“We Want to Create the Way We Consume – Voraciously and Prolifically”

​VIRTUE is known for being ‘the agency that powers culture’, and meeting the Indian leadership team, it is evident that this sentiment runs through their blood. From backgrounds in music and art to creative advocacy work, the team’s vast and varied talent brings a huge wealth of cultural knowledge to their roles.

To get to know the leadership team, LBB’s Sunna Coleman sits down with business lead Sumbul Khan, strategy director Saumya Baijal, and creative head Hayden Scott, who make up VIRTUE Asia’s Indian division.

In this interview, the group speaks up on subjects they hold close to their hearts, how they hope to shape the next generation of talent, and what makes India so culturally exciting right now.

LBB> First up, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves – what do each of you specialise in and what is your background experience?

Hayden> I am the India creative head at VIRTUE Asia and have been in the business of ideas for 18 years now, having done my time at some of the big network agencies like Ogilvy and DDB and some exciting independents like Metal and Strawberryfrog. I was part of the founding team that built Famous Innovations into one of India’s hottest indies.

Over the course of my career I have won over 80 local and international awards and worked with clients like Nestlé, Diageo, Burger King, Platinum Guild, Titan, and many more.

Sumbul> I’m the India market lead at VIRTUE Asia. I started in advertising two decades ago when the world was about perfect layouts, handmade fonts, and CMYK proofs.

I took a sabbatical to be a full-time mother to twins and was a visiting faculty teacher in brand, marketing, business communication, and e-business for five years. I soon reclaimed my place in the corporate world, by pivoting to digital, and later, media too. I love playing my part in designing strategic campaigns and creative solutions to clients’ business problems.

Saumya> I head strategy for VIRTUE Asia. It's been 18 years in advertising for me now and I’ve been across agencies like Ogilvy and MLLG, and even on the client side. But I am still as wide-eyed and curious about an idea as I was all those years ago – and still an idealist who believes that ideas can reshape the world. I’ve worked on clients like Google, Fabindia, Scooty, Diageo, Radio Nasha, and many more.

Gender representation, in language both visually and with words, has been my focus area, and will be until equitable and empathetic representations of intersectionality become a norm.

LBB> You each have many talents and interests outside of your careers. Can you tell us a bit more about these and how they influence your perspective and work?

Hayden> I am a third-generation artist who specialises in illustrating urban architecture as well as a guitarist and songwriter who is very active in the independent music scene in India with my acts Stella by Starlight and Citizen Koi.

I have also worked as a screenwriter in Bollywood and have been a script doctor for films and web series for the last 16 years. A perspective that straddles the worlds of entertainment and music makes me partial to ideas that have a strong musical heart and that are platform- and media-agnostic. Simply put, I love advertising that doesn’t feel like advertising!

Sumbul> Teaching gives me immense pleasure and I love the energy that I get in classrooms. It gives me huge confidence that the world will certainly turn for the better once the kids are able to work through the mess that it is currently in.

I also ensure that I add my voice to the table in conversations surrounding getting young mothers back to work. It was not easy for me but that should no longer be the case for gen z. Women shouldn't need to “lean in” to a breaking point. There is a need for systematic and policy-level changes to give women an equitable playing field. Our all-female leadership at VIRTUE Asia is committed to making a difference.

Saumya> I am a gender rights activist, writer, radio presenter, poet, bilingual storyteller, theatre person. and student of dance. I write cultural commentaries on cinema, especially on language, politics, and gender for Outlook, The Wire, and others.

My poems on body positivity have been taught at the translation programme at the University of Central Missouri and have been published in both English and Hindi. I also use theatre as a tool for intervention for children within communities on social ills.

Through storytelling, I love to break social taboos. Essentially all my interventions focus on intersections of gender, politics, intersectionality, language, and social change. And all of this understanding reflects in how I approach advertising, its purpose, and my leadership style at VIRTUE.

LBB> What does great leadership look like to you and what is your vision for the agency for the coming years?

Hayden> To me, great leadership is growing great leaders. Mentorship is dead in advertising and we hope to bring it back. Leadership is also about empowering a team to take risks, learn from their mistakes and practice accountability.

As a team, Sumbul, Saumya and I talk a lot about leadership that is kind, empathetic and holds everyone to ambitiously high standards. In the next year we are looking forward to building VIRTUE into an agency that doesn’t just co-opt culture but creates it. We don’t want to limit ourselves to just advertising. Culture lives in music, food, art, tech – it’s all around us in fact! We want to create the way we consume – voraciously and prolifically.

Saumya> Agree. Empathy is paramount. Our teams must feel that we stand by them and with them. And that everyone not only belongs at our table but their voice at the table matters with each word they choose to speak.

LBB> VIRTUE is known as ‘the agency that powers culture’. What does this mean to you and how does this translate specifically in India?

Saumya> Culture is beautifully intangible and yet palpable in everything you see and experience in a space. It breathes through language, music, art, cinema, dance, theatre, fashion, street style, ambitions, values, desires, food….

We at VIRTUE believe that culture needs to not only be a part of our insights thinking, but also translate into how and where we show up. So our idea will not be just an advertising idea for your brand. Because a 30-second ad spot may not be where culture is now shaped.

The joy of doing this in India is multifold – given that culture is diverse yet similar in different ways, and perennially dynamic. We couldn’t be more excited.

LBB> What are some of the biggest cultural moments that you have your eye on in India at the moment? What are you personally most excited for?

Hayden> I am incredibly excited to see the rise and rise of the Indian live music and entertainment industry. We have seen incredible turnouts at concerts like Coldplay, Dua Lipa, and Ed Sheeran as well as festivals like Lollapalooza (sometimes even rivalling attendance at the Maha Kumbh!), Mag Fields, and more. More fandoms are being created around artists and I love that the world is sitting up and paying attention to artists like Bloodywood and Hanumankind.

I am looking forward to seeing music in a hundred different Indian languages find its way to global playlists. In addition to this, I am very excited to see the amazing indie films India is making, many of which have shrugged off the shackles of big studios and proven to the world that you don’t need massive budgets to make a meaningful artistic statement.

I would love to work with brands who are looking for creative ways to matter to an audience that is living at a time when pop culture history is being written in the spaces of music and film.

Saumya> For me it's super exciting to see how the new idioms of cinema are getting shaped across different languages. They are shaping the contours of microcultures and having very brave, progressive conversations culturally. To unearth some insights with them would be fascinating, given these are intersectional conversations that are deeply authentic, and brutally real.

Along with this, I am deeply interested in the curations and creations of new museums that are telling India’s contemporary histories from the gaze of survivors of mass events – whether it is that of the Bhopal Gas tragedy or the Partition Museum. The authenticity of the gaze is crucial. Given that authenticity will be a prized value even for brands, these are the purest ways to see how it shapes up. Narratives that fight off any kind of appropriation, and reclaim their politics and gaze.

LBB> Anything else you’d like to share?

Sumbul> We do think of ourselves as an agency that is challenging the current agency models. The agility we deliver is not at the back of throwing more people at a problem but because of the immense flex we have. Each member doubles up to deliver beyond just a defined function and role. Single-mindedly, we want to answer marketing and branding problems with creative solutions that find a place in emergent culture and media. And at the heart of the work we deliver, we focus on ensuring that it is entertaining and engaging to the core.

Saumya> We are a bunch of people who are all beyond their advertising roles. We bring a mix of all our varied interests into the conversations. And everyone in the team is a secure individual. So the idea is to only build on each other’s work, draw inspirations and build blocks far and wide.

As business problems become more complex, the need for communication to be memorable is acute. So we ensure that everyone at the table has a voice, and ideas are welcomed from everywhere. Because at the end, that’s the only thing that matters.