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

Hi Ravind, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

A global tectonic shift towards digital culture imbued with extended reality/XR/VR/AR, Metaverse and A.I automation.

With the rise of these new digital technologies brands are now exploring new ways to connect and commiunicate with their customers beyond traditional commerce and social media channels. They are leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) technology to create digital experiences that allow customers to try on clothing and accessories virtually, or to visualize how a product might look in their homes.

AI tools are increasingly being used throughout the digital creative process to streamline pipelines and bolster the creative process. They can assist with concepting by providing insights on audience demographics, generating ideas based on past successes, and even creating visual assets such as images and videos, creative teams can save time and resources while also gaining valuable insights and inspiration for their projects. These tools can also help to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up creative professionals to focus on the more complex and strategic aspects of their work, helping to drive innovation and efficiency in digital creative mediums.

By embracing digital culture and leveraging extended reality and innovative marketing techniques, brands are setting the stage for a future where the Metaverse will play a central role in shaping our digital lives. As we move towards this future, we can expect to see even more exciting and innovative uses of digital technology in advertising and marketing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a child I have always been captivated by animation and movies, I then fell in love with Pixar and studied 3D animation in London, UK. For me storytelling is my true passion, be in motion, stills, photography, songs or speech, I have always wanted to tell stories in emotive and visceral ways.

Honing this into a more succinct direction I aimed to learn how movies were made through the channel of CGI and Animation. I studied and worked through my University time and once I graduated I worked in my first studio role in advertising and VFX. At this job I was really thrown into the industry, it was trial by fire, every project was a high profile client and every project was the first of its kind for me. Meaning I did not have previous experience to create what I was creating, this industry is really learn on the job and collect as much experience in your toolkit as possible.

Throughout my 2 years working on creative and broadcast for clients such as F1, Disney, Fifa and ITV, I constantly worked beyond my office hours, working all day, going home for dinner and then returning to the office to work past midnight. In efforts to collect even more experience I took on a part time role alongside my studio job as a Associate Lecturer of 3D modelling at the University of Derby, this for me was a milestone achievement. To go from student to designer to educator in just 2 years helped me realise my potential and that I was on the right track, that the hard work was paying off.

After these 2 years in efforts to grow more, I moved to Canada, working in a Agency as a Art Director, where much foundational processes and pipelines needed to be established and built out. At this agency I helped the company triple its creative team in size and acquire new areas of business as we transitioned from motion graphics and video to full service agency, offering branding, strategy and product design.

As I mentioned this industry is a learn-as-you-go kind of industry, growing my agency to full service was a huge challenge but challenges is what I was looking for, this meant I had to learn how to do branding and logo design, how to think like a brand and develop a culture from scratch rather than working on global leaders brands, this growth garnered great results and helped the agency establish new verticals of business and establish ourselves as full service creatives.

From Art Director to Creative Director, I work within the intersection of business and creativity, focussing on building long lasting brand strategies for my clients, helping them position themselves within their market and develop a roadmap for long term growth, executing initiatives that are not just creative but serve real purpose and hit my client KPIs and goals.

A tenacity to grow, learn and work hard is needed in the creative industry, to collect as much life experience and cultural knowledge as possible to further push the boundaries of what you create. Researching old traditions and new technology, I am excited to offer my clients provocative creative that challenges the mindset of their customers and competitors.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I love the technology of NFTs and see massive potential in their use cases for real life applications. Digital art in the form of NFTs was great for mass awareness of the tech and for building out a new economy for artists however like most new things, there are some that negatively exploit and give a bad reputation to this new tech.

That said NFTs are really just undeniable proof of ownership/ a digital receipt stored on the blockchain. This can be applied to many things; when buying a car, instead of a pink slip or logbook I could receive a NFT to transfer ownership, instead of a print document and contract when purchasing a house I could have a digital stored token, incredibly secured on the blockchain, when booking a holiday, instead of flight boarding passes and hotel booking confirmations and barcodes, one neat tidy and memorable NFT would serve more efficiently and can be held for sentimental value.

In conclusion, keep an eye on NFTs, the end of the hype-cycle usually spawns effective technology that betters peoples lives.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

SELL the brand experience first and OFFER the product second. Brands are far more than the products they sell, they are the communities of consumers they tap into, the results they achieve for the consumer and ongoing relationship they nurture with their community.

Research your audience further than you though necessary, find the subcultures of people with the audiences you identify. What are the real life experiences and anecdotes of the people you are trying to sell to? Write these down and build a strategy with this in mind, communicate authentically and then you will find you do not need to sell your product, the brand will sell it for you.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.ravlekh.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ravindlekh/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ravindlekh/