Adland Rockstars: Mayuresh Wagle

This week's Rockstar is Mayuresh Wagle, who's worked at Rediffusion Y&R (Mumbai, 2006), Ambience Publicis (Mumbai, 2008) and JWT  Bangalore (2009), where he's currently a copy supervisor on brands like Black Dog, Whyte & Mackay and Levi's.

How did you get into advertising? What’s your career path been like?

One day, while I was in the 12th standard, I was watching a TV commercial and said to myself, “This is crap, maybe I can write a better ad” and my interest in advertising gradually developed. Being in Goa, where there are virtually no advertising agencies, I had a tough time finding out what an ad agency is made up of, but eventually I did find out and here I am now.

It’s been a very exciting and enjoyable journey so far. I’ve been fortunate enough to have got the opportunity to work with and learn from some of the best minds in the industry- Ashish Khazanchi, Prasanna Sankhe, Vivek Rao, Akash Das, Prashant Godbole, Mash, Ramanuj Shastry, Sagar Mahabaleshwarkar, Tina Sachdev, Senthil Kumar etc.


What do you remember of your first week in advertising?

I was very very excited. More than happy to have got a foot in the door, I would read the Archives all day and steal briefs from my colleagues!


What’s been your favourite/most satisfying campaign you’ve worked on till date?

It has to be the ‘Hairstyles’ guerrilla advertising we did for Juice Salon. Within days of putting it up on the Internet, it was picked up and written about on almost every advertising and popular culture blog across the world. In fact if you run a search for the ‘top ten escalator ads’, chances are the first thing you’ll come across is the ‘Changing Hairstyles’ ad.

Getting the idea was the easy part. My art partner Siddhesh Khatavkar and I soon realized that something like this was never done before. Hence it took a lot of research, imagination, hard work, engineering skills and the goodwill of a lot of friends in the agency to pull it off.





Any international TVCs/campaigns you’d have loved to have your name on the credit list for? And any Indian ones?

'Noitoluve' for Guinness is my all time favourite. It has everything you’d want in an ad - superb music, amazing special effects and a big idea.

WATCH TVC now [interview continues below]



I am also inspired by a lot more - ‘Drink milk' by the Flemish Milk Board, the Berlitz ‘Sinking about’ commercial, ‘Evolution’ by Dove etc.

Among Indian ads, Zoo Zoos, Center Shock ‘Crazy hairstyle’, Happydent 'Palace' and ING Vysya ‘Chase’ are the ones that I’d love to have been a part of.

What’s the one thing you love about your job?

The fact that I don’t necessarily need to be in office to do my job. In the bus, in the toilet or on a vacation, I can work from anywhere!

What’s the one thing you don’t love about it?

The fact that I don’t necessarily need to be in office to do my job. So every weekend, vacation and free time has the potential to turn into office time!


Who’s the one person in advertising you’d love to have a working dinner with?

Mr. Ashish Khazanchi. Ask anyone who’s worked with him how much fun it is just to be around him and they’ll tell you.

What do you like to do outside of advertising?

That’s tough considering you don’t get time to do much outside advertising once you are in it. But when I do, I play badminton, go hiking or biking.