Indian Creatives Are Superior Than World

Taproot India's Co-founder and CCO Santosh Padhi hopes 'Aman Ki Asha' winning big at Cannes Lions this year. Read the full interview.

Taproot India has been in the news from past couple of weeks by winning its first International Gold at Clio Awards and Hottest Creative title for its Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Santosh Padhi a.k.a. Paddy. In an interview with Nirbhay Taneja of BestMediaInfo.com, Paddy shares his views on India's growing ad power. Here are the excerpts from the interview :

Q) At the very outset, congratulations for being voted as the hottest creative in India for the second time and 37th hottest creative in Asia. But how does it feel to be in the hottest league?

It's easy to get there, but it's quite a hard task to keep that position intact for long time. I am happy to be rated as the number one creative person in India for the second year in a row. I will try my best to keep doing the great work, which seems to be the only mantra. Awards and creative recognition are essential for a creative guy. In this industry it does not matter whether you are a junior or a senior as at the end of the day, it just pushes you to do better and better work.

Q) In an industry where a tea brand forces people to fight corruption, a telecom service provider asks country to protect tiger, or where a Pappu promotes voting and is also as effective in selling chocolates, do you think the creativity in India is setting it own dimensions?

To me what we are doing is far more superior to what the world is doing in few areas. But to be one or the best in the world, we still have a way to go. If you see most of our ideas like TOI's work, Happydent, Fevicol, Nirma etc., they reflect our culture and connect with people. And they also carry a fresh creative approach very well, which not only appeals to our consumers but also to the juries as well. So we have made a mark of our own on the global map, but not strong enough to be remembered for long, but certainly if we continue doing this for few more years we'll be there in the top league.

If we look a decade back, we Indians were never considered to judge any international awards but things have changed today. Almost all big award shows invite us to be part of the judging panel as our point of view has become important.

Q) Taproot India has been collecting a lot of awards these days, recently also you bagged an International Gold metal at Clio Awards. What has been the driving force behind this commendable body of work?

We are extremely happy the way we have grown in last one and half year. We have taken every small thing as an opportunity for us and for the brand; be it a retainer brand or a project. Everything we did right from TOI to Mumbai Mirror to NGC or Nirma was appreciated and applauded by consumers and more importantly the ad community. Our day to day work has a certain level of creative standard. The credit for this goes to a bunch of young blood that we have at Taproot India.

Q) On a lighter note, who all are on your personal list of hottest creatives in India?

I would pick Rajiv Rao, I have always liked his work, he is still passionate about every small little thing that he does, he speaks less, but his work does the rest for him and for the brands as well, I have immense respect for the guy because in spite being such a senior creative, he is still able to find time to work on brands himself, as not too many Creative director do that once they get there, they just end up just supervising and giving their point of view.

I strongly believe that if you are not a playing coach, you are not the right coach. I also like V. Sunil's work and have a huge respect for him as well, purely for his edginess and experimental attitude towards his work.

Q) What is the next big thing that our readers can expect from Taproot India?

I won't be able to share the ones on which we are currently working on, but certainly the year ahead looks brighter to us in many ways. I believe that good work is like a domino effect, one good work leads to another and currently we are middle of it.

We have done some outstanding work on TOI, NGC, Nirma and Conqueror Papers. We hope to see those moving juries at Cannes this year, especially the Aman Ki Asha campaign which we did for Times of India this year.

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