IDEAS THATESCAPEDTHE PDF

Selling streetwear to Gen Z without sounding like a clueless uncle is an extreme sport. During our time on Yousta at Lintas, I got to work on two massive digital shoots that did exactly that:

• All The Festivals At Once

  We batched Diwali, Onam, Rakhi, and Independence Day into a single high-energy marathon shoot, styling traditional days with everyday street drip.

• The Quarterly Refresh

  The seasonal engine that delivered non-stop reels, print statics, and fresh drops before the internet got bored.

Fast-paced, colourful, and built for the eight-second attention span.

Background

Center Fruit’s tennis ball gum was already on the market, but Harmanpreet Kaur’s historic WPL win gave us the perfect excuse to go louder. The gum is shaped like a cricket ball and built for instant mood flips, making a team-up with India’s captain the most natural match possible.

Insight

Real cricket isn’t played with cinematic orchestral music. It’s played in alleyways where an angry aunty is always five seconds away from keeping your ball. We didn't need Harmanpreet to inspire the nation; we needed her to win a ridiculous argument on a terrace.

Output

I hopped on the campaign, grabbed my bags, and flew from Bombay to Delhi for the shoot. Sukriti brought classic comedy chops as the nosy neighbour and the dramatic mom, while Harman shut down the complaints with dry one-liners and chewing gum. Clean, loose, and relatable, it racked up massive organic views without forcing the sell.

Most insurance clients want you to terrify people into buying a policy, then bury them under twenty pages of terms and conditions. Future Generali was a rare breath of fresh air. The management actively pushed us to skip the usual fear-mongering and try things that felt genuinely human: oddball film treatments, sideways humour, and corporate films that people actually enjoyed watching without having to be held hostage in an auditorium.

On this brand, our job was to launch a clean-living label without the usual holier-than-thou fluff. Herbo Green needed to show that a plant-based cleaner could take on greasy kadhais and stubborn haldi marks without guilt-tripping the buyer.

We rolled it out from scratch end-to-end:

• The Setup

  Crafted the tone of voice, designed and wrote the website, and executed the Amazon launch.

• The Rollout

  Took over the social media mandate and drove performance creative to turn curious scrollers into repeat buyers.

A full 360 launch: brand identity, storefront, marketplace, and performance ads that actually sold.

5x Award Winner (2025)

The Premise

Everyone swears they will take the stairs. Everyone takes the lift.

Climbing 50 steps daily drops heart disease risk by 20%. Nobody argued with the science. The real enemy was gravity and an elevator button.

So Saffola stopped asking politely. We turned it into a dare: climb 50 steps in under 90 seconds without gasping for breath. Then we put that dare everywhere.

The Execution

• Digital & AI Coach

  Ronit Roy fronted the launch films, backed by 300+ influencers. On the microsite, an AI-powered avatar of Ronit coached users in real time. It tracked pace, analysed voice strain over the mic, and told people how their heart was actually holding up. Over 137,000 returned to recheck their vitals.

• The Prime-Time Hijack

  Indian soaps never shot in stairwells—until now. Lead actors from Anupama (Star Plus), Kumkum Bhagya (Zee TV), Wagle Ki Duniya (Sony SAB), and Mangal Lakshmi (Colors) forced directors to move scenes to staircases, ending with Ronit calling out the viewers. Rival networks even cross-promoted each other’s shows to keep the message looping.

• On-Ground & Print

  Activations were installed right between lifts and staircases with quick QR codes, backed by a World Heart Day print ad daring readers to climb instead of queueing for the elevator.

What It Did

• 2.4M+ participants challenged
• 19% live engagement rate with the AI coach
• 78M+ views with an 81% average view-through rate
• +17% jump in sales
• +18% lift in brand consideration
• 29% to 32% surge in spontaneous awareness

Campaign Awards

• Bronze ABBY: Technology (Best Use of Voice Service)
• Bronze ABBY: Technology (Use of AI)
• Bronze ABBY: Cause Marketing (Media ABBYs)
• Silver EMVIE: Heart Health on Prime Time
• Bronze IDMA: Breakthrough Technology
• Featured in WARC Effectiveness Case Studies and WARC Effective 100

Deliverables: Mainline TV Partnerships · Campaign Films · Print · Digital Activation · Interactive AI Experience

Naam hoga toh kaam hoga, and mine started as a voice. I did the voiceover for Saroj the Leader (2016), India’s first all-women team of professional painters, and the Ogilvy team heard it. The film went on to win a Silver Effie. A painting brand is the reason I work in advertising.

A year later, I was inside Ogilvy writing Monu the Seeker (2017) with my creative director, a boy from Amroha who trained at the Asian Paints Colour Academy and went home to start his own business. We shot it in villages, the shoot ran longer than planned, and the direction team had to leave. For the last two days, I was the copywriter and the First AD. My creative director directed. I did the writing and the shouting. Hard shoot, very good film and I’m extremely proud of it.

Background

Everyone in India books their Goa trips on MakeMyTrip without blinking, but the minute someone plans a holiday to London or Bali, they suddenly act like MMT does not exist. Our job was simple: break that weird mental block and get Indian travellers to actually use MakeMyTrip abroad, especially for their zero-drama, 100% refund policy.

Insight

Nobody trusts a brand when it claims, "Hey, getting a full refund from us is super easy." You instantly assume there are twenty hidden asterisks and a nightmare customer care queue waiting for you. But when your favourite travel creator or that lifestyle influencer you watch every day says they cancelled an overseas hotel and got their cash back immediately, you actually believe them.

Output

We pitched, won the project, and launched #RecommendedByMe. Instead of making glossy, expensive commercials, we built the entire campaign around a wild mix of real internet creators, from hardcore backpackers to lifestyle and comedy folks. We worked directly with the MakeMyTrip team to handpick the creator roster and write scripts that didn't sound like corporate press releases, letting them talk like normal human beings about real travel hiccups.

I got to lead the launch of Saffola Muesli, starting with print and in-store branding. The job was to get a new breakfast brand noticed in a country where everyone has strong opinions about breakfast, and a mother whose recipe is better than yours.

It worked, so the next brief was influencers. We built a full campaign, the products began flying off the shelves, and the worry shifted from “please try our muesli” to “can someone check the stock?”

A couple of months later, the client liked the influencer campaign enough to come back for films.

I spent one year at an agency that Mahindra trusted with hyperlocal and nothing else. Mainline and digital belonged to the retainer agencies. The client wasn’t sure we could deliver, and I joined at a time when they were openly unhappy. We built the trust slowly, by improving the copy, the design and the quality every week. By the time I left, we were making brand films and more departments were sending us work. Navratri and Dussehra were the first two.

We made these with AI, stock and images, with a team I’d upskilled, while I covered design, feedback and copy myself. It was a struggle, and it was fun.

Being in-house at Jio Creative Labs came with zero free passes. When Ajio put their new affordable fashion labels on the block, we had to battle in a full multi-agency pitch just like everyone else. I led the pitch, beat the competition, and ended up parenting two brands from ground zero:

Diwali toh sabki hai, even in a house that fits on a shelf. In this film, a little girl throws Diwali for her toys, who are also her kids, and announces “mere ghar pe bhi Diwali hai.” Her father doesn’t laugh. He says hers comes first. I got to work on this film, one of several in the campaign, along with the print and OOH pieces.

My first ever campaign at Ogilvy, and my first proper advertising job. Platina claims 20% fewer jerks on broken roads, so we put two animated eggs on the pillion seats of a Platina and a competitor bike and sent them down the same bad road. The competitor’s egg cracked. Ours survived. I got to work on the film and the print with the team, and it was a fun first one.

On this brand, we had the full playground: mainline, digital, website, the annual calendar, and films. The catch? Half the biggest briefs came from top management with a ticking countdown. You get 48 hours to write a script, get it approved, send a camera crew out, edit, and deliver before the festival morning.

The Beginning

It started in a high-stakes multi-agency pitch room where we took home the business and signed Moj on as a retainer client. Then came the real test: launch the short-video platform's very first nationwide talent hunt and convince millions of bedroom creators to take the stage.

The Opportunity

India has never had a shortage of raw performers, just a chronic shortage of open doors. We turned the smartphone into the country's biggest audition room, daring creators across acting, dance, comedy, beauty, and downright bizarre talents to step up. The Moj Superstar Hunt gave everyday creators a legitimate pipeline from obscurity to prime-time internet fame.

The Campaign

We roped in Remo D’Souza to judge and Awez Darbar to host, bringing classic reality television energy directly inside a nine-by-sixteen vertical screen. From high-decibel launch films to influencer stunts, we mapped out a full tournament journey with auditions, semi-finals, and a high-stakes digital finale.

My Role

I led the creative charge from day one: cracked the core idea, scripted the master films, and directed Remo D’Souza and our talent on set for digital spots and reveal assets. Beyond the glamour, I lived through the daily agency trenches—writing promo copy, shaping edits at odd hours, and steering the creative through to the final trophy.

The Impact

We asked India for talent, and the internet completely blew the doors off the servers. Over 700,000 creators joined the battle, uploading more than 5 million original videos and clocking an astonishing 37 billion video views in eight weeks flat. For two straight months, our feed was the loudest party in town.

Evershine wanted a name and a launch identity for its township in Global City, Virar West, and a story that sold a way of living, not four walls and a parking spot.

We won the pitch, and the client chose Amavi, the name I’d developed. I loved the word. They loved it enough to use it, and it now belongs to an actual township, which is more permanence than most of my work gets. The campaign creatives were used across the launch, on digital, on the ground and everywhere in between. The brochure got a light edit from their side. Everything else went out the way we made it.

My first real estate campaign, from pitch to launch, across a year in 2018-19. I’d do it again.

Working with Tara Sutaria on the Savlon Cool soap launch was a quick and happy one. We shot at her place, built the KV and the print and digital campaign around her telling people what makes the soap different, and had it rolled out as an integrated campaign. It’s the kind of job where the clock is the hardest part and everything else falls into place.

Background

Fresh off Moj, I took the keys to Roposo at the agency. First gig: Musicathon 6.0 in Bir, Himachal Pradesh. We owned the launch end-to-end, hyping up the lineup on social and painting the entire mountain venue in Roposo colours.

Insight

Plenty of friends and indie music heads actually packed bags and took the overnight bus to the hills. But for every person singing under the stars in Bir, another friend was stuck at a desk, aggressively refreshing Instagram and nursing pure FOMO. The gig was a hit, but leaving half the crew behind is just bad manners.

Output: Part 1 — The Hills

We lit up Bir with total venue takeovers, stage branding, and creator madness, giving indie artists a packed, freezing-cold amphitheatre of screaming fans.

Output: Part 2 — The Couch

For everyone who couldn't get leave, we launched the Couch Pass. We beamed the sets live into the app, served up backstage access, and let fans pick up festival merch directly from their phones. We capped it with Mic Drop for post-festival digital encores. Rolling Stone India covered the drop, indie artists found a national audience, and both crowds got a front-row seat.

Background

During the peak of the second COVID wave, I led and won a multi-agency pitch for Pee Safe with a script that hit a raw nerve: the quiet agony of female doctors trapped in PPE kits for twelve hours while on their periods. The menstrual cup solved an intense, real problem for them. The founder greenlit the idea immediately, until hospital safety and lockdown logistics made shooting with frontline healthcare workers an impossible call.

Insight

With the clock ticking toward Menstrual Hygiene Day, we needed an idea that required zero production crews and zero studio floors. While everyone was stuck indoors doing the viral #PassTheBrush challenge on Instagram, we hijacked the trend. If people were already used to watching brushes fly across screens, we could pass a menstrual cup instead and get women talking without the usual hesitation.

Output

We launched #PassTheCup, a high-octane digital relay that spread across every tier of the internet. We brought on big names like Shibani Dandekar Akhtar, Krystle D’Souza, and Kritika Kamra alongside a wide roster of lifestyle and micro-creators, passing the cup screen-to-screen while breaking down taboos in plain, honest language. It proved that when a great production plan falls through, a sharp internet pivot can make even more noise.

Writing a Republic Day ad in the middle of a global pandemic is tricky territory. If you go too chest-thumping, it feels insensitive; if you go too sad, you lose the room.

When Colors put out the brief, I pitched a script that skipped the fake parade drama and looked at real life. COVID hit everyone hard, but it also showed the best of India: neighbours feeding neighbours and strangers looking out for each other when it mattered most. Colors bought the voiceover and the vision immediately. We pieced it together under pandemic shooting constraints, ending with the channel's headline celebrities stepping onto screen not to show off, but to salute the everyday people who carried the country through the dark.

A tiny, funny footnote in the portfolio. We worked on a couple of simple print pieces for Swaraj Tractors. The copy was minimal to the point of being just the tractor model and a straightforward line.

Celio wanted packaging and in-store branding with a lot of copy, and I had a good idea where to look: Bible verses and the Ten Commandments, the most successful copy ever written. They’ve been telling people how to live for a few thousand years, so I told them how to dress. The Celio man got ten commandments of his own, and the in-store posters got “ask and you shall receive”, with the stylists as the miracle. It was loved, and it was rolled out.

Every copywriter ends up with a bizarre accidental specialty. Mine happened to be logistics, and DTDC is where the saga started. We pitched, bagged the mandate, and steered their social media and mainline creative for an entire year.

No big-budget cinematic films on the docket that year, just pure, relentless day-to-day creative work: fast topical banter, sharp social posts, and keeping a heritage courier giant looking fresh and alert on digital feeds. Ground zero for everything I later learned about moving boxes across India at full speed.