With an illustrious 31-year career bridging creativity, technology, and strategy, Manas Mohan – CDDO of Laqshya Media and CEO of Digitalabs stands as a transformative force in the media and advertising landscape. He exudes innovation and purpose. His expertise spans groundbreaking projects like SHARP—India’s only integrated OOH measurement system—and AI-driven campaigns that redefine audience engagement. Dynamic and insightful, Manas speaks with clarity and conviction, offering a masterclass in blending creativity with data-driven precision. 

 

Looking back on your 29 years in media, CRM, and creativity, what is one project or initiative that you consider your personal career highlight, and why? 

It’s actually been 31 years! I’ve journeyed from the age of COBOL to the era of AI, and I’m loving every minute of it. As you can imagine, I’ve worked on a wide range of projects—starting with cleaning up FoxPro datasets to implementing Python for analytics!The project currently closest to my heart (and brain!) is the booking engine for our client, Smaaash. This project originated from a conversation with the CEO of Smaaash. 

• This addresses a very real problem of people waiting several hours for bowling, cricket and Go karting (coming shortly) during weekends weekday rush hours. 
• The solution is low-cost, elegant, and highly effective. It offers booking slots with variable pricing for bowling and cricket lanes across Smaaash’s 11 centers in India.
• At the client’s request, we also added an offers section to the platform, which has now become an integral part of all customer outreach communication for Smaaash. -We are currently building a robust data framework to employ machine learning and AI technologies, aiming to enhance the efficacy of the Smaaash booking engine across the country. 

 

How do you define “creative intelligence” in the context of the evolving digital landscape, and how do you integrate this into your strategies? 

Technically, this question requires an entire book for an effective answer. Let me, however, illustrate my standpoint with a few examples:

1. At Open Magazine, part of the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, we delivered more eyeballs on Facebook than a leading business TV channel—for the same content featuring some of the biggest names in the Indian economy. Was this content better suited for Facebook? The answer was clear. 
2. For Delhi Police, we executed two campaigns—AI-created anti-drug films for Instagram and a “real” anti-financial-fraud campaign across social and print media. The creative intelligence behind these campaigns varied significantly based on their core target audiences. 
3. For a global industrial adhesive brand, we ran a quasi-educational campaign featuring AI-powered creatives. While loved by the India team, they were rejected by the Europe team, highlighting differences in creative intelligence between India’s youthful outlook and Europe’s reserved, engineering-focused approach. 
4. Content from up-and-coming “influencers” often makes us “creatively evolved folks” cringe! Yet, their impact can’t be ignored. We sometimes bow to mathematics, leveraging influencers to connect with new audiences. 
5. For an upcoming dairy brand campaign, we are carefully adopting new digital advertising formats to attract the next generation while retaining older consumers—an act akin to walking a tightrope. 

Ultimately, the primacy of a human idea remains essential, supported by technologies shaping the world today. The application of ever-deepening databases, innovative use of digital real estate, and real-time responsiveness to consumer feedback are vital components of creative intelligence in today’s context. 

 

At the OAC 2024, you introduced SHARP, an integrated OOH measurement system. Can  you elaborate on how SHARP enhances the effectiveness of OOH advertising campaigns? 

We first debuted SHARP in 2019 as a comprehensive OOH Audience Metrics Platform to address the lack of transparent, credible, and valid data in the Indian OOH media space. Since then, SHARP has evolved to solve the key challenge of scaling OOH media’s share of wallet by providing brand managers with CFO-validated data. 

Previously, Indian OOH lacked a platform that could: 

1. Optimize plans for a sharply defined TG, minimizing wastage caused by reliance on arterial road signages. 
2. Reduce human error, addressing the mindset of “if my competition used the site, so must I.” 
3. iii. Provide transparent, credible, and statistically valid impressions and eyeballs data for every campaign site. 
4. Combine site efficacy with a quality score for better quantitative deliverables. v. Most critically, delivering the holy grail of audience metric platforms: Deliver the net plan reach of multi-site campaigns in each city. 

Laqshya Media now offers optimized media plans that calculate TG eyeballs using an algorithm integrating five databases, including telecom and Google Maps touchpoints. Additionally, we offer a consumer loop to measure campaign efficacy, a feature adopted by many of our largest clients. 

 

How do you envision the synergy between OOH advertising and mobile technology evolving  in the next five years? 

We have publicly stated that digital advertising (primarily mobile display) and OOH (static and digital) will be the most powerful advertising combination in the coming years. As people spend more time outside their homes due to increasing spatial challenges, their curiosity will become the playground for smart marketers. Leveraging the overlap between “eyes-up” and “eyes-down” moments will help occupy consumer mindspace. 

Picture this: you’re in a metro station and see a digital signboard promoting a new Indian fashion brand. Moments later, your phone prompts: “Did you like what your favorite star was wearing?” This is level one of interactivity between OOH and digital. 

Digital OOH now enables storytelling, a dimension previously missing from traditional OOH. For instance, the digital signboards in BKC, Mumbai, offer a dynamic canvas for sequential communication targeted at professionals in the area. Ambient signages that track eye movements or expressions are also gaining increased share of voice. 

NFC-based scalable advertising has seen mixed reviews, as privacy concerns remain a challenge even as engineers work toward secure solutions. Finally, delivering real-time, hyperlocal communication across mobile and digital platforms, with measurable sales attribution, is the next frontier we must tackle. 

 

Considering the rapid advancements in technology, which three emerging trends do you believe will shape the future of media and advertising? 

Another book might be needed to cover this in detail, but here are my top three trends: 

1. The Immediacy of Advertising: With the advent of AI-driven creative tools, the speed of advertising creativity is accelerating rapidly. From the quarterly advertising campaigns of the past, the industry is shifting toward hourly campaigns that react instantly to consumer inputs. This trend sets the stage for the following two. 
2. The Specificity of Advertising: Advertising is moving away from broad aggregations like NCCS and geographical splits to highly individualized communication, leveraging the vast amounts of data generated every minute. 
3. Cross-Media Campaigns : The interplay between media must be optimized to create a seamless loop that captures the imagination of consumers. The challenge lies in the overwhelming number of stimuli consumers face daily. Programmatic campaigns, still in their early stages, are serving ads based on immediate consumer behavior. The next frontier in adtech is stitching together immediate behaviour with consistent long-term behavior to drive meaningful engagement. 

 

What’s the next big technological disruptor on the horizon that could reshape media,  advertising, or even consumer behavior? 

The boundary between science fiction and reality is becoming increasingly blurred. The application of technology to provide consumers with a tactile experience for a range of products and services is the next frontier. Platforms like Swirl have expanded the scope of video commerce, while brands like Zomato are already utilizing AI platforms that mass-personalize advertising. The resurgence of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPGs) has opened new possibilities in parallel worlds. Can advertising evolve into experiential marketing? 

The greatest challenge, however, lies in the fragile security of consumers in this new world. Online fraud is a growing threat, and the industry must respond proactively. Ethical marketing must prioritize the quality of products or services delivered and the privacy of consumers. Marketers must ask themselves: how can we promise and deliver quality while respecting consumer privacy? 

We’ve come full circle—from the days of phone books revealing personal details to safeguarding identities and now to marketing databases that often know more about us than we remember. The disruption needed is a commitment to ethical and secure practices that build consumer trust in this increasingly connected world.