The Indian AdGeek

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 Asia. Ranga has spent over two decades running some of the most complex media operations in the APAC region, and he's arrived at some sharp conclusions.

They cover the holding company model's quiet unravelling, why outcome-based pricing remains a zombie idea despite years of industry consensus, whether programmatic DOOH is solving the right problem or destroying what made OOH powerful in the first place, and what Zepto and Blinkit's rise actually means for outdoor media's next brief. They also go deep on India's pitch culture dysfunction, the real margin story inside media agencies, and why the seniority trap in advertising is more structural than anyone admits.

Plus: the role of AI in media planning, what a young media professional should genuinely bet on, and what being named in Campaign's 50-over-50 really felt like for someone who's wrestled with self-doubt.

The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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What Next? by Rishad Tobaccowala

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 identity in a world of 24 hour trend cycles and algorithmic fragmentation

📺 The shift from influencers to makers and what it means for agency P&Ls

📺 How to justify strategic investment in unmeasurable communities like Reddit, WhatsApp & Discord

📺 Identifying the un-houseable value proposition that prevents clients from doing it all themselves

📺 Why the “Plus Company” partnership model is leaving traditional holding company baggage behind

This is a wide-ranging, no-filler conversation that covers the structural future of social agencies.

The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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 "disproportionate fame." We dive deep into:

📺 The Hard No: The clients Uncommon turned down to protect their creative DNA.

📺 The Purpose Trap: Why every brand needs a business objective, but not necessarily a higher social purpose.

📺 The AI Slop Era: How physical experiences, high-end design, and PR will save us from a sea of algorithmic sameness.

📺 The Hollywood Model: Why bespoke, fluid strategy teams beat the rigid structures of legacy networks.

📺 Equity over Fees: How Uncommon’s "Unrest" accelerator is changing the agency-client dynamic from service provider to co-owner.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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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-security prison.

Adam joins us to dismantle some of advertising's most prevalent myths. We discuss why hyper-personalisation might be a trap and why "frictionless" isn't always the goal.

We also covered:

📺 Thinkerbell model: Why they fired account managers and replaced them with Thinkers and Tinkers.

📺 The Vegemite pitch: How they won a brand that hadn't changed agencies in 70 years.

📺 System 3 thinking: Moving beyond rational vs. emotional to understand how we actually make choices.

📺 Procurement battles: How to sell magic to a line-item world.

📺 Pratfall effect: Can brands get more lovable by owning their flaws — there's even a parallel in Indian romantic poetry.

Whether you're a CMO with a dwindling budget or a creative trying to protect the magic, this conversation is a masterclass in psychological leverage.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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Black T-shirts Podcast on The Great Unlearning

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 AdGeek, Rakesh breaks down:

📺 Why "platform-first" is more than a buzzword — and what it looks like on day one of a client brief

📺 The logic behind 7+ acquisitions and global expansion via Poland, and the impending IPO.

📺 How Wondrlab’s Hector is powering Rs 3,500 crore in ad investments and why CMOs are now paying attention to an Indian-built SaaS platform

📺 The real reason brands like Dove don't need Facebook — and what most Indian marketers haven't figured out yet

📺 Why he took his HR colleague to a marketing pitch (yes, really)

📺 What the agency of 2027 actually looks like — and why Rakesh is more bullish on advertising's future than almost anyone in the room

Whether you're a CMO, a founder, or someone who still thinks the 30-second TVC is king — this one will rewire how you think about brand-building.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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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 storytelling, the last standing fortress of "showmanship"?

We discussed:

* The Roman Empire to Reels: Why 15th-century art is the secret key to understanding why your IG Reels aren't working.

* The WWE Analogy: Why great advertising needs a "slow-burn" storyline.

* The India Advantage: Why the Indian film industry and cultural "masala" might be saving us from the creative "flatness" of the West.

* Boardroom Battles: How to convince a sceptical CFO that "emotion" isn't a soft metric—it’s the engine of market share gain.

* The AI Frontier: Why AI might struggle with "betweenness" and the implicit human communication that makes an ad a masterpiece.

* The Perfect Ad: Orlando reveals the one ad that perfectly balances the left brain’s need for logic and the right brain’s need for soul.

Orlando explains how testing can become a creative catalyst, why Indian advertising still has cultural advantages, how CMOs & CFOs must learn to translate emotion into measurable outcomes and the three hires to make if you were building a showmanship agency today. 

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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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 units like IMAGINE (AI Studio) and the Vernac Room rather than folding them into the core. We dive deep into the math of profitability, where Shradha reveals her "salaries + seat cost" rule for retainers and the proprietary SPIC framework (Suspect, Prospect, Intent, Content) that drives their strategy.

Key highlights in this episode:

The Power of No: Why Grapes teaches its BD teams to walk away from the wrong pitches.

The GTM Mandate: Why you should never enter a pitch room without a go-to-market strategy, even if the client didn’t ask for it.

2026 Outlook: The rise of retail media networks and whether the agency's future lies in media buying or data resolution.

Independence in a Merger Era: Shradha’s take on the Omnicom-IPG merger and the pressure on independent shops.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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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:

* The Anti-Luxury Stance: Why calling a brand 'luxury' is a sign of creative laziness.

* Positive Friction: Why making your customers work a little harder can actually increase brand loyalty.

* The AI Paradox: As "perfect" AI content becomes cheap, why is "human imperfection" the new premium?

* The Pitch Secret: Why Matter Of Form records private podcasts with clients (under Chatham House rules) to win the deepest insights.

* Value vs. Time: How to move away from hourly rate cards and capture the true value of strategy.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

What The Luxe Podcast

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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 to the agency world.

* A candid take on whether the ‘Super Agency’ model has truly delivered seamless integration—or just created slower giants in the age of AI.

* How leaders can sell intangible brand equity to CFOs obsessed with quarterly metrics.

* Why agencies still struggle to own IP and build products, and what needs to change.

* The three elements of a winning pitch deck (and the biggest mistakes agencies make).

* His perspective on design vs advertising as CMOs shift budgets.

* The skillsets agency leaders must double down on to stay indispensable in the next decade.

* Leadership lessons from running both creative and media businesses.

* His favorite podcasts and books that inspire him today.

This episode is a blueprint for anyone navigating the crossroads of advertising, design, and leadership in 2026.

The Indian AvGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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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 the industry’s obsession with scale, arguing that "relevance" is the only currency that matters in 2026. We discuss why agencies shouldn’t try to out-consult the consultants, but instead double down on what they do best: Storytelling, Provenance, and Emotion.

Key Highlights of this episode:

* The Scale Paradox: Why the Omnicom-IPG merger might be a legacy solution to a modern problem.

* Poetry vs. Plumbing: Why AI makes knowledge free, but makes "the soul of business" more expensive than ever.

* Agentic AI: Why the real revolution isn't Generative AI, but Agentic AI—which is currently doubling in capability every 8 weeks.

* The 100-Employee Billion-Dollar Company: How small teams are replacing massive headcount as the new gold standard for impact.

* The Future of Work: Why 60-80% of your future workforce will be freelancers, and how to lead them.

* The "No PowerPoint" Pitch: How to win business with perspectives and provocations instead of decks.

Whether you are a CMO, an agency leader, or a "media company of one" (which, as Rishad notes, every Gen Z consumer now is), this episode is your blueprint for the next three years of marketing.

The Indian AdGeek streams on all major podcast apps.

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