MUMBAI, INDIA – As the world continues to change drastically thanks to the widespread impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the creative industry is also settling into a new rhythm. adobo magazine has been checking in with some of the world’s best, award-winning leaders in the communications industry to find out how they are doing.
Today, Rajdeepak Das, Managing Director India and CCO, Leo Burnett, South Asia writes in his personal insight, on why now is the the best time to reboot and think what the future is going to look post-lockdown, Raj writes:
Covid 19, Lockdown, Flatten the curve, Herd immunity, Furlough, WFH, Black swan events and many more new words and concepts that came into our lives in the last 140 days. And before we realized, it changed the way we live, we work and most importantly as creatives, how we think.
News about the economy slow down, production shutdown, WFH, no human interaction are few of the things that stopped us from doing what we do best. But like I always believed “the best freedom a creative can get is — not having an option.” I thought it was the best time to reboot and think what the future is going to look post-covid. All the future plans of the pre Covid-era were now out of the window. We saw the importance of short-term plans compared to five-year plans that we loved to present in boardrooms.
So every day, with pods of Nespresso, I was doing collaborative zoom calls with brain-trust teams of Leo Burnett, friends who are corporate heads and creatives leaders around the world just to understand, how they see the world in the post Covid era.
We discussed lot of interesting solutions, some were simple and some were drastic and some were never answered. Concepts like “If Covid-19 spreads through droplets on surfaces, does gesture or voice control the future?” Is the next billion dollar industry — the industry that makes you feel safe? Is domestic travel in India going to be a game changer against international travel? Is auto industry in a slump or would people want personal mode of transport to feel safe? In countries like ours, which has 2 India’s, will rural India bounce back faster than urban India? Healthcare is a booming industry for now, but what new industry will boom post vaccine era? And many more such conversations.
I also spent a decent amount of time with Sameep Padora, world renowned Indian architect to understand intelligent simplicity of space design. With social distancing being the new normal, space design either in public space or retail or in hospitality industry or even public transport will be the biggest challenge in a highly dense country like ours.
Based on all these interesting conversations, we started creating innovative products, services and platforms for some of our clients. Like for a retail client we created a new distribution channel. We added a new service for one of our consumer tech clients. The best was when we created a new online wedding platform “Weddings From Home” for our client Shaadi.com (India’s biggest matchmaking platform).
In India, astrology plays an important part in arranged marriages. During the lockdown lot of weddings were getting cancelled. So we created a platform where if you met on Shaadi.com and your mahurat (auspiscious wedding time) falls in the lockdown period, we will arrange a big fat Indian wedding on zoom, starting from the priest to the mehendi ceremony to online makeup tutorials and a big after-party. Full kudos to my team for making this impossible task possible. We have already conducted a couple of weddings online and have a few more planned.
The other interesting piece of work happened when I was talking a friend who was pregnant. While pre-delivery she was worried about Covid, but when she held her child for the first time she started seeing positivity in the world around. Based on the insight we created Pamper’s “Welcome to the World” initiative.
Overall if you see this is going to be the most interesting and inspiring time of our lives. I have seen my dad who is in his 70s being a doctor, still decides to treat his patients and not worry about social distancing. Maybe I am just lucky to be surrounded by so many positive people who make me think “let’s learn something new every day” so that I can create something good one day.
About Rajdeepak Das
Raj is a native of Odhisa — one the most disaster-prone states of India. Because of which, with his doctor dad, a large part of his childhood was spent being part of flood rescues and spending school breaks in village hospitals. These experiences taught him one of his biggest life lessons: Empathy.
So when he joined advertising, his goal was to use creativity and help brands make a positive impact on human lives.
From creating India’s first online micro-financing system for business giants TATA’s, to innovating “Roads that Honk” — the world’s first anti-collusion road management system for a Petroleum giant. In 2015 the team with him saved India’s biggest national treasure — a warship, from getting redundant. With the help of Bajaj, India’s biggest automobile company they melted the scrapped ship and made motorbikes out of it so that every Indian can own a piece of the national treasure. His work ‘Whisper, Touch the Pickle’ won the inaugural Cannes Glass Lions Grand Prix for breaking the menstruation taboo in India.
On the way, while creating Humankind work which is impactful and change oriented, he has also won multiple Grand Prix and metals at Cannes, One Show, D&AD and Spikes Asia. But he believes his biggest creation till date is Apollo 11 a specialised division of Leo Burnett India, consisting of what he calls “the mutant creatives.” Team of young people in their 20’s with backgrounds like aerospace engineering, product designers, data analyst and environment scientists solving human and brand problems with him.
This article is part of a series by adobo magazine exploring “Creative Minds in Lockdown,” a look into how industry experts are coping with the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of community quarantine in select parts of the world.
