‘CCOs must act as chief culture officers’ – Lulu Raghavan, Landor

“The chief creative officer (CCO) has to be the chief culture officer,” said Lulu Raghavan, president, APAC, Landor. According to her, agency CCOs need to be talent magnets because young people want to work with legends. Raghavan was speaking at a panel discussion titled ‘WTF is Creative Leadership Now?’ held on the second day of Goafest 2025.

The other panellists included Bobby Pawar, former chairman of the Havas group, Sonal Dabral, founder, Tribha, and Senthil Kumar, chief creative officer, VML India.

Raghavan said that in a fragmented media landscape, it’s the CCO who holds a unified vision for the brand. “Clients are looking for an unfiltered perspective. Chief creative officers, especially the evolved ones, have the strategic foresight to ensure that creative solutions are rising above aesthetics to be strategic solutions for their problems,” Raghavan said.

Bemoaning the dilution of the CCO role, the panellist Bobby Pawar opined: “The problem is that the creative that was supposed to be a specialist has now become a generalist.” He averred that the CCO should not act as a quality control inspector but rather as a cultural leader who nurtures creative talent and cultivates an environment for creativity to flourish seamlessly.

Echoing Pawar’s remarks, Sonal Dabral of Tribha recounted that while agencies focused on creating powerful, brand-building creative work that sold products and drove revenue, “over time, driven by greed and the desire to compete with consultants and tech firms, agencies shifted focus.” Dabral argued that CCOs must return to fighting for bold ideas, not revenue targets, because “when agencies chase money over creativity, they risk losing everything.”

Stating that change is constant, Senthil Kumar, chief creative officer, VML India, said, “If you don’t adapt to cultural shifts and the evolving needs of clients, you will fall behind and continue down the wrong path. If the idea is the centre of the universe, a CCO must is the heart which keeps an agency alive.” According to Kumar, the role of the CCO has expanded. “It is no longer just about crafting and refining ideas to perfection and putting them out into the world to be admired. Today, it's about more than creative execution; it's about talent curation,” Kumar said.

The panel members agreed that a CCO’s job now is to bring these varied talents together, connect the dots, and filter out the noise—to elevate the good work. It’s about creating solutions that not only address a client’s problem but also build on fresh, original ideas—ideas that agencies can truly call their own.

The advertiser-agency relationship

The second day of the festival featured another panel discussion titled ‘Merging Boundaries: From Placement to Partnership,’ which drew participation from some of the brightest minds in marketing and media. The panel deliberated on how the advertiser-agency relationship is transforming today's dynamic ecosystem.

Day 2 of Goafest included many engaging panel discussions on diverse subjects from advertising to marketing. Panel discussion shown in this picture was 'Merging Boundaries: From Placement to Partnership'. | The panellists - L to R: Satya Raghavan, director, marketing partners, Google India, Rathi Gangappa, chief executive officer, Starcom India, Ajit Varghese, head of revenue, entertainment, and internanonal, JioStar, Shubhranshu Singh, CMO, Tata Commercial Vehicles, and Kartik Sharma, Group CEO, Omnicom Media Group India (moderator)

The conversation, moderated by Kartik Sharma, group CEO, Omnicom Media Group India, pivoted around collaboration, value creation, and redefining what true partnerships mean in a world where media is no longer just about placements, but about connections.

Satya Raghavan, director, marketing partners, Google India set the tone by underscoring that brands must evolve from transactional mindsets (like lead generation) to focusing on their long-term brand health. He called on agencies to be more than execution arms.  “They need to challenge client assumptions and provide strategic clarity. In today’s fragmented media landscape, integration across platforms and functions is not optional—it’s essential,” Satya Raghavan said.

Asserting that connectivity trumps pure media placement today, another panel member, Rathi Gangappa, CEO, Starcom India said, “Agencies play a central role in weaving together brand stories, media platforms, influencers, and loyalty strategies. It’s no longer about just booking ad space. It is about creating experiences that travel across consumer touchpoints and build enduring relationships.”

The panellist Ajit Varghese, head of revenue, entertainment and international at JioStar said that true partnership integrates consumer insights, content creation, and ROI thinking from the start. He shared an example of the OTT platform JioCinema as an enabler of personalised storytelling, outlining that effectiveness is less about the platform and more about how well it is used.

The panellist Shubhranshu Singh – CMO, Tata Commercial Vehicles offered a reality check by stressing that no single agency partner can do it all. He pointed out that agencies are invaluable in alleviating pressure from overburdened internal teams, providing not only bandwidth but also specialised domain expertise and operational efficiency. “The success of marketing partnerships today lies in how agencies plug skill gaps and bring speed to execution,” he explained.

Rethinking marketing effectiveness in Asia

Biprorshee Das, India editor at Warc, and Sujeet Kulkarni, managing director at Andersen Consulting India, released a report on a study that uses Asian market data to examine marketing effectiveness for the first time, alongside Goafest 2025. The report calls for a balanced approach to marketing, investing equally in long-term brand building as well as short-term performance. In the Asian context, a 50:50 split between brand and performance marketing has emerged as the most effective strategy.

Biprorshee Das, India editor, WARC, presented findings of the study, 'The Pace Principle'

The study also stresses the need for improved measurement methods, such as extending tracking beyond campaign durations and ensuring cultural relevance to connect with consumers meaningfully. During his address to the assembly, Kulkarni emphasised that separating brand and performance marketing was a false dichotomy, proposing a new concept of ‘brand-time performance’ highlighting the importance of time in achieving a lasting brand impact. Challenging the commonly held notion that speed hinders brand investment, Warc’s Das revealed that balanced campaigns performed well in Asia. He stressed the ‘multiply effect’, where integrated, consistent branding across time and platforms delivered superior results.

AI in action: Driving transformation across sectors

The panel discussion ‘From Code to Commerce: Growth in the AI Age’ was another standout session on Day 2. Moderated by Anuradha Sengupta, an independent journalist and a producer, the panellists included Pragya Bijalwan, CMO at Voltas, Tejas Apte, head of media and digital marketing at HUL, Sanket Tulangekar, director at MakeMyTrip, and Arjun Choudhary, vice president at Swiggy.

During the session, Pragya Bijalwan of Voltas explained how AI was transforming the consumer experience in HVAC systems, bringing personalisation, predictive maintenance, and efficient service to the forefront. She observed that AI was ‘function-agnostic’ and should be integrated across departments, and not siloed. HUL’s Tejas Apte explained how AI was embedded end-to-end from smart factories to marketing innovation. “HUL’s internal tools enable the rapid creation and testing of hyper-local campaigns, with generative AI playing a central role,” he said.

Sanket Tulangekar of MakeMyTrip shared an example of Myra AI assistant deployed by his organisation to streamline review summarisation, smart search, and itinerary planning using a multi-agent orchestration approach. He underlined the critical need to audit AI-generated content for accuracy and bias, mentioning the use of red-teaming to safeguard reliability and trust.

Swiggy’s Arjun Choudhary shared his organisation’s experience with internal transformation driven by Gen AI that powers everything from sales co-pilots and data dashboards to catalogue enrichment and video content generation. He pointed out how AI had become a vital tool even for non-tech teams, enabling them to draft product requirement documents (PRDs), create demos, and mine insights efficiently. For Choudhary, AI is no longer optional—it’s a core life skill and productivity multiplier.

Spotlight on masculinity

Another thought-provoking panel discussion analysing the evolving portrayals of masculinity in Indian advertising titled, 'Mardon Wali Baat: A discussion on Masculinity in Advertising' brought a new dimension to the second day’s proceedings at Goafest 2025. Moderated by Manisha Kapoor, CEO, ASCI, the panellists included Nisha Singhania, co-founder, Infectious Advertising, and Karthi Marshan, principal, Marshan.Ink.

The panellists for 'Mardon Wali Baat: A discussion on Masculinity in Advertising' (L to R): Manisha Kapoor, CEO and secretary general, ASCI (moderator), Karthi Marshan, principal, Marshan.Ink, Nisha Singhania, co-founder and director, Infectious Advertising

Observing that India’s social landscape is shifting, Nisha Singhania challenged the outdated tropes such as ‘Get him married and he will change’. She urged brands to stop depicting men as flawed projects in need of fixing. “Audiences today are more open-minded, and it’s time for brands to let go of legacy biases and be brave enough to craft new narratives,” she said.

Karthi Marshan called out the false binary of masculinity versus feminism, arguing that labels around gender and sexuality are increasingly becoming irrelevant today. Advocating for disruption over tradition, he said that attention, not just long-term investment, was key in brand engagement.

A focus on OOH

A panel discussion on the second day called for a bold reimagining of out-of-home (OOH) advertising as a dynamic, data-driven, consumer-centric, and creatively independent medium in today’s attention economy. Ajay Kakar of Adani Group stressed that OOH captured attention with minimal distraction, encouraging the advertising fraternity to shift from ‘digital versus non-digital’ to consumer-first strategies. He advocated for original, idea-driven OOH storytelling, and urged ad agencies to adopt a proactive, advisory role. Shekhar Narayanaswami of Times OOH described OOH as the true out-of-home experience that broke through digital fatigue, calling for a deeper understanding of client needs and stronger brand recall through physical-digital integration.

The panellist Sandeep Bommireddi of Adonmo pointed out that digital was transforming all media horizontally, and stressed the importance of media choices based on audience relevance and smart integration, not medium silos. Promita Saha of Karukrit Advertising reminded the assembly that the consumer mindset matters more than the media canvas, highlighting localised events as powerful engagement platforms and expressing the need for custom storytelling tailored to OOH environments.

Between the lines

Karan Bedi, director and head, Amazon MX Player, in his keynote address on Day 2 said that streaming video ads were outperforming other formats in driving brand recall and building positive brand associations. “With increasing viewer engagement, digital video ad spending is on a steep rise and is expected to match traditional TV advertising spending by 2026,” he said.

Gautam Gambhir, the head coach for Indian men cricket team, and Suniel Shetty also attended the festival on the second day.

Bollywood star Suniel Shetty in conversation with Aruna Daryanani, director, Amazon MX Player