How does it feel to complete 10 years at a digital agency ?

The average tenure in digital advertising in India is around a year.

I’ve just completed 10 years at WATConsult.

I started as a social media executive in 2010 after a 10 minute interview and an hour long test with Rajiv Dingra. After 10 years and multiple designation changes I’m still taking on new projects with the excitement of a new executive on most days, even today. The gravity of this 10th calendar change event ie. 10th anniversary, had largely eluded me even though I‘m aware how big ‘a decade of…’ anything tends to sound. I don’t know if it means anything that I started at the tail end of one global crisis, the financial recession, and completing a decade in the middle of another global one, the pandemic.

Only after being asked multiple times “how does it feel to be in a same company for 10 years ?”, I got seriously thinking about it (ref: professional over-thinker). So this is me trying to answer the question in a very stream-of-consciousness style.

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What was once common practice for our father’s and mother’s — a long career in a single organisation, feels like an anomaly in today’s job-hopping milieu where a career path is a perpetually shifting private initiative that takes people to various company banners in a short span of time. Most of those jumps are justified only as long as the jumpers are aware what they are jumping for or towards. When it comes to a long career commitment only with effort does one find answers that are not synonymous with complacency.

When I look back at my stint though, it doesn’t feel like a singular long stint at a single organisation. So much has moved and so much has happened in 10 years that it feels like multiple career eras have gone by.

A REMEMBERED LIST OF ERAS (not in the right order).

• Facebook now has brand ads! era
• Creative on a small budget! era
• Win. New. Business! era
• Our own advertising awards! era
• Win. New. Business! era
• Our own advertising event! era
• Topical campaign! era
• Platform innovation! era
• Win. New. Business! era
• Dentsu Network! era
• Media innovation! era
• Videos are everything! era
• Talent is everything! era
• Awards! era.
• Win! era.

(The ‘!’ is for how excited we all were at each stage)

I have very specific associations of people, current colleagues & ex, and also of practices/skills, current and ex, at each of the above stages. While a good chunk of the years were spent fighting the copy and art battles, both within and without, another chunk seemed dedicated to city-hopping, jet-setting for business growth and the even more other chunk is all about teaching and talent.

Credit needs to be given to the unique blend of character and circumstance that makes WATConsult the kind of organisation that it has been and what it’s going to be, first with Rajiv and now under Heeru Dingra. At each stage, WATConsult has had the wherewithal and the capacity of shifting gears and transmuting into something else, something new and something better, all the while retaining an original essence, the kind that only old timers like me can talk about with confident nostalgia. I have been lucky enough to experience, survive and grow through these while being in the thick of it. Me and my teams have always gotten a chance to transform along-with.

That maybe, is the secret of long term relationships in advertising. Capacity to transform yourself along with the entire living, breathing entity of the larger organisation. I’ve been lucky enough to explore creatively in every minor stint with practically no holding back. An advertising illiterate ex-engineer with a penchant for over-thinking and doodling, me, has acquired the skills required for professional creativity, strategic thinking, campaign planning, business development, client servicing and a lot more, on the job simply because it was made possible.

Freedom and creativity has been central to my entire time here for which I will be forever grateful.

That’s how a workplace becomes an alma mater and it’s true not just for me. Over the years I’ve worked with so many people that I could count on and I’m surrounded by many of those faces even today, who always deliver, irrespective of the size and potential ridiculousness of the project at hand.

These 10 years are also surprisingly filled with ex-colleagues and clients who I can say the same about as well.

Happy 10 to me.