Executive Dossier
“MullenLowe Lintas doesn’t need me”: R. Balki
MUMBAI: Within the creative industry, there are very few people who are fiercely protective of their art and at the same time put no airs on about it. R. Balakrishnan is one such person. Be it as the outstanding filmmaker that he is often referred as, or as one of the brightest minds in the creative business, or as the chairman of one of the fastest growing creative agencies in the country — Balakrishnan, or R. Balki as he is called, has not only walked the untrodden road, he has created his own way, thereby making it easier for others to walk down the path that he first walked upon.
Time and again, the industry has been taken aback by his bold stances — be it his raising an eyebrow at advertising industry awards event or taking chances at the box office with extremely unconventional stories. As a director, filmmaker, writer and creative genius, R. Balki refuses to be judged by others. However, as the chairman and CCO of Mullen Lowe Lintas Group, he feels happy when his team is more capable than him.
In a candid chat with Indiantelevison.com’s Papri Das, Balki discusses what is keeping young talent from excelling in the industry, his goals for Mullen Lintas in five years and the question that is uppermost in most minds in the industry – Will Mullen Lowe Lintas return to Goafest next year? Excerpts of the interaction:
Q1. Between being a director and a chairman of an advertising agency, you have donned many roles. Which role do you identify yourself the most with?
A: I always call myself a writer first, and not any of these.
Q2. How do you manage to juggle between these multiple roles and do justice to all of them?
Luckily, I don’t have to balance as much these days, especially when it comes to Mullen Lowe Lintas. It used to be difficult when I did my first couple of movies, because I was shuttling back and forth. Then I took a long break from movies and actually focussed on making sure that the agency could run without me. It took about four or five years to really plan for the next generation; to build the next team with people who can make you irrelevant and dispensable. Today I am the happiest person in the world to say that I am not really needed. It takes a lot of time to build a team of that calibre, that’s what I have done. I guess I am reaping the benefits of that now (chuckles).
Q 3 What qualities did you look for in your next generation team before handing them the baton?
A: You need people who want to do things differently. You need resilient people to match the kind of resilient business we are in. It is not about just getting an idea, but to get an idea day after day, especially when they are being scrapped and rejected. It is indeed a task.
Secondly I think it is such a people business. You can’t do everything on your own. You have to add value to people’s lives so that they can add value to the relationship. I think anybody who doesn’t understand the sensitivity to deal with creative people will find it difficult to lead and be part of the team.
Q 4: How hands-on are you now when it comes to decision making within the agency?
I am part of the meetings, but not as frequently as before. I don’t need to be there 24×7 every day. There are lot of people doing brainstorming and our clients respect their vision and are running with that.
Q5 How did the team react to the company’s decision to not participate in awards?
A: Firstly, I got one thing clearly straight: As an agency what do we stand for? What do we believe in? Are we going to be worried about what the world says, are we going to be judged by the world’s parameters? Are we going to enter Cannes and all other awards? We took a stance which was contrary to most of the agencies. We told ourselves ‘No we are not doing any of that stuff. Our work will speak for itself.’ Which it did, though it took some time! We didn’t have media support. We didn’t do a lot of PR and definitely didn’t get coverage for things like award shows etc. We were never in the news. But our work was speaking louder than ever, and the business was growing phenomenally because clients were happy with the work. But to have a stance like that as an agency and to make sure that the team buys that stance wasn’t easy. Most youngsters who come in the industry say we want fame and acknowledgement. So it was a tough stance to take as an agency and have the team believe and support that stance.
Q6. Retaining talent seems to be an issue of concern within agencies currently. How do you think the industry should address that?
A: I think every creative agency should strive to empower its next generation. Things can’t stop with the who’s who of this generation. There is no merit in holding the knowledge and keeping the command. We need to create a system where more and more people need to benefit from it. For that you need leaders who have vision to ensure that the system works.
Q7. When it comes to new business, do you focus on new account wins or is retaining old clients more important?
A: You have to retain clients’, there is no question of priority. Normally you do that by doing good work for them, doing the correct work for any brand that you get. And the same logic applies to the new businesses. If you can do efficient and relevant work for a brand, it will definitely work with you. Gone are the days when you could get business without doing work. There was a time when people used to think that good work was ‘one’ of the things that an agency needs to do, apart from big talk on relationships. Not anymore! You can have a great relationship and maybe talk a little more about the work because of the relationship, but it can’t survive long on that without work.
Q8 Mullen Lowe Lintas has been presented as a competitive agency? Where do you derive that competition from, if not through awards?
When I say Mullen Lowe Lintas is competitive, we are talking about doing better work. I don’t believe I need a jury to tell me if I am good enough. If I know that my work is better than most, I am happy. People often tell me that that distances and alienates creatives and puts them in a bubble, but let me tell you, there is no bubble in advertising. You take criticism all the time because you criticise yourself the most. 99 percent of the time you are criticising yourself. It is the one percent of praise that you seek from yourself is the toughest thing to do.
Q9. After the restructuring last year, how well is the two agency structure working for the group? How well is Mullen Lintas doing?
A: Yes the restructuring has worked for us. We had the talent pool to sustain a two agency structure and it was the right decision as well. Unlike most restructuring, we actually shifted some of our businesses from Lowe Lintas to Mullen Lintas. I am happy with the performance it has shown in less than a year. I hope it will be as big as Lowe Lintas in about 5 years.
Q10. Since your presence at the Goafest 2016, the industry is speculating about the chance that Mullen Lowe Lintas will participate in the festival next year. Is that true?
A: No. I don’t think so, whether I am part of Mullen or not, the agency will not participate.
Q11. What is your goal within Mullen Lowe Lintas Group?
A: I believe every person’s goal should be to leave a place better than what they walked into. I feel I have done the same with Mullen Lowe Lintas. That’s my earnest wish, to leave the company a better place for young creatives and advertising geniuses.
Executive Dossier
Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star
MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.
Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.
Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.
Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.
Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.
With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.
Digital
SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform
INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.
The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.
Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.
Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.
Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.
Executive Dossier
Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention
MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.
In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.
On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.
Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.
On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.
LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.
About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.
Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.
• Automotive | Renault Triber
For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.
• FMCG | Namaste India
In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.
• Real Estate
For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.
On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.
As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.
On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.
LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.
On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.
OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.
About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.
LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:
• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.
• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.
• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.
• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.
These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.
On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.
Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.
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