We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Manas Paradkar a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Manas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

There’s two parts to my job. One is coming up with big creative ideas and the other is copywriting. They’re not always mutually exclusive, but they are pretty discrete skills. The biggest learning for me about being a creative in advertising was to never stop being a student. We have to be fervently devoted to the business. That means constantly learning, unlearning, adjusting beliefs, stretching the boundaries of comfort zones, and perennially consuming culture.

Knowing what I know now, I would have started actively studying creativity around me much earlier. It’s not just about appreciating good work, it’s also dissecting it, discussing it, debating it, asking questions about the insight, process, imagining everything that must have led someone to the final product you see.

I would have been more curious early on, more hawk-eyed about ideas. And it’s also not just about creative ideas. As people in advertising, we should be aware and interested in anything and everything around us. From extraterrestrial intelligence to sports, from Eastern European politics to the latest social trend.

The skill that helps develop this is just general curiosity. The innate desire to want to know more. It also leads you to listening better. A lot of people in marketing listen to speak. But I think the better creative people listen to listen. Because when you ask genuine question and are earnestly listening, you are able to filter out all the noise, and get to the real solutions quicker.

Biggest obstacles for me were just not being great at time management earlier in my career.

Manas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hello! I’m Manas and I’m an Associate Creative Director and writer working in Brooklyn. I’m originally from Mumbai, India. I moved to the States in 2016, and have been here since. I work at an independent creative agency called The BAM Connection in Brooklyn. We’re small, but boy, do we pack a punch!

I stumbled into advertising through the world of translation. Growing up, I spoke 4 languages, and then as a young adult I started learning French. The act of translating for me was never just about converting words from one language to another, but giving emotions a meaning for a new person. And as I journeyed through my love for languages and translation, I learned that advertising is arguably the same thing. It’s about translating brand stories into emotions.

In the past eight years, I’ve worked on an array of clients from cannabis to wine and spirits, from eye care to sexual health, from frozen food to coffee. We do everything from brand strategy to branding, and then coming up with big campaign ideas that get fleshed out across numerous, impactful touch points like TV, social, digital, activations, noisemaking events, etc. Our agency was started by two heavy weights from Grey, New York. So they bring immeasurable brand-building experience. And now we complement that larger brand expertise with breakthrough social and physical activations.

We’ve created some cool work in the past few years, but currently we’re super stoked to be working on some very unconventional, noise-making ideas for a national coffee brand, a Japanese skincare brand, a very popular eye drop brand.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding part of being a creative is seeing something I worked on, a line, a visual, a campaign, resonate with someone on a human level. Advertising moves fast, but when a piece of work makes someone feel seen, smile, or even think differently for a second, it reminds me why I do this.

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

So many websites ripe with knowledge like modern copywriter, award show sites, specifically the free ones like Clios, Graphis, etc., Ads of the world, public libraries– the ones in New York are unbeatable.

And the biggest resource to learn from that I wish I had identified earlier is people! Just talking to people, friends and family, strangers on a train, people in the park. Just having conversation with everyday people can be eye-opening in so many ways.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.manasparadkar.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manasparadkar23/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manas-paradkar-950138116/