We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aarushi Periwal. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aarushi below.

Hi Aarushi, thanks for joining us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

Aarushi is a Founding Member and Creative at Talented, an employee-owned indie agency in India. Winner of the Cannes Young Lions ’24, she will be representing her country at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. Before joining Talented, she led global accounts such as Google, Ikea, and Spotify, and also one of India’s most loved brands, Swiggy at Dentsu Webchutney. In just over half a decade, her work has won recognition across award shows ranging from Cannes, Spikes Asia, to Kyoorius.

One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

While I’ve been a fan of advertising and the energy it radiates, I haven’t been a fan of a bunch of things––the appalling representation of female creatives in leadership roles, work-life imbalance, and advertising’s own self-worth issues. At a mid-senior role in my agency, turning work-life balance into life-work balance for my team is an active agenda for me. I’m also bullish about raising the creative standards of the industry with campaigns that also drive numbers, believing that it’s the only way for all of us to drive creativity’s value up in the value chain. Which is why everyone at Talented takes a lot of pride in not only being an ambitious, world-class, creative company, but also an ambitious, world-class, creative company with a big heart.

One of my proudest achievements is The Better Half Cookbook for Swiggy Instamart – a campaign designed to challenge a 1600-year-old assumption that recipes are written for one person to do all the cooking. This led to the creation of the world’s first-ever feminist recipes that addressed the gender chore gap in Indian households. And to be a little selfish, this also gave me my first-ever Lion which kicked the imposter syndrome out of the way.

Creative work is either a gut-feeling or a giant kick in the gut. Either way, it’s about the gut.

Prepare to test it. Again and again. It’s the most wonderfully scary thing you can do in favour of doing great work.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

My wallpaper reads, ‘Inspiration always comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.’ And to be inspired you have to look at great art, watch great films, read great books, and listen to great music. Great work always inspires. To start anyone off, I sincerely recommend these three books below. They have the power to make you think different.

#1

“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not. It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not”
― The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Book by Rick Rubin

#2

“Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Out job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

― Steve Jobs

Book by Walter Isaacson

#3

“The fact is that worth is a matter of opinion, and opinion is informed by culture. And if that culture is as male-biased as ours is, it can’t help but be biased against women. By default.”

― Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

Book by Caroline Criado-Perez

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Never let work get in the way of life, but allow for life to get in the way of work.

Whatever you do post EOD is what most of your next day, or week, or month, or even the year can be inspired by. As young creatives, we feel guilty spending time outside of work. We are scared to experience life away from the desk because we don’t know what ‘value-add’ that’ll bring. Life away from work is what makes work richer. So be spent in life to make your work rich. Better insights, newer stories, and fresher perspectives. This is my version of work-life balance. Or rather, life-work balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://rb.gy/j0p19d
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/periperi_fried/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarushiperiwal/?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Egoogle%2Ecom%2F&originalSubdomain=in
• Twitter: https://x.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2FRogue_Roush