How would you describe your experience of being a part of the creative team at Leo Burnett?
You can judge it by the number of years that I have spent here. I started my career with Ulka and worked with them for four years. Then I was with Lowe for three years and finally I came to Leo Burnett. But if you insist on some adjectives to define the experience here, I will say that it has been a fabulous experience.
What, in your view, makes Leo Burnett so special and distinguishes it from the other ad agencies?
There are two aspects to Leo Burnett. First, we are very serious about our work and second, we are also very serious about fun. This makes life very interesting out here. From the senior-most person to the lowest designation, we believe that our survival critically depends upon these two aspects. The passion that young kids have here while working is amazing. They treat even a small promo film with the highest seriousness and chip in with their best efforts. I have grown through those times in my career when I was hungry for client briefs and there were not enough briefs to feed this hunger. Things are very different now. At every point in time, everybody is loaded with something or the other. The most important tip for success is not to forget that every brief is an opportunity. Here, we make a constant effort to push the averages up because there is no upper limit to quality.
How do you handle situations when you find that the creative work is not really up to the mark?
Thankfully, there have not been many such situations. The reason is that these young people have got pretty mature heads on their shoulders. So, I never needed to pick up a cane to discipline them. Another important part is that I am very selective about who is hired in the creative team. We have our own culture and I love to call it the Leo Burnett culture. If somebody does not fit into this, however talented he or she is, I will never recommend him/her for hiring. While skills can be imparted on work, values have to be hardwired into the human beings beforehand. Ours is a very open agency. There are no hierarchies except designations. There are no doors in our office. People from the studio to servicing to projects team walk up to me to show or discuss their creative ideas. They do not hesitate just because somebody is a chief creative officer. Another interesting thing in our culture is that we take immense interest and pride in each other’s work. It really does not matter who is the father of the idea, if someone else is able to add some value to it, he will be more than happy to do so. Technically speaking, we have different divisions and every client has a dedicated team working for them but there is a very healthy overlap that I see. People come forward to contribute to each other’s work. This culture is very heartening to see and hopefully it will continue and strengthen in the coming years.
You mentioned high standards when hiring people. Do you remember any special incident that took place during the hiring process?
There were times when there was not so much pressure about whom to hire. If you liked someone and his work, you could pick him up. But now, with so much of number crunching and scrutiny about headcount, I have to be even more vigilant about whom I hire. Once, a young boy came to me who had just six month’s experience. He was carrying his portfolio bag. I went through his works and liked it but the thing that excited me the most was that he had the letter L in red color pasted on his portfolio bag, just the way you paste on your car to indicate that you are still learning. I hired him and he did well for Leo Burnett and made me proud.
