DuoClean’s solution, at a granular level – literally. We even art directed our dirt, by making it bright, vibrant and eye-catching, rather than drab and depressing. With slick camera work and editing, more like a car ad, consumers understood that something big was happening.

We then re-edited highlights of our spot into multiple social posts and leveraged the imagery and language on in-store packaging. 

The result, Shark DuoClean became the #1 searched vacuum on Amazon and one of the top-selling vacuums in the U.S.

What do you feel are the reasons behind:

Your product popularity – Agencies today are designed to be too ‘front-loaded’, meaning that by the time strategy and ideas come to life, there is little time or budget left over for amplification. When consumer behaviors shift or competitors pivot, as they always do, brands struggle to find the funds to react quickly and effectively.

Madras Global overcomes the prime obstacle faced by marketers today – developing marketing solutions that are both innovative and cost-effective – by replacing the linear agency-client model with continuous engagement. Without a typical siloed agency approach, we are making it financially easier so that clients can shift some of the upfront strategy cost towards making and doing more. 

Your consistence growth as an organization – Madras’ continuous engagement model takes a different approach weaving together story and delivery to create continuous content so every one of our brands can reach more customers, change more lives and create a greater impact on the world. Whereas top creative directors typically disengage after delivering the initial big idea, our creative leads stay connected to address clients’ changing needs fluidly. And by focusing on longer-term engagements, we enable the heavy creative investment to be amortized over the course of evolving campaigns.

If you have to list three factors that have been/are the biggest asset to your organization, what would they be and why?

Madras’ people are our greatest asset. They are the real fuel and energy behind our success. At a company of our size, our employees assume more responsibility and wear many hats which is instrumental to our company culture and vital to being successful.

Second, it’s working with collaborative clients. We are committed to understanding all of our clients’ businesses and we continuously strive to be a partner that has integrity and a steward of marketing dollars and ROI. In return, we look for collaboration, a commitment to drive the work forward, and open and honest feedback. The work is the ultimate reflection on our clients and we want them to shine.

And lastly, killer ideas and execution. Madras’ foundation is built on a unique operating model that combines lower priced and high-volume creative automation via our Indian operation, and high-value strategic and creative resources in New York and London. This allows our clients’ brands to create more meaningful, connected and continuous customer experiences.

How does your company contribute to the global IT platforms?

Technology is at the heart of Madras’ solutions and is a critical component in successfully executing the near-shore/off-shore service delivery model.

JDX is our proprietary Ad Ops technology platform and proprietary workflow and automation solution that allows users to create, collaborate, manage, proof, store, distribute, and measure advertising across all channels; print, digital and video.

Do you have any new products ready to be/getting ready to be rolled out into the market?

We are in the midst of rolling out new brand work for our client Patheon, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific. ‘Made With’ is the first campaign since they were acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific. The campaign puts a face on pharmaceutical manufacturing by celebrating real employees who bring expertise and commitment to deliver life-saving drugs to market and tells real stories of how the brand makes, solves and delivers for its clients. The campaign marks a bold shift for the CDMO category leader (Thermo Fisher has delivered more NDAs than the next six manufacturers combined), away from traditional capabilities and capacity communication that are standard in the space. By putting real people front and center in an integrated digital and print communication program directed at prospective clients and investors, the new campaign brings heart to what has been a purely scientific category. Through powerful and artful photography, Madras brings to life the human ingenuity that sets Thermo Fisher’s Patheon and Fisher Clinical Services businesses apart.

The industry ads broke during DCAT week (March 19-22), the premier event for companies in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing in NYC, while mainstream advertising broke on March 30th in USA Today and other publications

Where do you see your company a couple of years from now?

In the next 5 years, Madras will continue to expand and grow, in depth, scale, and geographically. We already partner with our clients’ internal marketing and creative organizations and will continue to listen to their needs and adapt and grow with them.

The Man Behind The Operation: A Brief Background

Fred is an inspiring creative and business leader with over 20 years of experience pioneering unique approaches to agency network operations, creative and content development and international production delivery.

Fred joined The Ad2pro Group, the parent company for Madras Global, in April 2016 and launched Madras in January of 2017. Prior to that, he was the founder of Fred&Co., a global creative operations company where he collaborated with Ad2pro on the operating model that led to their expanded Brand business.

Fred was the also the founder and Chief Executive of Craft Worldwide, a content and production business unit of McCann Worldgroup which offered unique, client-centric operating models and an emphasis on the ‘craft’ of execution. Prior to joining McCann Worldgroup, Fred spent 16 years at Ogilvy & Mather, most recently as Chief Executive Officer of RedWorks Worldwide. As the inaugural Global CEO, Fred helped build RedWorks into one of the largest global creative development and production delivery offerings in the industry with over 50 offices globally.

Fred’s expertise covers a wide range of industries including technology, healthcare, manufacturing, consumer, and financial services and has personally led award-winning teams working on global accounts.

We build continuous content engines for our clients that enable them to remain relevant and provide value.