Case Study Assignment

Neeraj Dani
Chimpz is an multinational corporation and they are amongst the top 3 advertising agencies of the
country and are ranked as the 6th best creative agency globally. People at Chimpz are divided mainly
into 3 departments which are the Client Servicing, Creative & Studio. Creative is further divided into
copy & art. Being amongst the top creative agencies it is always busy and chaotic. One of the teams
was working on a creative and Alok from Client Servicing was coordinating with Mir from the art and
Amit from the copy department. Alok, had already submitted a brief to the creative cell and a draft
was ready. As Alok, saw the creative he went to the creative and said this will not work as client will
not like this.

Meanwhile Alok, gets a call from Anupam, his boss who wanted to know the status of the creative
and Alok, shared the creative with Anupam without sharing it with the client. The next moment he
received some changes in the brief but since he was on call with Anupam he forgot to send the
changes to the creative. In this he told Anupam, that there was a change in the brief and told the
creative people that he has not sent the design to the client. The change was the copy was to be
written in Hindi, so since Alok was in a hurry to finish and send the creative he himself translated the
copy from English to Hindi. He told Amit, the copy guy to just verify what he translated and didn’t
give him the actual English copy. Amit just saw some grammatical errors and sent the corrections to
the Mir in the Art.

Mir, replaced the old copy written in English in the same design since he did not receive the creative
brief change from Alok. Then Mir, gets a call from Anupam for some changes in the design and Mir,
does the changes and send it to Anupam without sending it to Alok. Studio people are responsible
for making the design ready for printing. In the mean time Anupam unaware that client has not seen
the design sends it to studio for readying it for printing. Then Alok calls Anupam for some other work
and the there was lot of noise in the office because Chimpz had won agency of the year award while
Alok wonder why was Anupam asking that has he sent the final creative to the client.

Question 1. What do you feel about the communication structure at Chimpz?

Question 2. Identify the various barriers to communication in the above case?

Question 3. Why was Alok puzzled when Alok asked him about sending the creative to the client?

Question 4. Did the creative work was also affected by any of the barriers to communication?
Explain.

Question5. How do you think this confusion could have been avoided?
Ans1. The communication structure at Chipmz is very haphazard. The people don’t follow prescribed
lines of communication. The scalier chain in not followed i.e. anyone is talking to anyone and don’t
follow a certain hierarchy which makes it chaotic. As we saw in this case that Mir, from creative gets
a call directly from Anupam for the changes in design and Anupam without checking with Alok
directly send it to the studio people. In this Alok, who was responsible for the work, he was the one
who was interacting with the client and also answerable with the client had no clue about what was
going on. So, it is clear that the communication was not proper and also a it is very important to
document all the conversation but here all the communication was going over the call and if
anything goes seriously wrong then it will be difficult to find that who exactly was at fault and whom
to be held accountable.

Ans2. Language Barrier, Perceptual Barrier, Listening Barrier & Physical Barriers.

Ans3. Alok made an early assumption that the client will not like the creative made by them thus he
didn’t send it to the client. But he made Mir, do some changes in the design. On the other hand
Anupam directly calls Mir, for making some changes in the design about which Alok had no
knowledge. Also, Alok forgot to inform Anupam that he is yet to send the creative to the client.
Where as Anupam had already made Mir work on the design and also get it ready from the studio
people and all this was far away from Alok.

Ans4. Yes, the creative which was made also suffered. There was language barrier involved in that.
This is because the original copy was in in English but now the final design had to be in Hindi. So,
Alok just translated the copy from English to Hindi and Amit, the copywriter just checked it for the
grammatical errors as asked by Alok. There are high chances that there must have been some
serious issues with the translation as the case never mentions that Alok was through with Hindi
language to write copies. So, the copy must have suffered some damage involving language barrier.
Also, Alok assumed that there will not be any flaws in translation so he just asked for checking the
grammar and not the translation part.

Ans5. Chimpz should follow a prescribed line of communication. They should involve more of written
form of communication preferably in the form emails. This will also make the communication
process swift, transparent and hassle free. Since here Alok was responsible for the creative and
interacting with the client he should have been informed by Anupam so that he is not left with
anything. In a way they should keep all the people informed in the loop. This will also create a space
for easy handling of any crisis or an emergency in case of anyone of the concerned are not available
due to any reasons.