Beyond the Brief: Vishaal Shah on the New Rules of PR, Creativity and Agency Growth

MUMBAI: Vishaal Shah, Founder of Moe’s Art, brings close to two decades of experience across media, marketing and communications. Since establishing Moe’s Art in 2007, Shah has helped evolve the agency from a PR outfit into a multidisciplinary marketing and media agency spanning public relations, content creation, digital media, advertising, social media, media auditing and brand consultation. His experience working with Fortune 500 companies, along with his ventures across content, travel, lifestyle and technology, has shaped his perspective on the changing communications landscape. In this conversation, he discusses how agencies can break down internal silos, build their own creative IP, move beyond traditional broadcast-led PR, navigate the opportunities and limitations of AI, measure experiential campaigns and rethink conventional agency revenue models.

On the friction of integration

The first step is to stop treating PR, digital, content and technology as separate products. The audience certainly doesn’t.

At moe’s art, we’re challenging how these traditional roles work to create a more integrated model. Everyone retains their area of expertise, but also takes on the role of Brand Custodian. That doesn’t mean doing everything. It means understanding the brand beyond your function and being accountable for its quality, performance and growth.

The group then shares responsibility for the work, the client relationship, brand consistency, proactive thinking, delivery and, ultimately, account growth. Accountability sits with the full team, not just with siloed teams.

The market is moving in the same direction. The global integrated marketing communications market is projected to reach $6.35 billion by 2031, growing at an estimated 11.5% CAGR. That growth is a clear signal of where client demand is heading: towards agencies that can bring different capabilities together, rather than making clients manage the gaps between them.

On going beyond traditional briefs

Agencies have always created IP for clients. What is changing is that agencies are also creating IP of their own, and that serves a different purpose. It gives an agency room to explore its own point of view, build an audience and create something that can exist beyond a particular client mandate.

The Anti-Agency Show came from a fairly simple observation: there was a gap between what brands say they want and what creatives understand once an idea starts moving through the usual agency process. The show created a space for more direct, unfiltered conversations between brands and creatives, without the usual layers that can dilute an idea.

Anti-Agency Season 2 took that further by turning the everyday chaos of agency life into a format — the disagreements, inside jokes and uncomfortable bits that people in the industry recognise but rarely see. It worked because it felt familiar to the ecosystem.

That is the larger opportunity with agency-owned IP. It gives the agency something it can build over time — a property, an audience and a conversation around its own ideas.The point isn’t that every agency needs to become a content company. But there is value in having something of its own to say, rather than always waiting for someone else to write the brief.

On the Limits of “Broadcasting”

The first thing is not to tell the client that press releases are dead. They are not. A press release still has a role when there is genuinely newsworthy information. The problem begins when distribution is mistaken for communication.

PR has moved beyond being an announcement mechanism. Audiences tend to remember information when there is a strong story behind it, and brands now have far more avenues to build that narrative than they did earlier.So the conversation starts with the objective. If the objective is awareness, traditional media may still be the right tool. If the objective is conversation, trust, community or behavioural change, then the format needs to change.Participation does not necessarily mean building an elaborate physical experience. It can mean giving audiences a role in the story, creating episodic content, involving creators or allowing founders and consumers to shape the narrative. Hence, the point is not traditional PR versus new PR. It is about using the mechanism that suits the job.

On Measuring Audience “Coherence”

The problem with measuring communication platform by platform is that audiences don’t experience it that way. A campaign can do extremely well on Instagram (or TikTok for international brands) and still have very little impact on how people think about the company behind it.

The first thing to look at is what is actually sticking. What are people associating with the brand after seeing the campaign, the founder’s content, the media coverage and everything else around it? If those associations are broadly the same, the communication is doing its job. If one part is building a playful consumer brand while another is creating a completely different corporate perception, there is a problem somewhere.Reach, engagement, sentiment and share of conversation still matter because they tell you what travelled. They just don’t tell you whether the story survived intact.The objective isn’t to make every platform look or sound the same. That would be fairly dull. Different formats should behave differently. What needs to remain recognisable is the brand’s underlying point of view. Consistency across platforms is what eventually builds credibility rather than just another spike in visibility.

On AI vs. creative ambition

AI can do a lot of the work that agencies have traditionally spent too much time doing. Research, iterations, formats, versions, even getting a first draft on the page. There is no great creative virtue in spending three hours doing something a machine can do in three minutes.

Adobe’s 2026 AI and Digital Trends research found that 76% of organisations reported moderate or significant improvements in the volume and speed of content ideation and production through generative AI.

However, the part that cannot be outsourced is the thinking and judgement around the idea. What is worth saying, what will actually interest people, what feels true to the audience and what is simply another piece of content made because the tool made it easy to make. Editorial judgement, for example, is more relevant than ever because the ability to produce content is no longer the constraint; knowing what deserves to be put out is.

That becomes particularly important when the work is built around real people and real stories. At moe’s art, the preference has always been for communication that feels lived-in rather than manufactured. AI can help produce the content. It shouldn’t decide what is worth saying in the first place.

That distinction will become even more important as audiences become more conscious of how content is made. Ipsos’ 2025 AI Monitor, covering 23,000 people across 30 countries, found that 67% of Indians expect products and services using AI to disclose its use.

On monetising experiential PR

Experiential PR can get expensive very quickly, but the question isn’t whether an experience costs more. It’s what you get out of it.

The way to look at it is what the experience does after the event is over. Take the recent One8 global premiere in Delhi. It wasn’t just a product launch where people came, watched Virat Kohli and went home. Buying a pair of One8 shoes became the entry point to the experience, with product zones, immersive sports experiences, customisation, live performances and the launch itself.

That is a very different proposition from putting a product on a stage and asking people to clap for it. The product, the audience and the experience were all part of the same story.

There is a commercial case for the category too. The 2026 EY-Parthenon–BookMyShow report, based on 7,450 live-event attendees, found that 55% reported higher purchase intent after interacting with brands at events. That is a much more useful number when talking about experiential ROI than simply looking at how much the industry spends.

The real question is what the experience is supposed to do for the business. Generate leads, create visibility, change perception, build a community or give people a reason to talk about the brand. Once that is clear, the returns become much easier to measure.

A good experience shouldn’t need to be defended as an ROI exercise after it is over. If the audience has enough to take away, the investment travels well beyond the venue.

On the 5-year agency playbook

The retainer model is not going anywhere. But expecting it to be the only model probably isn’t realistic anymore.

Going forward, the agency business will increasingly operate on a hub-and-spoke model. Retainers remain the hub, but around that you have multiple projects, consulting, specialist capabilities, experiential, technology and even editorial IPs. The idea is not to move away from retainers, but to stop making the entire business dependent on them.

That also reflects how clients are buying today. They may need an ongoing relationship for one part of their business, but bring in the agency for a campaign, a specific problem or a capability that sits outside the usual scope.

A healthy agency needs a strong core, but it also needs enough spokes to keep the business moving.

The Road Ahead

For Shah, the future of the agency business is less about choosing between PR, digital, content, technology or experiential and more about making those capabilities work together around a common understanding of the brand. His views point towards an agency model built on integration, independent creative thinking, meaningful audience participation and a willingness to adapt to new technologies and changing client needs. Ultimately, the challenge for modern agencies is not simply to produce more communication, but to create work that has a reason to exist, travel and endure.