Mumbai: When two great minds with more than two and a half decades of experience come together, they create wonders. An independent creative agency, Infectious Advertising is a 10-year-old media-agnostic 'ideas company' founded by Ramanuj Shastry and Nisha Singhania that believes in creating work that solves problems facing brands and businesses. Some of their clients include National Geographic, ALD Automotive, Bayer Crop Sciences, UltraTech Cement, Inorbit Malls, IDFC, and TBZ - The Original, among others.
Talking to Indiantelevision.com, Infectious Advertising CEO & managing partner Nisha Singhania and managing partner & creative chairman Ramanuj Shastry reveal that it’s been an absolutely brilliant decade-long journey. “Everyday has been a learning experience. We have grown from a five-member team to a 70-member team.”
About the agency’s performance in the last two-three years, and if they witnessed any fluctuation during the pandemic, Singhania points out that the last 2-3 years have been their best so far. “We have grown 100 per cent in the last 2 years. The initial couple of months of the pandemic were tough as clients were cutting budgets, but we bounced back quickly and well.”
Shastry brings out that the next few years they see themselves scaling up substantially, and that they have made significant investments in senior talent. Discussing the new vision for Infectious advertising and the direction the agency is taking now, he says, “Going forward our motto is ‘Virality’ - work that is talked about and shared.”
Some of the leadership hires at Infectious Advertising in recent times have been Siddhartha Singh as COO & managing partner, Ashish Naik as ECD and Shabbir Motiwala as head of production. Singhania tells that in addition, they have also beefed up their account management and creative teams. “Diversity and inclusion are extremely important to us which is why we consciously hire people from different backgrounds. We also believe there are several women who take a break post-motherhood but are now ready to come back to work. We try and structure a work style suitable to them so they can manage both.”
Talking about the leadership structure, Shastry mentions, “Ashish as ECD will work closely with me, Rashid is helping the agency’s digital transformation journey and Shabbir is helping us establish ourselves in the content piece. Sid has come in as COO - he is going to be managing all clients and day-to-day work, which frees up Nisha to concentrate on research and strategy.”
However, inspite of the new companions in their team, Shastry and Singhania are and will continue to be completely hands-on and will be responsible for the quality of work at the agency.
About focusing on the digital and creative prowess at Infectious Advertising, Shastry remarks that the focus is already there. “With Rashid Ahmed at the helm of our digital transformation, Infectious has taken several steps in that direction. Recently we invested in a three-month long training program for the whole agency for digital upskilling.”
Some of the key account wins in 2022-2023 for the agency include Bayer Crop Sciences, Transunion, IBC. “In addition to that we have worked on several projects for Tata Teleservices, Eureka Forbes, Bayer Bangladesh, Mindseed, CredAvenue and ElWorld,” explains Singhania.
Both, Shastry and Singhania, have been part of large network agencies winning awards across Goafest, Kyoorius, Cannes etc. What do they think about Infectious Advertising participating in these award festivals? What kind of a change or disruption have these award festivals seen, along with the change in the kind of advertising that has been doing the rounds? Shastry emphasizes, “Awards are important and Infectious definitely plans to participate in all leading awards. In the current scenario, more integrated and cause-driven work is winning, which suits us as our approach has always been integrated and our starting point has always been what people care about.”
With digital and social media becoming the primary medium chosen by brands, what about clients consciously asking for integrated solutions rather than just traditional advertising? Shastry believes that that’s the way it should be. “Ideas should be media agnostic.”
Underlining their take on work-life balance, and challenges in retaining talent and hiring new talent, Singhania elucidates, “Work life balance is important, and we discourage people from working on weekends. Hiring the right talent is crucial as one needs to get not only good calibre but also good people who fit into our culture.”
Talking about their focus and expansion plans, Singhania wraps up, “We will be growing at a rapid pace, and you will see a lot of action.”
