Neville Shah grew up in a culture where people who worked in creative fields were too insecure to take breaks, thinking they’d miss out on opportunities and potential great work. Today, a lot of that has changed and Shah advocates for it both personally and professionally.
He dabbles in stand-up comedy, directing and producing and is the full-time Chief Creative Officer at FCB Kinnect and FCB/SIX India. Despite his two decades of experience in advertising, his curiosity and openness to experience keep his mind young, garnering him accolades at Cannes Lions, D&AD, OneShow and more.
In an interview, he tells us about his goal of weaving creativity into the fabric of his organisation.
Edited excerpts…
What does your creative process look like when coming up with a pitch or a campaign?
There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. But here are a couple of things that can give it structure and help you come up with something—try and understand what the problem is and look at what the competition is doing. A lot of strategic work happens before you start grinding your brain to think creatively. You need to bring it down to the simplest possible thing that you need to say. And if you do that, you will normally come up with something good.
How do you envision the role of AI in creative agencies?
I am not a fan of using ChatGPT to be able to generate lines or ideas, but I'm old now. There was a time when people would look at archives of magazines and films to find inspiration. Today, maybe people look at AI-generated ideas to find inspiration. As long as you're using it to inspire you and feed yourself information and not using what it's giving you, I think, why not?
To me, tech is a tool that should be used to bring an idea alive in the best way that the idea deserves to come alive. The best tech in any idea is in the background—you never see it but it makes the idea so much better. Take for example ‘My Ad’ done for Cadbury with Shah Rukh Khan or the ‘Lulumelon EOSS’ campaign done for HDFC bank. And if AI is at the forefront of it, you need to consider whether the audience is a tech-loving audience and if they’re going to be wowed by the simplicity of the execution.
What are some of the most effective marketing mediums today?
Different mediums work for different audiences. If you're going mass India, you'd still want to do TV. When it comes to social, you're trying to do things that seem like they're one-to-one but they're not actually one-to-one. So if I'm able to put you in a set of boxes, with many algorithms that converge, I can give you something that seems like it's uniquely yours.
There’s no easy way to distinguish where an audience will be based on an age group. We have always been two countries—India and Bharat. And even when it comes to Gen Z, while they're demographically the same, psychographically and behaviourally they're very different.
That is one of the biggest advantages of having data—it is about creating a unique experience that's not necessarily unique. If you're a brand and you have a very sharp knowledge of where your consumer is going to be at what time, you can do that effectively. Brands like Swiggy and Zomato are doing this well. They'll ping you at that 6:30 pm mark to remind you that you're slightly hungry. Or when you haven't ordered in a while, a notification will pop up to remind you of what you like and with a discount. All this is done without even getting out there on other media platforms—just through their app.
New-age brands are often neck-to-neck with legacy brands in terms of brand recall and awareness. Does that also convert at the bottom of the funnel?
There's a lot of work that today is done for valuation and building the value of the brand, which is a different success metric compared to the actual sales the brand is doing. Every brand has a different North Star, and they’re chasing at different points in time. But if you ask the question “Can a legacy brand and a startup compete?” or “Can you get a customer to try a new product from a new brand?” — the answer is absolutely.
What has your transition from Ogilvy to now, FCB Kinnect, a digital-first agency, been like?
I have never been really a fan of the idea that there is a difference between digital and mainline. There really isn’t. You are always idea-first. And when you're an idea-first agency, it does not matter where you are. In the industry today, most people are trying to build digital muscle and spends are shifting to digital. But one exciting thing about working at Kinnect is that we have integrated media, influencers and tech in-house.
What is your opinion on offering flexible working polices to creative teams?
Creativity doesn’t work as per a schedule. There is no nine-to-five, then pack your bags, go home and stop thinking. However, a lot of times, flexible working policies tend to get misused when you become a larger organisation. So it's important to have some structure in place and then within that structure, allow people to work flexibly.
But I do think flexible working policies exist anyway. For example, if you're shooting all through the night, you're not expected to come to work the next day.
It's just that creatives used to be so insecure thinking that if they don’t show up one day, somebody else would get that brief. And it's unhealthy. That's the environment I grew up in. Today, though, people are a lot more aware that they will burn out if they don’t take breaks.
What do you think is the role of a CCO?
As a CCO, I think you want to put creativity at the heart of almost everything that the agency does. It's about building a healthy creative culture throughout the entire organisation. I've been at it for about five months. Hopefully, in 18 months, I'll be successful because you've only finished your job when it's seeped through all levels and it's not just percolating at the first.
Piyush Pandey used to say, “Always be a playing captain.” So I think you lead by example with the work that you put on the table. Also, let your team have the confidence that when they come to you, their work is going to get elevated and not just your work or point of view getting pushed down their throats. It's about building teams. Cliched as it is, you should be able to shout their name when the work is successful and stand in front of them when it fails.
I do my best to give my team the confidence that they can trust me with their idea. Because an idea is a soft, gentle thing. When someone comes to you, they're bringing it with a lot of reticence and you want to make sure that you treat it well. That's really what it is.