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

Pooja, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I’m a creative and founding member at Talented agency, India. Talented was founded by Gautam Reghunath & P.G Aditya in 2022. We didn’t want Talented to be just another agency. We wanted to create it to right the wrongs of the industry we love so dearly–Low pay, pay disparity, unequal growth, burnout, mediocre work, and underrepresentation, especially in leadership roles. It didn’t just make us uncomfortable, it pissed us off, A LOT. So we set out to build an agency that can right the wrongs of the industry we all love so dearly, while keeping great creative work at the center stage. In my current role as a part of the founding team and a Creative (Director), I creatively lead new business projects & retainers while contributing in shaping an agency that aims to make advertising sustainable for creativity and creatives to flourish.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed your drive to ‘do good’ in advertising?

While there are brands and businesses established with ‘for good’ embedded into their business practices, there are more that don’t, and as a creative working in the commercial creative industries this is often a minefield to navigate. How do you attract the type of work you want to produce? How do you help guide your own agency or clients on a path of creativity for good? And how do you wrestle with your own moral compass to balance your values with the reality of day-to-day working life? I love the fact that as creatives our power and vulnerability can be a force for good for our clients, our brands and our own industry’s reputation. It is also therapeutic for those in advertising to connect our line of work to things that are personally important to us as individuals. The work I am most proud of creating so far–The Better Half Cookbook, aimed at attacking the gender chore gap in Indian households. And as a female creative, I am massively driven to put out work that sparks a discourse around gender equity, fair representation, and inclusion, with the opportunities I get (and create).

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

1. Life-work balance, instead of work-life balance.
As a fresher in the industry, I often felt that the only way to stand out is to work harder and longer. Wrong. You need to realise that you have been hired for your talent. Not because you have 2 hands that can type and a mouth that can chug 5 cups of coffee a day. Learn to say NO early on, define your boundaries, and remember that imposter syndrome will come and go like ebb and flow, no matter where you are on the ladder. There’s a thin line between giving

2. EQ > IQ
You could be a genius but an a**hole to work with. Or you could be a fantastic talent (if not a genius) with empathy, and still see more success than a genius a**hole. Primarily because emotions drive people. Feeling motivated and driving people to feel motivated is the shortest shortcut to doing incredible work consistently.

3. Your work isn’t your entire personality. It’s a part of it.
Answer this–How do you describe yourself? Did you answer this with your job title as your only/first answer? While it’s not necessarily bad, it makes you vulnerable to a painful identity-crisis. Imagine going from who’s who to who’s she? If you had to make a career switch, take a sabbatical or dare-i-say-it… get laid off.
Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” Our work is our medium, and it becomes our message. We learn to love the image of our successful selves, not ourselves as we truly are in life. When your work is the only thing that drives your sense of self, you set yourself up for feeling like a failure (aka feeling lost) more often. The way I tackle this is by considering OOO not just as an automatic email response, but a daily reminder. Who am I when I am OOO? What am I doing this weekend which has nothing to do with my mental work checklist?

4. You’re not a doctor.
Unless you’re actually saving lives, you have no reason to rush or panic. It’s okay. The idea will come tomorrow. The artwork can go 2 hours later. Timelines can always be moved. Nothing is urgent even if the client email says so. Take your (reasonable) time. It will all fall into place.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The reminder that, by its very design, any work I put out is going to be a broadcast, keeps me highly motivated to keep fighting the good fight. It’s magical that anything we create, will at least be seen by lakhs, if not millions. And the sheer power that has, often positively overwhelms me. Particularly why I like putting this pressure on anything I work on–Is it creative standard-bettering work? Is it business-bettering work? Is it industry-bettering work? Is it world-bettering work? If it is not at least one of these, I’d rather just drop it and start from scratch.

I also love labelling myself as a lived-experience creative. The more I experience life outside of work, the better my work gets. The insights come naturally, the creative flow flows automatically and the mind thinks magical things on its own. The phrase ‘Sleep on it’ stemmed from a psychological study and it works. When you step aside from your desk, live a little/a lot, and give yourself time to breathe, it all directly impacts your quality of creative work. So, find your sources of creative nourishment and don’t compromise on that time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @pooja_manek
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poojamanek-for-industrybetteringwork-and-worldbetteringwork/
• Twitter: @boredmanek
• Other: https://www.behance.net/poojamanekportfolio

Image Credits
Kyoorius Creative Awards