He spent 13 years at BBH, from Brand Partner to Managing Director of BBH India. Then Arvind Krishnan traded the comfort of a global network for Manja, a 16-person independent agency named after the glass-coated kite string built to cut through.

In Episode 36 of The Indian AdGeek, the founder & CEO of Manja talks about the business of building an agency:

📺 Why you pay for 20 years of experience, not 30 minutes of typing: The mechanics of value-based pricing over FTE headcount.

📺 Operating a 16-person "players-only" agency without bloated middle management or redundant approval layers.

📺 How BBH insulated its creative culture after the Publicis acquisition, & what London understood about work that moves products.

📺 Pitching strategy & post-pitch debriefs: Why spending time defining the real problem beats jumping straight to creative answers.

📺 The "Fuck It, Move On" mindset when losing pitches and why ruminating destroys agency momentum.

📺 Pitching disruptive work (like Urban Company's "Filter Toh Pagal Hai") to risk-averse clients without hard-selling.

📺 The future of Indian indies: Will tech giants like TCS or Wipro eventually acquire creative agencies the way Accenture bought Droga5?

📺 Why agency equity isn't about revenue or headcount, but about creating giants and leaving a lasting cultural imprint.

www.TheIndianGeek.com

Vishal on X - https://x.com/vishal1mehra

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vishal1mehra/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishal1mehra/

The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

#IndianAdGeek #Manja #AdvertisingPodcast #ArvindKrishnan #IndianAdvertising #BBH #AgencyLife

Marketing has one job: create memory. Everything else - the channel, the format, the algorithm, is just the delivery mechanism. That's the argument Shubhranshu Singh makes in this episode of The Indian AdGeek.

Shubhranshu has built brands across categories most marketers only get to touch once in a career - Hindustan Unilever, Star Sports (where his team created Mauka-Mauka), Royal Enfield, and Tata Motors Commercial Vehicles. He's a Global Board Member at the Effie LIONS Foundation, a Global Fellow at The Marketing Academy London, sits on SEBI's Apex & Executive Committee, and writes some of the sharpest columns in Indian marketing today.

In Episode 35 of The Indian AdGeek, Vishal Mehra discusses with him why most modern marketing is "karaoke marketing" - singing someone else's hit song and calling it a strategy; the "-er positioning" trap that quietly killed a generation of differentiation claims; whether the CMO is turning into an endangered species inside Indian boardrooms; what PepsiCo's no-pitch move to Publicis and Publicis dropping the Coca-Cola review as a result, actually signal about the future of agency holding companies; why he thinks clients should stop buying agency time and start buying outcomes.

www.TheIndianGeek.com

Vishal on X - https://x.com/vishal1mehra

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vishal1mehra/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishal1mehra/

The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

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.

Prasad discusses why agencies have underpriced themselves, how procurement has 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, and why independent agencies increasingly have an advantage over large networks.

The conversation also goes inside advertising trade media: editorial independence, 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.

Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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.

The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

You can listen to the Lucy Jameson episode on The Indian AdGeek here.

Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Gautham Narayanan runs Virtue, VICE Brand Group's creative agency, across Europe. 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.

In this episode, Gautham talks about what network agencies still do better than anyone else, why he pushes back on the term "anti agency," and the WhatsApp message from a client that unlocked Guinness's Made of Black campaign. He also unpacks how VICE convinces brand-safety-nervous Fortune 500 clients to work with it, why brands are now competing with MrBeast and Netflix for attention, and the one thing he'd bet on for advertising's next five years that has nothing to do with AI.

As Gautham puts it, culture isn't something you tap into. It's something you earn your way into.

The Indian AdGeek streams on all podcast apps.

Host: Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The Indian AdGeek, Episode 32.

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.

Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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.

• • 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.

Vishal Mehra - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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 - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@vis⁠hal1mehra⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠