The Indian AdGeek

The Indian AdGeek

By Vishal MehraBusiness
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The Indian AdGeek episodes

  • The State of Indian Advertising Industry feat. Prasad Sangameshwaran (Editor, ET Brand Equity.com)

    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 have underpriced themselves and how procurement changed the agency-client relationship
    • Why the industry failed to make pitch fees stick
    • What the decline of the traditional AOR model means for brands
    • Why independent agencies increasingly have an advantage over large networks
    • Inside advertising trade media: Editorial independence and the economics of industry events
    • Whether Cannes Lions still delivers enough value
    • How AI is changing publishing and discovery, the rise of micro-dramas, and where long-form storytelling could go next

      • And perhaps the biggest question of all: if advertising is brilliant at repositioning brands, why has it done such a poor job of positioning its own value?

      A candid look at Indian advertising from someone who has spent decades watching, questioning, and documenting the industry from the front row.

      The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

      Connect with Vishal Mehra on X

      43 min
    • The Eye-Tracking Truth About Ad Attention feat. Mike Follett (CEO, Lumen Research)

      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 are wired to ignore ads.

      We dive deep into:

      • The Advertere Fallacy: Why forcing people to look at ads in focus groups invalidates market research.
      • Media Realities: Why linear TV and cinema ads outperform glitzy digital platforms on raw attention, and why cricket remains the greatest ad vehicle ever invented.
      • The Creative Multiplier: How great creative can effectively boost your media budget by 50%—and why relying solely on algorithms is a trap.
      • The AI Slop Problem: What eye-tracking data says about AI-generated creatives and their 10–20% drop in effectiveness.
      • Gaming Attention: Why proxy metrics fail and how programmatic attention layers are changing media planning across global agency stacks.

        • 🎧 Listen to Lucy Jameson’s episode on The Indian AdGeek here.

        The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

        The Indian AdGeek | Episode 33

        Host: Vishal Mehra on X (@vishal1mehra)

        42 min
      • Making a Virtue Out of VICE: Building Brands Through Entertainment feat. Gautham Narayanan (Managing Director, Europe, Virtue)

        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 "anti agency"[cite: 1], and the WhatsApp message from a client that unlocked Guinness's Made of Black campaign[cite: 1]. He also unpacks how VICE convinces brand-safety-nervous Fortune 500 clients to work with it[cite: 1], why brands are now competing with MrBeast and Netflix for attention[cite: 1], and the one thing he'd bet on for advertising's next five years that has nothing to do with AI[cite: 1].

        As Gautham puts it, culture isn't something you tap into. It's something you earn your way into[cite: 1].

        The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps[cite: 1].

        The Indian AdGeek, Episode 32[cite: 1]

        Host: Vishal Mehra on X

        44 min
      • Traditional Creative Agencies vs Frontier Agency feat. Bianca Dordea (Global Client Lead, AKQA)

        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 full-service network office, and now a business that refuses to call itself either.

      • 📺 Why AKQA calls itself a "frontier agency" and rejects the labels of creative agency, consultancy, and design firm
      • 📺 The real story behind AKQA's founding relationship with Nike, and what being "embedded in a client's business" actually looks like day to day
      • 📺 How WPP's OpenX model works for Coca-Cola, and whether capability-based (not geography-based) teams are genuinely more efficient
      • 📺 Why AKQA is moving away from slide-deck pitches toward working MVPs and live demos
      • 📺 The exact type of client AKQA works best with, and the type that should never walk through its doors
      • 📺 Whether Accenture Song, Deloitte Digital, and McKinsey Design are a real threat to agencies, or whether culture is the one thing that can't be acquired
      • 📺 What happens to agency pricing once Gen AI commoditises execution

        • The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

        Host:
        Vishal Mehra – @vishal1mehra on X

        46 min
      • Why Indian Advertising is Broken feat. Santosh Desai (MD & CEO, Futurebrands India)

        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 regional brands are leaving national giants in the dust.

        Key Highlights:

        • Inside the strategy behind VIP Suitcases' "Belong Everywhere" shift & an ahead-of-its-time Stayfree campaign that fought shame decades before it was trendy
        • Why the K-shaped economy and digital "doom scrolling" are redefining what aspiration actually means in non-metro India
        • How centralized agency structures fail to comprehend hyperlocal realities, and why the linear development gap between cities is officially dead
        • Why AI easily replaces mediocre advertising, and how the industry completely missed the short-form creator boom on Reels
        • A sharp critique of why the advertising industry is desperately obsessed with self-referential validation & patting its own back

          • The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

          Host: Vishal Mehra — @vishal1mehra

          59 min
        • Battlefield Lessons in Agency Growth feat. Tracey Barber (Global Chief Transformation & Growth Officer, Havas)

          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 global agency networks today: what needs to be transformed, and what simply needs to be replaced.

          We get into the mindset shift from winning pitches as Global CMO to re-architecting how an entire network creates value, the real signals that separate genuine transformation from relabelled old habits, and why Havas' Village model still holds up a decade after it was conceived. Tracey also gets into details about India's structural position in Havas' global playbook, what Converged.AI actually looks like when it is commercially deployed end to end, and the uncomfortable strategic challenge she would hand India's leadership for the next three to five years.

          This is a conversation about advertising's future told by someone who has spent equal time defending a nation and defending a network. Tune in for client stories, pitch stories, and one very direct answer on why clients are choosing ad agencies over management consultants.

          The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

          Vishal Mehra on X

          57 min
        • From Sequoia to Spring, Carry, and Retainer feat. Raja Ganapathy (Founding Partner, Spring Marketing Capital)

          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 Partner of Spring Marketing Capital, joins Vishal Mehra on Episode 28 of The Indian AdGeek for one of the most structurally unusual conversations this show has ever hosted.

          📺 The Culture Shock: Moving from FMCG brand management to Sequoia's investment floors and what that crossing taught Raja about the enormous, dangerous gap between how founders romanticise their brand and how investors coldly price it.

          📺 The Spring Model: Skin-in-the-game equity with returns tied to exits that could be five to seven years away. How do you pitch that to a founder already sweating over every basis point of dilution?
          📺 Pitch Room Realities: The most common misconception founders carry into Series A and B pitches about their brand, and the pitch where that misconception was painfully, almost comically, on display.
          📺 The IRR Lens: How does your definition of a successful brand shift when you have to justify it through an IRR lens? The answer reframes what most brand strategists think they're actually building.
          📺 Performance vs. Brand: Is India's obsession with performance marketing quietly strangling the next generation of iconic brands before they even have a chance to become iconic?
          📺 Day 1 Marketing in 2026: With attention fragmenting and AI reshaping discoverability, what does marketing look like for a D2C brand with near-zero capital? Which categories are wide open for India's next Amul or Titan, and which ones are already won for this generation?
          📺 The Dealbreaker: The single marketing red flag in a founder that makes Raja want to walk away from a deal, regardless of how compelling the product is.
          📺 The Final ROI: How do you sell the ROI of a brand identity to a data-obsessed Series B founder who only cares about CAC and LTV?

          The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

          Connect with the guest & host:

          • Raja Ganapathy on X
          • Vishal Mehra on X

          1 hr 5 min
        • Inside Creative Tech at Publicis feat. Laurent Thevenet (Head of Creative Tech APAC, Publicis Groupe)
          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 tools but culture, structure, and taste. 
          Also, APAC’s most underrated innovation pockets, the rise of India as a creative-tech force, & the technologies that may matter even more than AI in the years ahead.
          📺 Why AI is a foundational utility rather than a differentiating competitive moat
          📺 How Le Pub and Le Collective are discarding traditional agency models to make tech an organic reflex rather than a final layer
          📺 Centralising tech capability in Singapore without losing the hyper-local cultural nuances of markets like India, Vietnam, and Indonesia. (Plus, a shoutout to the incredible work coming out of Leo Burnett Mumbai!)
          📺 Why advertising is currently underestimating the physical web (Apple Glasses) and why quantum computing, not AI - will be the next massive technological leap
          📺 Laurent's top creative tech bets and hiring advice for independent agency founders looking to survive the next 12 to 24 months
          The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.
          42 min
        • Veni, Vidi, VML feat. Babita Baruah (CEO, VML India)
          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 realities, the future of the big TV spot, talent in an AI world, value-based pricing and why creativity still has to stay stubbornly human.
          📺 What happens when one of India's most enduring advertising leaders sits down to talk about everything the industry is too polite to say out loud? You get this episode.
          📺 Going deep on the fault lines defining the industry right now: why friction in the purchase journey might be a feature, not a bug; and how AI is reshaping the agency P&L in ways most leaders won't say on record.
          📺 They talk Q-commerce and the 6-inch shelf where decisions happen in under 10 seconds. They talk about what a creative director actually does when execution is a commodity. They debate whether the pure-play agency model can still deliver 10%+ growth year-on-year. And they go into the value-based pricing question that every agency CEO is quietly terrified of, how do you charge more for faster, AI-augmented output to procurement departments trained to count manhours?
          📺 Babita also shares her view on what skill a 2026/27 graduate needs that simply didn't exist two years ago, where she'd place her bet on the Indian startup ecosystem by 2030, and, if she were building an agency from scratch today, whether it would look anything like the network model we have now.
          The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps.
          Vishal on X
          1 hr 5 min
        • Kulfi-dential: Building the Collective feat. Advait Gupt (Co-Founder & CEO, Kulfi Collective)
          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 valuations, what changes now that Divya Karani has joined as chairperson, and why the company sits in the awkward, beautiful space between branded content, original IP, and immersive experiences.
          The conversation goes deep on the commercial model behind a collective, the procurement problem that's quietly reshaping Indian advertising, the rise of dark social and creator-led communities, the q-commerce squeeze on creative canvases, owned-IP economics, the so-called “independence tax" of the AI era, and what brand building looks like in 2027 when consumers never see an ad.
          Plus: how a frozen dessert became the name of one of India's most exciting creative companies.
          The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps.
          Vishal on X
          56 min

        About The Indian AdGeek

        From the publisher's feed

        The Indian AdGeek podcast is where the best advertising minds sit down to talk real business of building brands, every fortnight, from Mumbai to Madison Avenue.