Rahul Jauhari, Joint President & Chief Creative Officer and Navonil Chatterjee, Joint President & Chief Strategy Officer of the newly independent Rediffusion Group talk to Srabana Lahiri about redefining aggression at work, their intense creative process and the challenge of offering integrated solutions to clients.
They complete each other’s sentences. They throw around Bong witticisms with deadpan faces. They also have a three-year partnership at Rediffusion that has resulted in big business wins - Tata 150 year celebrations, Tata Trusts, State Bank of India, German brand Liebherr, Rising Pune Super Giants and Jamshedpur Football Club, amongst others - and some brilliant creative work on brands. While Rahul Jauhari, Joint President & Chief Creative Officer, and Navonil Chatterjee, Joint President & Chief Strategy Officer of Rediffusion epitomize the have-fun-while-you-work motto, they are absolutely serious when it comes to carrying forward Diwan Arun Nanda’s just-announced credo of aggression on all aspects of the business.
“We may be softies at heart with people and things like that. However, when it comes to work, it’s all clearly defined. Our aggression means being a lot more forceful about our point of view, and being able to command the right kind of premium for our work. One thing that both of us are very clear about is that we will not sell our services cheap; we will choose clients more carefully, not go for rampant pitching,” says Jauhari, who has spent 14 years with the Rediffusion Group in two stints. “Mr Nanda has always been known to be a man with absolute spine. For us too, spine counts in a lot of places – our stance with clients, stance with team, stance with the industry... We bat front foot with our clients, we bat purely on our work.”
Chatterjee quotes Jane Austen here. “It is how Jane Austen says, ‘Darcy has no improper pride’. We believe in having that proper pride when we walk into a client’s office or talk to people. That is quiet aggression.”
CHANGES ON THE GROUND
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