5 Minutes with… Monideepa Nandi
Monideepa Nandia has been on quite a journey in her career in marketing and advertising.
Formerly the Leo Burnett Indonesia general manager for South-East Asia,Monideepa is a seasoned advertising professional whose passion for storytelling ignited her path in the industry.
With a rich background in diverse markets like India, Singapore, and Indonesia, she brings a wealth of experience to the table. Campaign Asia awarded her gold for account person of the year South-East Asia in 2023, and was the showrunner for BlackPink in your Oreo campaign.
Speaking to LBB, she offers candid reflections on effective leadership, the role of account management in creative decision-making, and the challenges and opportunities posed by today's dynamic digital landscape
LBB> What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing and advertising, and how did your journey lead you to your current role?
Monideepa> I have always been excited at the prospect of a well-told story. As a kid, I devoured books, read for hours, and never necessarily a special genre or format, anything and everything with a story excites me. To date, I read everything I can get my hands on.
Early on in life, I decided to make a career in communications, and I joined MICA – a coveted institute in India, to do my master's in communications. I interned in a media house and joined Leo Burnett as a planner.
I then also took a lot of interest in how an ad was made and how it affected business. Basically, the production and business side of things and having an understanding of all aspects of the business helped me immensely in taking on leadership roles. Honestly, I never did anything because I had to; I just purely enjoyed it. Piecing a comms journey and getting ‘into’ the thick of every little piece is something that I enjoy to this day.
LBB> What do you believe sets apart effective leadership in the dynamic and competitive advertising industry?
Monideepa> A colleague from SEA recently appointed in a leadership role in her company said something that resonates with my work ethic – ‘ Never stop doing the work’. To be effective in advertising, you’ve got to keep up and keep learning. Changing media landscapes, creative tools and tech can all be overwhelming if you’re a leader who’s a prop at the top telling people to do things. If you continue to ‘do the work’, you keep up with the change and stay in the know and, in my view, a 100% more effective leader.
LBB> In your opinion, what does a great account person bring to the table?
Monideepa> A good account person has a great understanding of the business, both the client business and her own industry. A great account person (as my boss Sony Nichani says) has a point of view on it. A great account person has the ability to assimilate culture and business, and tell a story that only she can.
LBB> Should account people be vocal, particularly when it comes to creative decisions? Why, or why not?
Monideepa>If you’re someone who does the work and knows how it works — and I mean the complex comms ecosystems we work with today — you must have a voice, hell, you must have a seat on the table. It’s the account person who runs the show, as they say. And a ‘showrunner’ must believe in and be convinced of the show itself.
For this, the account person must be a great all-rounder. In the current environment, a business leader cannot just have an opinion on creative but all the things that make it — the media, the channel mix, the tech, the product. Only then can she run a successful show.
LBB> You’ve spoken in the past about your experience as a woman in the industry. Can you tell us a bit about that, and how it’s shaped your perspectives?
Monideepa>The difference in experience starts creeping in at the top, at leadership levels. While not true for all organisations, like in Publicis SEA you can see an effective healthy balance, in many other organisations, the growth slows down and sometimes is stagnant as you move up the ladder. In one of my previous organisations, I used to be the only female Business head, with no women as leadership. It's tough then to find female leaders or icons to look up to and to draw from. You keep going back and listening to interviews of the likes of Indira Nooyi on how she thrived, as an Indian woman outside the country who made it so big.
Things are changing, but slowly.
Also, I feel that it's important that someone in the workplace has your back. it could be a woman, or not, but always someone who treats you as an equal. That's the main issue sometimes, that it still takes a lot of effort and time for a woman to be seen as an equal - she really has to earn it.
LBB> What challenges did you face while leading integrated agency teams for major clients, and how did you overcome them to deliver successful campaigns?
Monideepa> Integration is a tough one, tougher now than before because of how complex the comms ecosystem has gotten and how creativity and creative delivery have dramatically changed with the advent of tech and media. You don’t just need to integrate at the top, but all the little pieces. You need to understand and then leverage the levers to make every little piece a success in its own arena. Whether a TikTok challenge to garner user videos and increase popularity, or bringing people to your site to be able to record data. Each piece has a different success metric, and each piece of success then contributes to the campaign KPIs and, most importantly the sales and the brand.
LBB> With your extensive experience across countries like India, Singapore, and Indonesia, how do you adapt your leadership style to manage diverse teams and effectively navigate varying market landscapes?
Monideepa> Well, I always try, but sometimes I’m successful and sometimes I’m not. It’s not so much the culture of a country that helps or does not. It’s the culture of the organisation. Do they accept you for who you are, hone your strengths, and let you shine? Or do they go through a process, and people ask them to change their ways? As you can see, I thrive in the former.
LBB> What are advertising agencies' biggest challenges and opportunities in today's digital landscape?
Monideepa> I believe that advertising agencies and the client industries still have some road to cover regarding platform-first ideas and executions. We need to push for media-agnostic creative and, in parallel, understand the use of platform tools to make these come alive. Clients, too, need to be able to comprehend ideas with different platforms without the use of video storytelling. The onus rests on both to fully realise the potential of a seamless ecosystem.
