The Indian AdGeek

Why does Indian advertising keep agreeing that its agency business model is broken and then keep behaving exactly the same way? In Episode 34 of The Indian AdGeek , Vishal Mehra turns the questions on Prasad Sangameshwaran, Editor of ET Brand Equity, for a wide-ranging conversation about the economics, power structures, and future of Indian advertising. Topics covered in this episode: Why agencies...

In Episode 33 of The Indian AdGeek , host Vishal Mehra sits down with Mike Follett , CEO of Lumen Research , to untangle the science of human attention in advertising. From late-night client debates in Mumbai over how big a logo should be to building cutting-edge infrared and webcam eye-tracking technology, Mike reveals why traditional focus groups give us useless data and why humans everywhere ar...

Gautham Narayanan runs Virtue, VICE Brand Group's creative agency, across Europe[cite: 1]. Before that, 13 years at AMV BBDO London on brands like Guinness and BT, doubling profits at BBDO South Africa, and a run as Managing Director at Wieden+Kennedy Delhi[cite: 1]. In this episode, Gautham talks about what network agencies still do better than anyone else[cite: 1], why he pushes back on the term...

What do you actually say when someone asks what AKQA does? That's the question Episode 31 opens with, and Bianca Dordea , Global Client Lead at AKQA , answers it. Before AKQA, Bianca was CEO of DDB Berlin , and before that, EVP Client Service Director at Energy BBDO in Chicago. Her career spans three very different definitions of what an agency is supposed to be: a traditional creative shop, a ful...

In our milestone 30th episode (& our very first video podcast), we are joined by one of the true greats of Indian advertising: Santosh Desai (MD & CEO of Future Brands India, author of Mother Pious Lady , and legendary columnist). In this unfiltered chat, Santosh talks about why the traditional agency model is fundamentally broken, how tech acts as a consumption pacifier, & why regiona...

Episode 29 of The Indian AdGeek features Tracey Barber , Global Chief Transformation and Growth Officer at Havas Creative Network, in a conversation that moves from war rooms to advertising's version of them. Tracey spent eight years as a Non-Executive Director at the UK Ministry of Defence while building her career at Havas, and she brings that same discipline to the biggest question facing globa...

Episode 28. What do you get when one of India's sharpest advertising minds walks through the doors of Sequoia Capital, watches how the world's best money thinks about brands, and then decides neither world is doing it right? You get Spring Marketing Capital. India's only SEBI-registered AIF that doesn't send you a retainer invoice—it takes a seat at your cap table instead. Raja Ganapathy, Founding...

On Episode 27 of The Indian AdGeek, Vishal Mehra sits down with Laurent Thevenet, Head of Creative Technology APAC, Publicis Groupe. What does creative tech actually look like inside a large agency network? Laurent talks about how AI is being used in day-to-day creative work, where it adds the most value, what still needs to stay “technologically inefficient", and why the real moat is not just too...

What happens to advertising when AI agents shop for us, Q-commerce becomes a media channel, and a team of five can do the work of twenty? In this episode, Babita Baruah, CEO of VML India, talks about her 30 year journey in WPP, breaks down how BX, CX and commerce come together to build human-centric, connected brands in a Bharat-first, AI-fuelled market. We talk global brand guidelines vs local re...

Episode 25 What happens when an agency refuses to call itself an agency? In our silver jubilee episode, Vishal sits down with Advait Gupt, Co-Founder & CEO of Kulfi Collective, the Mumbai-based creative powerhouse behind Supari Studios and brand work for Spotify, Netflix, Crocs, Nothing, LEGO, Red Bull, and CRED. Advait unpacks how Kulfi stayed bootstrapped while peers chased eye-watering valuatio...

Episode 24 What does a Global Chief Strategy Officer at one of the world's most sophisticated out-of-home companies actually think about the state of media? Quite a lot, and almost none of it is comfortable. In this episode of The Indian AdGeek, Vishal Mehra sits down with Ranganathan Somanathan, Global CSO at billups and former CEO of both Publicis Media and Omnicom Media Group across Southeast A...

In Episode 23 of The Indian AdGeek, we sit down with Toby Southgate, Global CEO of We Are Social, to dissect the fundamental evolution of the agency model. Toby has navigated every corner of the advertising world, from the upstream consulting of Brand Union and the global scale of McCann Worldgroup to the creative independence of Forsman & Bodenfors. We dive into: 📺 How to build a timeless brand...

Episode 22 What happens when you stop trying to fix a broken agency model and just build a new one from scratch? This week on The Indian AdGeek, we are joined by Lucy Jameson, the strategist and founder behind the globally celebrated Uncommon Creative Studio. Lucy pulls back the curtain on how Uncommon became the most awarded creative shop in the UK by leaning into "noisy thinking" and "disproport...

Episode 21 | Adam Ferrier (Founder, Thinkerbell) “If you want to change behaviour, stop asking people what they want.” In this episode of The Indian AdGeek, we dive deep into the mind of Adam Ferrier, the founder of Thinkerbell (Campaign’s Global Agency of the Year), author of Stop Listening to the Customer and perhaps the only ad man who started his career as a forensic psychologist in a maximum-...

Episode 20 What if the future of advertising isn't a great campaign — but a great system? Rakesh Hinduja left one of the world's most storied agency networks to build something India had never seen: a platform-first martech network that owns its own IP, runs its own tech, and doesn't just rent reach on Meta or Google — it helps brands own their audience relationships. In this episode of The Indian...

In Episode 19 of The Indian AdGeek, we are joined by the man who is literally rewriting the repair manual for the advertising brain: Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer at ⁠System1⁠ and author of the seminal works ⁠Lemon⁠ and ⁠Look Out.⁠ Western advertising is in a "crisis of effectiveness"—becoming flat, literal, and devitalised. But is India, with its love for music, dance, and high-context s...

Episode 18:  How does a digital-first agency transform into a global integrated brand partner with footprints in London and Dubai? In this episode, Vishal Mehra sits down with Shradha Agarwal, co-founder and Global CEO of Grapes, to deconstruct the blueprint of a modern independent agency. Shradha pulls back the curtain on why she’s betting on a "modular" agency structure—launching specialised uni...

Episode 17 In a world obsessed with 15-second micro-trends and "zero-click" conversions, Anant Sharma (CEO of Matter Of Form) is making a radical case for slowing down. In this episode of The Indian AdGeek, host Vishal Mehra sits down with Anant to deconstruct why the term "luxury" has become a marketing crutch and why "timelessness" is the only metric that matters in 2026. We dive deep into: * Th...

Episode 16 kicks off The Indian AdGeek in 2026 with a powerhouse guest: Tarun Rai, Co-Chairman of Start Design Group UK and former Group CEO South Asia at Wunderman Thompson (JWT). In this wide-ranging conversation, Tarun shares: * His first big break in advertising and the decisions that propelled him from Account Executive to Group CEO. * Lessons from seven years in publishing before returning t...

Episode 15: The Year-Ender | Scale, Soul, and the Agentic AI Revolution with Rishad Tobaccowala As 2025 draws to a close, the advertising world is reeling from the massive Omnicom-IPG merger and the realization that AI is moving faster than anyone predicted. To make sense of it all, we are joined by world-renowned marketing visionary Rishad Tobaccowala. In this deep-dive finale, Rishad challenges...

Is the advertising industry undergoing a mid-life crisis? We are obsessed with youth culture, viral trends, and Gen Z—yet the data shows that Gen X outspends Gen Z by a staggering 10:1 ratio. The 14th episode of The Indian AdGeek features Brent Rivard, founder of Geezer, a "purpose-built" agency hell-bent on helping clients unlock the 50+ demographic. Brent doesn’t hold back. We discuss the "brain...

Episode 13 of The Indian AdGeek, Vishal Mehra sits down with Manisha Kapoor, CEO of the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) and Vice President on the Executive Committee of ICAS, for a wide-ranging conversation on the evolving role of advertising standards in India and beyond. From her early love affair with advertising and formative years at Hindustan Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, to...

What does it take to build not just great campaigns, but great businesses? In this episode of The Indian AdGeek, I sat down with Ivan Fernandes — leading marketing management consultant — to unpack the urgent shifts reshaping the advertising world. Ivan shares how he first found his way into advertising and how his current roles give him a unique vantage point on agency health. From the industry’s...

On Friday, October 25, 2025, the advertising industry woke up to devastating news—Piyush Pandey, the Godfather of Indian Advertising, had passed away. The man who gave Indian advertising its own voice, who believed that “no campaign is worth its salt unless the people on the street love it,” was gone. This episode is dedicated to his memory. The Indian AdGeek episode 11 features Gopa Menon. Longti...

A wide-ranging conversation with Lulu Raghavan on brand building, pitching, and design-led business transformation across APAC, from San Francisco and London to Mumbai and the Delhi airport that changed her work forever. Lulu unpacks the craft of winning clients, the anatomy of a memorable pitch, and how global thinking meets Indian opportunity. What we cover: 📺 How Lulu's lifelong love for brand...