You don’t love your job. You love your industry.
Welcome to the cutthroat world of digital advertising. Where you slog your ass off for 16 hours a day, usually 7 days a week, sometimes even camp in office for 3-4 days straight due to an extremely important pitch, partly because you want to succeed and rise up the corporate ladder, but mainly because you have passion. The passion to excel, the passion to come up with something innovative, something never done before, something… epic.
It’s not just about winning big clients or awards or living from pay cheque to pay cheque so you can throw it all away during a weekend binge; it’s about the gratification you get for having done a good job. Sure, money plays a big role, I’m not being naïve here, but the priceless look on your clients’ or peers’ or boss’ eyes when you present an idea to them that makes them go “wow”, is the exact reason why you put yourself through all these.
Commitment.
Of course we’re in an industry that has a love-hate relationship with clients. It is no secret that Admen bitch about clients for many reasons, like when they reject proposals we know will definitely work out for them. Clients may know their business more than us, but we know our industry more than them and we can indeed predict what will work out or not. Or when clients fail to grasp the very basic of what we do and try to steamroll us [Hilarious example would be from The Oatmeal].
But I also had my fair share of clients where I was the one pushing them to do this and do that and even ended up doing some of their work, just because I was committed to my goal.
That’s our industry.
And today, I must announce that I am leaving this industry, the industry that I love.
Almost five years now in Webchutney, ranked number 1 digital agency in India for 2008, 2009 and 2011, I am now one of the oldest employees in terms of duration. Corporate life is tough, especially when it comes to advertising. We see people getting fired or hopping companies all the time. To remain in the leading agency of India for such a long term had indeed been a privilege and honor for me.
Not to blow one’s own trumpet, but the amount of offers I had from other agencies, with much higher pay grade and designation, is something I’ll always cherish as an achievement. It showed that I was recognized in our industry. And I have nobody else to thank except Webchutney for that.
Leaving Webchutney doesn’t mean it’s the end of a relationship. I’ll always be loyal to this company, my first ever work experience, my first love. How I walked in and demanded for an interview as a fresher without any appointment and got a job will always be talked about. And how I rose up from copywriter trainee without even knowing what copywriters do, to junior copywriter, to copywriter, to senior copywriter, to Creative Trailblazer, all in a span of just 4 years, had indeed been a milestone for me.
But this is not just about me leaving Webchutney. It’s about me leaving this industry altogether. No more advertisement or pitches or client feedbacks. No more social media campaigns and designing newsletters and planning wireframes. A complete new horizon…
I’m moving into the Mobile Internet Gaming space! :)
I’ve always been a passionate gamer, and this is the exact field I want to be in. Scratch that. This is the exact field I have to be in. It’s in my DNA.
The journey from here is going to be about taking risks. And chances. And about the desire to be one of the pioneers before the herd moves in. The first-mover's advantage. Sure every person working in the digital field cribs about how extremely low internet penetration is here in India. And so everybody’s waiting for the great big Indian internet boom, but with the fast pace in which the global internet industry is moving, we strongly believe the future here in India too is not desktop internet, but rather phone and tablet internet (including the name of the genre I hate so much – phablet!). And that’s where we’re going to focus – A market sparsely penetrated here in India.
“But India has just 12% internet penetration, if you take away people with desktop internet access and focus only on mobile internet, that’s an even smaller percentage”
We’re well aware of that. But we’re also aware of the prospect that Indian internet mobile users can cross the 100 million mark before the end of this year! Brace yourself; an internet hurricane is going to sweep the Indian mobile world. Are you going to watch the storm pass by from a safe distance, or would you rather ride the lightning?
If things don’t work out, well, then, shit happens. But hey, we’ve been around for a long time and firmly believe in what we do. So do wish us all the best. And even if we don’t succeed, what is life if one doesn’t take any risks, right? Hehe… cheers y’all.
:)
