Earlier this year, Santosh Padhi attended ADFEST 2018 as Jury President of the Outdoor Lotus and Press Lotus categories.It’s not the first time Padhi has judged ADFEST, so we’re delighted that ADFEST is a festival he keeps coming back to!
Padhi is Chief Creative Officer at Taproot Dentsu, Mumbai, and he took time away from a gruelling judging schedule to chat to Emir Shafri (ECD at Y&R Malaysia). He spoke about the beginnings of his independent agency and how creative freedom is a key to its success.
What made you take that big leap of faith to start your own agency?
We started in 2009, and it wasn’t a good six or eight months. It made us think, ‘Have we done the right thing by setting up our own agency? But I think things were fabulous after a couple of months. Touch wood, we have been having a fantastic nine years of wonderful creativity.
Actually, in that nine years you have been consistently been winning creative and effective awards. If I’m not wrong, you’re also named one of the top 20 independent agencies in the world. How is it that you guys are so successful? Do you put a magic ingredient in the water cooler?
I think when creative guys are given creative freedom they come up with the best of the best solutions, and that is exactly what is happening to us. Although we are part of the Dentsu network, we have been given a free hand. We are allowed to do what we feel is right; there is no pressure to win awards.
I think when you take some of these pressures away, the result shows. It’s not that we don’t have great people in our industry but there is unnecessary pressure of winning pitches and winning awards that stops them from actually performing.
When you remove these pressures, they do their best, and luckily that’s what we keep focussing on and it’s thankfully working for us.
- Watch Emir’s interview with Santosh here, or watchmore interviews with past Jury Presidents via ADFEST’s Official YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksjXkIcl-uE
