PRITHVI /
CHANDIOK
BLOG
A collection of my thoughts and experiences penned down onto one page. I yearn to express, and I realise that there is not just one way of doing it - there are many; to write is to feel.
Here is what I feel;
A collection of my thoughts and experiences penned down onto one page. I yearn to express, and I realise that there is not just one way of doing it - there are many; to write is to feel.
Here is what I feel;
JAN 6 TO JAN 15, 2026 / WEEK 1 & 2
Like Being Pushed into a Moving Race.
Like Being Pushed into a Moving
Race.
On the 6th of January 2026, I started off my day by waking up at 6:15 AM, something I hadn't done for five full years. The last time I actually remember waking up this early on a Monday morning was when I had to catch the bus to school, which my Mum conveniently chose to be in Noida, nearly an hour and a half away. Combine that time with the amount of other kids that had to be picked up on the way, and it went to upwards of two hours. I remember vividly how I used to be one of the last kids to be dropped off while going back, and how I hated getting home at 4 PM, seeing Facebook texts sent to me by my classmates who used to reach home an hour and a half before me.
Regardless, this was only one of the things I thought about while I was in the metro to Gurgaon. Something else that came up was the fact that it's crazy to think that I, a fourth-year college student, was taking the infamous Yellow Line to corporate central with half the corporate population of NCR, only to hit me later that this student isn't just going to Gurgaon; he's going to Ogilvy Gurgaon.
When I was in school, my Mom on some days used to take me to her office; I even attended a weeklong workshop there, inside of HCL Noida. I think that's how my knack for corporates began, because now if I think about it, I have dreamt of working in a big, corporate design agency. Not even a design agency in particular for that matter - but any corporate office. I've always been intrigued by them; it's funny how the façade of those big office buildings manage to look as professional as the employees that sit inside in their staple corpo suits. Dreams come true, I guess, eventually.
I was shit-scared; I did not know what I should expect, apart from what I had seen before. Should I wear formals? Smart-casuals? Should I look at LinkedIn profiles of people who work there to get a sense of what they wear? Should I carry a mouse? Do I print copies of my work? Should I get a new pair of shoes or will my Converse work? Am I on the right metro? Am I making a mistake? Do I even want to do design? Overthinking was at its peak; I was thinking about what I should wear even though I was three stations from my destination.
Of course, while all of this was going on in my head, I was scrolling through on my phone, but this time it wasn't Instagram, it was LinkedIn. I pulled my screen down to update my feed - and Bhagwaan Ne Kiya Nyay; the first post that came up on my now updated feed was from Ogilvy. It was a picture of the Mumbai branch; they had just inaugurated their brand new addition to the office entrance - a portrait of Piyush Pandey with the quote "Front foot pe khelo!"
At first, I had no idea what this meant; I thought that it was just a casual way of paying homage to the Ad Man - I didn't pay much mind to it. Then as I got closer and closer to my station, the feels hit - I became hyper-anxious about what my first day would be like, the overthinking was back. I had watched a reel the day before that said, "If you want to overthink, overthink the good part as well," but regardless of my continuous attempts, the devil on my shoulder kept triumphing.
To take my mind off what could happen, I decided to look up what "Front foot pe khelo" meant. Although there is no official source from the Ad Man himself, the majority of our population interprets and uses this phrase to ignite confidence. As I went through articles for the phrase, I came across one that was posted after the recent passing of Piyush Pandey by an ex-CD from the Delhi office: Satbir. He mentioned how powerful Piyush's name was in the industry, and how it used to just get work through the approval barrier effortlessly just because his name was attached to the work that was being delivered. He mentioned that Piyush said something along the lines of "Front foot pe khelo" to him early on and that he internalized it. Satbir revealed that later on, even work that wasn't looked at by Piyush was pitched as work that went through him, leading to it getting approved by the client quickly - of course, I assume that his "fake it till you make it" mentality originated from the famous phrase.
My takeaway from all of this was that it's a sign; someone, something out there is watching and looking out for me and giving me these slight subtle hints "ki bhai, mast rahe, chill maar - sab mere plan ke according chal raha hai".
I exited the metro at my station, unsure of where to go next. An old friend of mine who interned at the same office told me that a shuttle waits at the exit that drops you off inside the campus. That was the only information I had carried with me. It was clear that I needed help, and so I began scouting. I approached a stranger, a man who looked to be in the later stage of his career. I didn't choose to go to him randomly: I analyzed him; the dapper grey suit said everything I needed to hear to feel as though he'd be able to help me.
"Excuse me, is this the exit for Cyber Park?" "Yes, which office are you in?" "Ogilvy." "Please, follow me - my office is on the same floor."
Maan liya bhai, that there is in fact, something or someone up there looking out for me. The person I spoke to was B.N. Sir; he works at Burson, whose office is literally 10 steps from mine, right across from Ogilvy on the same floor. B.N. Sir guided me towards the right shuttle and asked me to board before he got on, when I asked him to lead with getting on, his only word to me was "Please", quite hard to refuse. So I boarded the shuttle and prayed for things to go as well as they could. I almost put on the Hanuman Chalisa for strength, but then, me being me, I instead listened to "World, Hold On," bopping my head to the beat as I looked out at the Gurgaon traffic. I felt the brakes hit, and I looked to my right, only to see the massive building that I'd been seeing for a long time whenever visiting Gurgaon. The one stapled with dozens of logos of companies that are regarded as the "elite". I was scared, but I also felt honored. I got off the shuttle, and as I continued to follow B.N. Sir's lead - which was hard to refuse, again, with the way he said "Please," subtly insisting to help more and more - suddenly it struck me that I had to get a temporary security access key issued from the reception until I had gotten my ID card. I was about to bid goodbye to B.N. Sir, explaining that I had to get the key issued, but he was already one step ahead, scanning his ID card on the booth, leaving the entry gate open for me, once again with that warm "Please," then dropping me off on the front door of where I'd be spending the next six months.
I was supposed to meet my HR, but I had arrived much earlier than what was expected of me; the offer letter said 9:30, and I was ready to start working by 8:50. I texted my HR letting her know that I had arrived, to which they said, "Oh, you reached so early, I'm not in office yet." I sat outside the office, seeing a handful of people walk in and out, one of whom was a familiar face. You see, when I received my offer letter, it had attached the name of my TL. As a curious mind would, I looked the name up and went through their LinkedIn profile; I had seen their profile picture and I could tell that one of the people who were walking back and forth looked like them. I asked them if they were who I thought they were; they nodded and asked me to follow them. I was made to sit down at a table where my TL and another person were sitting. I was introduced to this mystery man, only to find out that he was one of the Creative Directors. Both of them asked to see my work; they appreciated it and then went on to show me their work - absolutely delightful - and then came the question, "Why are you here?" In that moment, I went blank. But then I answered, and they seemed content with what I said, or maybe it was just the corpo-poker face. I tried not to pay much mind. What reassured me though was the fact that my TL said, "Sahi hai, acchi team mein aaye ho". Made me think that I'll have a good spectrum of brands to work with. Speaking of - I was introduced to the different brands that my team had been allotted and what I should be expecting - Ghadi Detergent, India Gate, Plumber, Mother Dairy, Coca Cola, and much more.
I was also introduced to terms such as Mainline and Digital advertising, and their differences, which were hard to grasp in the beginning but then became clear. I was also told that legacy terms such as ATL and BTL were often used before the introduction of Mainline and Digital Advertising.
My tasks weren't constructed; I was offered to work on a conceptual project revolving around the rebranding of an existing product - Uplife by India Gate. I worked on the project, conceptualized a direction, and began materialising it before hitting a roadblock. Fortunately, as I hit the block, I was handed over my first, official, real brief. I was asked to animate a post that would go live on Ghadi's Instagram page in the next two days. I have very little knowledge of how to work on motion graphics; it's not like I don't know anything, but I wouldn't say that I'm confident working on a full project, especially one with stakes involved. Regardless, I couldn't say no to my first project - so I began working on it. Thirty minutes of drawing paths and placing points on the timeline, before I flipped my laptop around to show my TL - "Sahi hai." Two words, and the creative went to the servicing team who worked their magic to convince the client. It was approved, and it ended up becoming my first ever real work that went out on Ghadi Detergent's official page - the same detergent that I'd been seeing ads of since I was old enough to speak.
The next day, I was asked to work on the same brand, but this time on a Republic Day post. From idea to execution, this project was owned fully by myself. I pitched my idea, and before I could pitch the second, my TL said, "This is a good idea, iska storyboard bana ke dikhao." Here I couldn't play on my front foot, unfortunately, and I had to let them know ki bro, I don't know how to draw, which is ironic considering the career path I chose. He said, "Arre bhai itna kuch nahi, Illustrator pe basic sa bana de!" I was like, "Yeh bhi theek hai". I showed them a rough storyboard, one that I made in 10 minutes, and they said, "Badiya, bana de." Next thing I know, I've got a 10-second After Effects timeline that looks like an absolute nightmare, but the output, well, it spoke for itself.
The following day, I worked on Army Day - a day that I had no idea even existed, but Ghadi likes to be called "desh ka detergent," so I guess it was on brand. Then, I worked on Vasant Panchami - diving deeper into the motion graphics rabbit hole. The brief came from Client Servicing to us, went to Copy for review, then back to us for changes, and eventually, finally back to Client Servicing after about 700 rounds for a mere social media post, only to get altered by the client, and the cycle repeated itself. I was slowly getting used to how things work around an agency.
I only worked three days this week; I joined on a Tuesday, had WFH on Wednesday, and went back on the last two days. A good start, I guess? Praying for an even better run.
BLESS / 15 JAN 2026
FEB 24 TO MAR 9, 2026 / WEEK 9 & 10
Thrown through the Window Seat.
There are days when the agency ramps up to a hundred, and there are days when it completely dies down. It's impossible to know which version of the office you’re walking into on any given morning. This particular day felt like it was going to be a slow crawl. It came on the heels of a chain of similarly quiet days. We had no festive posts lined up, Holi was completely wrapped for nearly every brand, and we were caught up on most of our upcoming work. I figured I’d take the opportunity to wander. I walked around the campus, hit up the cafeteria, nodded at a few people, and eventually headed back upstairs, fully expecting the rest of the day to be a gentle coast to 5:30 PM.
Then, I heard it.
"Bhai, supers."
Ah, yes. That word. Supers. We haven't exactly had the best history. "Accha?" I replied, bracing myself. "The CCO has specifically asked to hand this over to you." My ears stood straight up. The CCO. "Mastercard ki nayi film aa rahi hai, you decide the look of the supers." I was being given the opportunity to decide the look and feel of an official campaign video for Mastercard. My CD told me the content and brief would be provided by a different Client Servicing team shortly. So, I waited. And waited.
I waited a week. For an urgent project, I waited an entire week. Classic. When the brief finally landed, it was: "We're showing travel through the lens of Mastercard. The client wants a silhouette of the card in the beginning, and then the supers." I asked the logical question: "Does the client know what they want their card and supers to look like?" "No, it's up to creative interpretation." I got to work straight away. I cracked a way to show the card with a glass-esque, "window to the world" effect; think Apple’s liquid glass aesthetic. The supers were essentially a thin line left behind by a card swipe, through which the text emerged. Simple, clean, effective. Right? Yes, but actually, no.
Every video usually has about 30 to 40 supers. This one had around 25. Being on the art team, my job was to create a reference that would be sent to the Production House, who would then replicate that super wherever needed in the video. I packaged the look and sent it over to the CS rep handling the project. What followed was a marathon of back-and-forth that genuinely tested my sanity.
"Give me the packaged file." "No, not the intro, just the supers." Ma'am, I literally gave you a ZIP file with both. "Please send an MP4 of the supers." Okay, MP4 sent. "Please send a PNG sequence." Okay, sent. "I need you to speak with the production house."
Pause. Hold on. I am an INTERN. I do not spearhead projects. I do not negotiate with external vendors. I absolutely do not wish to jeopardize twenty to thirty lakh rupees worth of ad production because of a potential miscommunication. But, I got on the phone with the PH.
"We need Alphas," the PH guy said. Bro, what the f*** are Alphas? I gave you a PNG sequence. "Actually, we don't need Alphas," he corrected himself. Brother? Hello?!
Eventually, the PH asked: "Please send a video that shows exactly where goes what." Fine. I made a brand new video, attaching basic placeholder text for every super, timing out the duration and sequence so they knew exactly where everything went.
Ten minutes later, the CS rep calls me: "Prithvi, why aren't these animated?! I'll have to get them approved by the client again." Woman, they are literally just placeholders for the Production House so they know where the text goes!
I was tasked with delivering a "Window to the World," and instead, I got thrown straight through said window. Alas, the AV eventually went through. CS was happy. PH was happy. The CCO was happy. I was just happy it was over. Mission accomplished. But this is becoming a trend. Those 10 to 11 PM days are becoming painfully consistent - but I was enjoying them, villainously. I like complaining on the surface, but it's addictive.
Take yesterday, for example. It was the final T20 match between India and New Zealand. On Friday, when the office was a ghost town, my TL and I sat together and proactively designed a T20 "Win" post for a brand - a washing powder brand, the name of which rhymes with Sadi, we'll call them that for this blog. Sadi hadn't sent a requirement, but we wanted to stay ahead of the curve. We cracked the look, leaving just the copy blank since CS hadn't briefed us yet. We were feeling pretty smug about it.
Fast forward to Sunday. The match happens. India wins, obviously. Cue the panic from Sadi: "Where is the win post?!" I confidently pulled up the file we made on Friday and dropped it into the group chat like a rare pokemon card. Bazinga. I was ready. Hero of the weekend.
Too bad, though. By the time our masterpiece was sent over to the client, they had already uploaded a hideous, AI-generated artwork to their official page. Beautiful.
Four years of design school and a Friday evening of proactive problem-solving, completely rendered useless by someone who probably typed "happy cricket man washing clothes" into an AI prompt.
BLESS / 9 MAR 2026
JAN 16 TO JAN 28, 2026 / WEEK 3 & 4
Catching Up.
I walked into the office, set my bag and unpacked my laptop - as I opened it, the Creative Director looks towards me and goes "Congrats bhai", I was confused - was he congratulating me on not having left the internship this early or was it an actual achievement? - "Tera Republic Day client ne approve kardiya" he followed, I was ecstatic. I worked on Republic Day from start to end; trying to figure out that perfect balance between delivering something conceptual & unseen and something that the people at Ghadi would like; apparently Republic Day posts are quite important for a brand like that, so it was a considerable achievement for me to be able to successfully deliver something big like that in the early stages of my internship. A few moments later "Prithvi, Makarsakranti is live" another post I worked on, the first one that officially went live. I was celebrating small wins.
My TL hadn't come, so it was just me and the CD. The CCO of Delhi office and the CD that I report to are friends, so it's not uncommon for them to speak to each other throughout the day. Today, the CCO came to our table to give a new brief involving creating a draft KV for a brand called Plumber. I am quite inquisitive, so I've built a habit of "healthy eavesdropping", I was listening into the conversation between the two big shots, and the CCO looks towards me and says to the CD - "Isko de na!" "Tu busy hai kya? tereko disturb toh nahi kiya" - "Absolutely not, batao.". The brief required us to come up with a KV that communicated bespoke luxury bathware - lot of negative space, with the product in the middle, think of it as the Apple of bathware. Myself and the CD began working on the brief and took two different directions which we were asked to deliver by 4 PM. Imagine me, basically going against this mammoth of a designer - the CD, who's had 15 years of experience in the industry.
The only constraint was to show a split screen, one with a long shot of the bathroom and one, a close shot of the faucet/shower within said long shot. I remember in first year, I did a project in Exterior Drawing called "Macro to Micro" - we chose a location within Lajpat Nagar with a subject, preferably a food redi/some stall - we started drawing a wide shot of the redi among the surroundings, how it blends into the environment, slow zooming into the same scene until we reached one particular element within the redi itself. Now although I didn't deliver the submission in my first year, I still applied the knowledge I consumed during that assignment in this project. I used AI to extend the wide shots of the bathroom that were given to me, and I blurred them so that they didn't look artificial. I used a technique called "Clean Collage" and placed the close-up shot of the faucet above the wide shot, off centering it such that it matches the rule of thirds. I proceeded to apply the same technique to all 5 of the concept KVs; eventually sending them over to my CD at 3:30 PM. At 4 PM, the CDs approach and mine were forwarded to the CCO. I began working on different project assuming that we'd get an answer later on, perhaps the next day. As I began working - "Prithvi, your approach has been selected". Bravo, pat myself on the back - held back my smile in front of my fellow corpo brethren, I didn't want them to know the joy I felt in that moment; all until I was asked to hand over the files for fine-tuning, a 2 minute affair which took me an hour. Eventually, I sat down with the CD to refine the look further because I came to know that the KV that had made was going to be presented to the client in-person, in Mathura for a potential campaign. I stayed back in office until this was finished that day. While going back home, I kept a subtle smile on my face the whole way.
The next day, I fell sick and I couldn't go to office, I was asked to hand over the files for the Republic Day post - although the overall look was approved, the client wanted the copy changed. I handed the files over. I received a message asking me to try and edit myself if I can, I worked on the creative and delivered the updated version: which unfortunately didn't go through because there was yet another change in copy by the client. We concluded that we'd work on the creative and hand it over by EOD Friday considering Monday is Republic Day. We had 3 additional copy revisions on Friday itself, with restructuring the sequence of the creative, essentially losing it's impact in the process - but hey, the client wants what they want.
The folllowing Monday, the creative went out. Was I happy with it? not entirely. But the client's audience seemed to be content - I called it a non reciprocative win.
Throughout all of the work, there are times when you take breaks - obviously. I tried to go out with my TL as much as I could, he used to take me around the campus perimeter for walks. Our campus is shaped like a rectangle - so it gives us ample of time to walk through one side of the building before changing topics as we turn sides. Lot of gyaan - good gyaan, but gyaan nonetheless.
I'm trying to build a persona that matches my surroundings, I keep questioning myself on what I say goes and what doesn't, and it's quite hard to settle one one persona because I don't fully understand the people yet - slowly though, I plan on doing so. I haven't had any noticable conversations with the people around me yet, but again - slow process.
BLESS / 28 JAN 2026
JAN 28 TO FEB 12, 2026 / WEEK 5 & 6
Wayfinding.
Trust is a pretty weird construct, there's many pre-requisites to it. It doesn't come by itself - what lies behind it is what builds towards it. Friendship, vulnerability, confidence, so many things that were & still are unfathomable in the real world.
These past few days have been uncertain, there hasn't been too much new work, it's just been revisiting old briefs and altering them to fit universal and client needs. Plumber KV was approved, the only change involved replacing the Plumber logo with Aquini's logo - their more premium line of products. It should go out soon - my first mainline deliverable, out into the world. I've been keeping a steady rapport of delivering briefs on the day they come, and thankfully all of them have been approved in house, a few didn't make it out - but that's expected. I stayed back in office till 8 PM some time this week, working on a task for one of the VPs; Interns are usually bhagaofied by 5:30 PM, it's policy; but nobody asked me to leave, I was one of the last ones to check out of the office, made me feel like I'm incubated quite well into the rat race, if you can call it that.
I've been thinking a lot about college; how much more independence lied in sitting alone at campus, free of any classes, working on work that was pending from a semester ago. All of a sudden, Nidhi Mam's reprimanding sessions don't feel so bad. What I'm trying to say is that college had something new to look forward to each day - whether its a new brief, meeting a prospective student, making a roadmap for Krea that we know we wouldn't go through, or even just a nice long conversation with any of the juniors. Comparatively, college was slow, but slow still felt enjoyable. I've finished a month here at Ogilvy now; here, slow isn't enjoyable, it's monotonous. There aren't too many people to have conversations with, there's things to learn - but you can only will to learn so much in a day. The work feels like… work. In college, no matter how much I dreaded it, work still felt like something to look forward to with every new brief - and now I know that it was because I got to express myself the way I wanted to express myself, creativity was uncapped - imagination could go the point where Mars rises in the East and Pluto sets in the North. But here, creativity is rigid. Creativity is what the client wants. You can only imagine so much for brands that have been set in their ways for a little over half a century. Alas, another thing to get used to.
Monotony isn’t just a preference I lack; it is a state that actively works against my nature. I’ve realized that my creativity is linked to momentum. Monotony is like my kryptonite. I need to be moving, solving, and doing function. When I am forced into a standstill, the experience is almost mechanical. Imagine a car engine that is topped up with premium petrol every single morning; but not fully used up before the end of the day, only to repeat the process the next day onwards. There is potential to drive it much further, but it isn't taken to that point. It's sad.
I've been thinking about that 'rat race' lifestyle, where work becomes your entire identity. I feel myself drifting toward it, and I know I have to stop. It brings me back to what I said about trust. The monotony I feel is a symptom of silence; there is no conversation here, and I think that’s because the prerequisite - trust, is missing. I chose design because I love the noise of reaction and the joy of creation. But recently, it's been too quiet. I have strayed away from the feeling that made me start. It is time to rethink and rebuild.
BLESS / 12 FEB 2026
FEB 12 TO FEB 23, 2026 / WEEK 7 & 8
Caught in the Evening Rush.
Contemplating.
It’s been a weirdly paced couple of weeks. The pendulum swung from absolute quiet to 3 AM panic, and then right back to a standstill. I started off the week riding a decent wave. I finished up a campaign contest announcement post for Ghadi, the one with the massive 50k prize pool for people dancing to the new theme song I’d worked on for Republic Day. Once that was out of the way, there were just a few minor tweaks left, mostly swapping out a static image for an Awez Darbar reel. Easy enough. I thought my day was pretty much cleared. Then, the infamous agency chaos struck. My CD was working on a time-sensitive project when his laptop decided it had had enough, it crashed. My TL was already buried in a different brand’s time-sensitive deliverable. Cue the strategy rep rushing over to our table, realizing the project might not ship today.
That’s when the CD pointed at me. "Prithvi, AV cut hui padi hai - ismein bas supers daalne hai." I nodded in confidence on the outside. Inside? Blank. "AV kya hota hai? Supers, hain?" Is it a font? A transition? I didn't bother to ask because everyone around me looked stressed out of their minds, and dropping a "what does that mean" in the middle of a crisis felt like a rookie mistake. I just put on my best corpo-poker face and went with it.
I sat down with the strat rep, and he gave me a very vague rundown. I was handed a picture, a video, and the "VO" - another acronym I had to add to my mental dictionary (Voice Over, for the uninitiated). "Bhai ismein video done hai, bas end mein supers add kar de, aadhe ghante ka kaam hai max!" he said. I smiled, confident in my ignorance, and got to work. Five minutes in, I realized the VO was completely out of sync with the visuals. So much for "video done hai." I had to manually slice up each piece of audio and align it perfectly with the captions. All said and done, I handed the video back to the strat rep and mentally checked out for the day. Supers ended up being what you see at the end of an ad, a CTA essentially. It needs to give off a message and look cool doing it.
"Bhai, last change, ismein ek clip change hogi."
The AV had a line that went, "Ek aur ek do nahi, gyaarah hojaata hai," basically putting two cricketers together to show that team spirit brings out results. Now, having little to no understanding of this specific campaign, and not being a cricket guy myself, I told him I couldn't be sure what clip to use. "Theeke, mujhe 5 aur minute de, mein tereko clip nikaal ke deta hu," he replied.
I checked the time. It was 4:40 PM. Usually, I try to leave by 4:45 PM with my TL to beat the afternoon metro rush. I chased the rep for the clip, but got hit with the classic "Bro aur 5 minutes." My TL intervened. "Chal, you're off the clock, work on this tomorrow now." I actually insisted on staying back, but he hit me with a solid dose of corporate gyaan about making a habit of leaving on time. Hard to argue with that. So, I grabbed my bag. That metro ride was something else. I was shoved into a corner built entirely by the stomachs of post office beers. My phone buzzed twice - the strat rep calling, but my arms were practically pinned. I couldn't even reach into my pocket. When I finally got home, I called him back. He sounded disappointed. "Bhai, aaj chahiye." I told him I'd give it to him first thing in the morning, but he insisted. I agreed and I figured, what's the worst that could happen? Thirty minutes? An hour and a half at most? I stayed up till 3 AM finishing this project.
When my CD got wind of this he told me not to come in and to just work from home the next day. I gladly accepted, envisioning a lazy morning in bed before the long weekend. Wrong. The AV required dozens of changes before finally settling at 2 PM. Only then did the long weekend truly hit. Monday was a chutti.
Monday rolled around, and I was getting ready for the office for the next day when my TL called. "Prithvi don't come tomorrow, we have a visit to Mother Dairy so there's no use you being alone in office." Me, being me: "Mein bhi aajaun?" Him: "Nahi yaar, there's a guest list."
A guest list. For Mother Dairy. Sad. I sat at home and watched Tuesday pass by too. Wednesday was another WFH day with no new briefs coming in, just minor copy changes on an older post.
But Thursday? Thursday was redemption. I got a brief for a Ghadi reminder post for the contest. My TL trusted me to handle the concept and execution entirely on my own, and to my surprise, it went through! I realized I was getting faster. What used to take me four or five hours was now taking one or two. The muscle memory was kicking in; my hands were hitting the right keystrokes without me even thinking about it. Genuine growth.
As I was leaving for lunch that day, I heard my name. "Prithvi!" I turned around to see the strat rep. He walked up and shook my hand. "Thank you yaar, sahi kaam nikal gaya - the client loved it." He then introduced me to his CD. "Hi Prithvi, amazing work on the AV, client loved it on the first go." For the rest of the day, a few people waved at me and felt that I was being noticed. After the sheer exhaustion, the confusion over acronyms, and the 3 AM grind, it genuinely felt good to produce something that actually made an impact.
And now, as I write this on the 23rd, it's been a quiet four days. No new briefs so far. But this week, I'm slated to work on a campaign from start to finish for India Gate Rice, plus my biggest project yet: in-store branding for Plumber.
Bring on the briefs. Just... maybe not at 4:40 PM this time.
BLESS / 12 FEB 2026
MAR 29 TO APR 13, 2026
Switching Lanes.
I've always had a thing for red. Not a preference, more like a reflex. If red is on the table, I'm picking it before my brain even gets a vote. My mom is the opposite. Lifelong blue loyalist, no contest.
There's this memory I keep coming back to - wandering through a market in Goa with her, a chaotic little display of coloured stone rings laid out in front of us. She asked me to pick one. My eyes went straight to it: deep, burgundy-red. I was already raising my finger when something stopped me. This isn't for you. It's for her. I swallowed the instinct, shifted, and pointed at the blue one.
That moment is the cleanest way I know to describe where I'm standing right now.
If you've been reading this blog, you know Ogilvy has basically been my entire world. It's the Red Pill in every sense: the logo, the office, the whole gravitational pull of it. It is the established advertising world, in a lot of ways.
Somewhere over the last two weeks, something quietly clicked. I'm still young enough that experimenting isn't a gamble, it's kind of the whole point. Three months at the agency taught me a lot. I got thrown into the deep end with over a dozen legacy Indian brands and figured out how each of those massive machines actually runs. It was genuinely valuable. But if I'm being honest with myself, it got monotonous in a way that started to grind. Real creative freedom doesn't get much room when you're working inside a rigid corporate structure. I started missing the feeling of just making something from scratch.
Then my CD walked up to my desk and casually said, "Prithvi, full time karega?"
I won't pretend that didn't land. Ogilvy doesn't really do that with interns, everyone knows it. So yeah, it meant something. And I get it: staying would've been a near-guaranteed, comfortable climb up the ladder.
But I've always thought contentment has to come first. If the engine room isn't doing it for you, the view from the top doesn't fix that. It just gives you a nicer place to feel unfulfilled.
Even before the offer came, I'd already been watching something from the sidelines: Gully Labs. The Blue Pill.
They'd just announced $3 million in Series A funding, a genuinely staggering thing for a two-year-old startup. But the money wasn't what pulled me in. It was the vision. The cultural DNA of what they're building lines up with the kind of storytelling and design work I've been wanting to do for a while now.
The Red Pill keeps you comfortable. It keeps you employed, validated, and moving upward in a straight, predictable line. The Blue Pill is messier. It asks you to bet on something unproven, to trade a guaranteed trajectory for a shot at something that actually sets you on fire. Most people look at that choice and call it reckless. I looked at it and thought: I'm twenty-two. If not now, when?
So I did what any reasonable person would do. I sent a cold email to the founders and the public domain listed on their website. Hail mary, why not. If I get a revert, lovely. If not, I don't really lose much. A friend of mine once told me she locked down a job at District by directly emailing Deepinder Goyal. I took the same approach.
No response, as expected. Sent another one a few days later. No response again. On the 30th of January, I walked into their store, bought two pairs of shoes, and sent a picture of them to the same email thread. Still nothing. I fully gave up at that point.
Or did I?
A few weeks later, they posted a story on Instagram. "Hiring a Senior Designer." I thought about something Nidhi ma'am always used to say: apply regardless of the position in the JD, it might land in your favour. So I said, fuck it. I pitched myself as a potential intern for the Senior Designer role. One week, nothing. Two weeks, nothing. Sent a LinkedIn message to the hirer. Nothing.
Until the hail mary gave back.
An email landed in my inbox: "I'm impressed by your enthusiasm, let's get on a call."
I was ecstatic. Agreed immediately. The call happened, and I stuttered my way through it, broke my flow more times than I'd like to admit. But it worked out. They told me they didn't have an intern position open and that they were only speaking to me because they liked the work and wanted to find a way to bring it into the GL pipeline somehow. I nodded. The call ended.
Silence for a week.
Then an invitation to meet them in person at the flagship store. I went, we talked.
Full time offer. Junior Designer, International Growth Team. Sometimes the red pill is right there, obvious and familiar. And you still point at the blue one. New chapter. Switching lanes. Remember when I said my mum's favourite colour is blue? She was rooting for Gully Labs all this time too.
BLESS / 9 MAR 2026
Back to Work?
BLOG
A collection of my thoughts and experiences penned down onto one page. I yearn to express, and I realise that there is not just one way of doing it - there are many; to write is to feel.
Here is what I feel;
Trajectories
JAN 6 TO JAN 15, 2026 / WEEK 1
Like Being Pushed into a Moving
Race.
On the 6th of January 2026, I started off my day by waking up at 6:15 AM, something I hadn't done for five full years. The last time I actually remember waking up this early on a Monday morning was when I had to catch the bus to school, which my Mum conveniently chose to be in Noida, nearly an hour and a half away. Combine that time with the amount of other kids that had to be picked up on the way, and it went to upwards of two hours. I remember vividly how I used to be one of the last kids to be dropped off while going back, and how I hated getting home at 4 PM, seeing Facebook texts sent to me by my classmates who used to reach home an hour and a half before me.
Regardless, this was only one of the things I thought about while I was in the metro to Gurgaon. Something else that came up was the fact that it's crazy to think that I, a fourth-year college student, was taking the infamous Yellow Line to corporate central with half the corporate population of NCR, only to hit me later that this student isn't just going to Gurgaon; he's going to Ogilvy Gurgaon.
When I was in school, my Mom on some days used to take me to her office; I even attended a weeklong workshop there, inside of HCL Noida. I think that's how my knack for corporates began, because now if I think about it, I have dreamt of working in a big, corporate design agency. Not even a design agency in particular for that matter - but any corporate office. I've always been intrigued by them; it's funny how the façade of those big office buildings manage to look as professional as the employees that sit inside in their staple corpo suits. Dreams come true, I guess, eventually.
I was shit-scared; I did not know what I should expect, apart from what I had seen before. Should I wear formals? Smart-casuals? Should I look at LinkedIn profiles of people who work there to get a sense of what they wear? Should I carry a mouse? Do I print copies of my work? Should I get a new pair of shoes or will my Converse work? Am I on the right metro? Am I making a mistake? Do I even want to do design? Overthinking was at its peak; I was thinking about what I should wear even though I was three stations from my destination.
Of course, while all of this was going on in my head, I was scrolling through on my phone, but this time it wasn't Instagram, it was LinkedIn. I pulled my screen down to update my feed - and Bhagwaan Ne Kiya Nyay; the first post that came up on my now updated feed was from Ogilvy. It was a picture of the Mumbai branch; they had just inaugurated their brand new addition to the office entrance - a portrait of Piyush Pandey with the quote "Front foot pe khelo!"
At first, I had no idea what this meant; I thought that it was just a casual way of paying homage to the Ad Man - I didn't pay much mind to it. Then as I got closer and closer to my station, the feels hit - I became hyper-anxious about what my first day would be like, the overthinking was back. I had watched a reel the day before that said, "If you want to overthink, overthink the good part as well," but regardless of my continuous attempts, the devil on my shoulder kept triumphing.
To take my mind off what could happen, I decided to look up what "Front foot pe khelo" meant. Although there is no official source from the Ad Man himself, the majority of our population interprets and uses this phrase to ignite confidence. As I went through articles for the phrase, I came across one that was posted after the recent passing of Piyush Pandey by an ex-CD from the Delhi office: Satbir. He mentioned how powerful Piyush's name was in the industry, and how it used to just get work through the approval barrier effortlessly just because his name was attached to the work that was being delivered. He mentioned that Piyush said something along the lines of "Front foot pe khelo" to him early on and that he internalized it. Satbir revealed that later on, even work that wasn't looked at by Piyush was pitched as work that went through him, leading to it getting approved by the client quickly - of course, I assume that his "fake it till you make it" mentality originated from the famous phrase.
My takeaway from all of this was that it's a sign; someone, something out there is watching and looking out for me and giving me these slight subtle hints "ki bhai, mast rahe, chill maar - sab mere plan ke according chal raha hai".
I exited the metro at my station, unsure of where to go next. An old friend of mine who interned at the same office told me that a shuttle waits at the exit that drops you off inside the campus. That was the only information I had carried with me. It was clear that I needed help, and so I began scouting. I approached a stranger, a man who looked to be in the later stage of his career. I didn't choose to go to him randomly: I analyzed him; the dapper grey suit said everything I needed to hear to feel as though he'd be able to help me.
"Excuse me, is this the exit for Cyber Park?" "Yes, which office are you in?" "Ogilvy." "Please, follow me - my office is on the same floor."
Maan liya bhai, that there is in fact, something or someone up there looking out for me. The person I spoke to was B.N. Sir; he works at Burson, whose office is literally 10 steps from mine, right across from Ogilvy on the same floor. B.N. Sir guided me towards the right shuttle and asked me to board before he got on, when I asked him to lead with getting on, his only word to me was "Please", quite hard to refuse. So I boarded the shuttle and prayed for things to go as well as they could. I almost put on the Hanuman Chalisa for strength, but then, me being me, I instead listened to "World, Hold On," bopping my head to the beat as I looked out at the Gurgaon traffic. I felt the brakes hit, and I looked to my right, only to see the massive building that I'd been seeing for a long time whenever visiting Gurgaon. The one stapled with dozens of logos of companies that are regarded as the "elite". I was scared, but I also felt honored. I got off the shuttle, and as I continued to follow B.N. Sir's lead - which was hard to refuse, again, with the way he said "Please," subtly insisting to help more and more - suddenly it struck me that I had to get a temporary security access key issued from the reception until I had gotten my ID card. I was about to bid goodbye to B.N. Sir, explaining that I had to get the key issued, but he was already one step ahead, scanning his ID card on the booth, leaving the entry gate open for me, once again with that warm "Please," then dropping me off on the front door of where I'd be spending the next six months.
I was supposed to meet my HR, but I had arrived much earlier than what was expected of me; the offer letter said 9:30, and I was ready to start working by 8:50. I texted my HR letting her know that I had arrived, to which they said, "Oh, you reached so early, I'm not in office yet." I sat outside the office, seeing a handful of people walk in and out, one of whom was a familiar face. You see, when I received my offer letter, it had attached the name of my TL. As a curious mind would, I looked the name up and went through their LinkedIn profile; I had seen their profile picture and I could tell that one of the people who were walking back and forth looked like them. I asked them if they were who I thought they were; they nodded and asked me to follow them. I was made to sit down at a table where my TL and another person were sitting. I was introduced to this mystery man, only to find out that he was one of the Creative Directors. Both of them asked to see my work; they appreciated it and then went on to show me their work - absolutely delightful - and then came the question, "Why are you here?" In that moment, I went blank. But then I answered, and they seemed content with what I said, or maybe it was just the corpo-poker face. I tried not to pay much mind. What reassured me though was the fact that my TL said, "Sahi hai, acchi team mein aaye ho". Made me think that I'll have a good spectrum of brands to work with. Speaking of - I was introduced to the different brands that my team had been allotted and what I should be expecting - Ghadi Detergent, India Gate, Plumber, Mother Dairy, Coca Cola, and much more.
I was also introduced to terms such as Mainline and Digital advertising, and their differences, which were hard to grasp in the beginning but then became clear. I was also told that legacy terms such as ATL and BTL were often used before the introduction of Mainline and Digital Advertising.
My tasks weren't constructed; I was offered to work on a conceptual project revolving around the rebranding of an existing product - Uplife by India Gate. I worked on the project, conceptualized a direction, and began materialising it before hitting a roadblock. Fortunately, as I hit the block, I was handed over my first, official, real brief. I was asked to animate a post that would go live on Ghadi's Instagram page in the next two days. I have very little knowledge of how to work on motion graphics; it's not like I don't know anything, but I wouldn't say that I'm confident working on a full project, especially one with stakes involved. Regardless, I couldn't say no to my first project - so I began working on it. Thirty minutes of drawing paths and placing points on the timeline, before I flipped my laptop around to show my TL - "Sahi hai." Two words, and the creative went to the servicing team who worked their magic to convince the client. It was approved, and it ended up becoming my first ever real work that went out on Ghadi Detergent's official page - the same detergent that I'd been seeing ads of since I was old enough to speak.
The next day, I was asked to work on the same brand, but this time on a Republic Day post. From idea to execution, this project was owned fully by myself. I pitched my idea, and before I could pitch the second, my TL said, "This is a good idea, iska storyboard bana ke dikhao." Here I couldn't play on my front foot, unfortunately, and I had to let them know ki bro, I don't know how to draw, which is ironic considering the career path I chose. He said, "Arre bhai itna kuch nahi, Illustrator pe basic sa bana de!" I was like, "Yeh bhi theek hai". I showed them a rough storyboard, one that I made in 10 minutes, and they said, "Badiya, bana de." Next thing I know, I've got a 10-second After Effects timeline that looks like an absolute nightmare, but the output, well, it spoke for itself.
The following day, I worked on Army Day - a day that I had no idea even existed, but Ghadi likes to be called "desh ka detergent," so I guess it was on brand. Then, I worked on Vasant Panchami - diving deeper into the motion graphics rabbit hole. The brief came from Client Servicing to us, went to Copy for review, then back to us for changes, and eventually, finally back to Client Servicing after about 700 rounds for a mere social media post, only to get altered by the client, and the cycle repeated itself. I was slowly getting used to how things work around an agency.
I only worked three days this week; I joined on a Tuesday, had WFH on Wednesday, and went back on the last two days. A good start, I guess? Praying for an even better run.
BLESS / 15 JAN 2026
FEB 12 TO FEB 23, 2026 / WEEK 7 & 8
Caught in the Evening Rush.
It’s been a weirdly paced couple of weeks. The pendulum swung from absolute quiet to 3 AM panic, and then right back to a standstill. I started off the week riding a decent wave. I finished up a campaign contest announcement post for Ghadi, the one with the massive 50k prize pool for people dancing to the new theme song I’d worked on for Republic Day. Once that was out of the way, there were just a few minor tweaks left, mostly swapping out a static image for an Awez Darbar reel. Easy enough. I thought my day was pretty much cleared. Then, the infamous agency chaos struck. My CD was working on a time-sensitive project when his laptop decided it had had enough, it crashed. My TL was already buried in a different brand’s time-sensitive deliverable. Cue the strategy rep rushing over to our table, realizing the project might not ship today.
That’s when the CD pointed at me. "Prithvi, AV cut hui padi hai - ismein bas supers daalne hai." I nodded in confidence on the outside. Inside? Blank. "AV kya hota hai? Supers, hain?" Is it a font? A transition? I didn't bother to ask because everyone around me looked stressed out of their minds, and dropping a "what does that mean" in the middle of a crisis felt like a rookie mistake. I just put on my best corpo-poker face and went with it.
I sat down with the strat rep, and he gave me a very vague rundown. I was handed a picture, a video, and the "VO" - another acronym I had to add to my mental dictionary (Voice Over, for the uninitiated). "Bhai ismein video done hai, bas end mein supers add kar de, aadhe ghante ka kaam hai max!" he said. I smiled, confident in my ignorance, and got to work. Five minutes in, I realized the VO was completely out of sync with the visuals. So much for "video done hai." I had to manually slice up each piece of audio and align it perfectly with the captions. All said and done, I handed the video back to the strat rep and mentally checked out for the day. Supers ended up being what you see at the end of an ad, a CTA essentially. It needs to give off a message and look cool doing it.
"Bhai, last change, ismein ek clip change hogi."
The AV had a line that went, "Ek aur ek do nahi, gyaarah hojaata hai," basically putting two cricketers together to show that team spirit brings out results. Now, having little to no understanding of this specific campaign, and not being a cricket guy myself, I told him I couldn't be sure what clip to use. "Theeke, mujhe 5 aur minute de, mein tereko clip nikaal ke deta hu," he replied.
I checked the time. It was 4:40 PM. Usually, I try to leave by 4:45 PM with my TL to beat the afternoon metro rush. I chased the rep for the clip, but got hit with the classic "Bro aur 5 minutes." My TL intervened. "Chal, you're off the clock, work on this tomorrow now." I actually insisted on staying back, but he hit me with a solid dose of corporate gyaan about making a habit of leaving on time. Hard to argue with that. So, I grabbed my bag. That metro ride was something else. I was shoved into a corner built entirely by the stomachs of post office beers. My phone buzzed twice - the strat rep calling, but my arms were practically pinned. I couldn't even reach into my pocket. When I finally got home, I called him back. He sounded disappointed. "Bhai, aaj chahiye." I told him I'd give it to him first thing in the morning, but he insisted. I agreed and I figured, what's the worst that could happen? Thirty minutes? An hour and a half at most? I stayed up till 3 AM finishing this project.
When my CD got wind of this he told me not to come in and to just work from home the next day. I gladly accepted, envisioning a lazy morning in bed before the long weekend. Wrong. The AV required dozens of changes before finally settling at 2 PM. Only then did the long weekend truly hit. Monday was a chutti.
Monday rolled around, and I was getting ready for the office for the next day when my TL called. "Prithvi don't come tomorrow, we have a visit to Mother Dairy so there's no use you being alone in office." Me, being me: "Mein bhi aajaun?" Him: "Nahi yaar, there's a guest list."
A guest list. For Mother Dairy. Sad. I sat at home and watched Tuesday pass by too. Wednesday was another WFH day with no new briefs coming in, just minor copy changes on an older post.
But Thursday? Thursday was redemption. I got a brief for a Ghadi reminder post for the contest. My TL trusted me to handle the concept and execution entirely on my own, and to my surprise, it went through! I realized I was getting faster. What used to take me four or five hours was now taking one or two. The muscle memory was kicking in; my hands were hitting the right keystrokes without me even thinking about it. Genuine growth.
As I was leaving for lunch that day, I heard my name. "Prithvi!" I turned around to see the strat rep. He walked up and shook my hand. "Thank you yaar, sahi kaam nikal gaya - the client loved it." He then introduced me to his CD. "Hi Prithvi, amazing work on the AV, client loved it on the first go." For the rest of the day, a few people waved at me and felt that I was being noticed. After the sheer exhaustion, the confusion over acronyms, and the 3 AM grind, it genuinely felt good to produce something that actually made an impact.
And now, as I write this on the 23rd, it's been a quiet four days. No new briefs so far. But this week, I'm slated to work on a campaign from start to finish for India Gate Rice, plus my biggest project yet: in-store branding for Plumber.
Bring on the briefs. Just... maybe not at 4:40 PM this time.
BLESS / 12 FEB 2026
JAN 16 TO JAN 28, 2026 / WEEK 3 & 4
Catching Up.
It’s been a weirdly paced couple of weeks. The pendulum swung from absolute quiet to 3 AM panic, and then right back to a standstill. I started off the week riding a decent wave. I finished up a campaign contest announcement post for Ghadi, the one with the massive 50k prize pool for people dancing to the new theme song I’d worked on for Republic Day. Once that was out of the way, there were just a few minor tweaks left, mostly swapping out a static image for an Awez Darbar reel. Easy enough. I thought my day was pretty much cleared. Then, the infamous agency chaos struck. My CD was working on a time-sensitive project when his laptop decided it had had enough, it crashed. My TL was already buried in a different brand’s time-sensitive deliverable. Cue the strategy rep rushing over to our table, realizing the project might not ship today.
That’s when the CD pointed at me. "Prithvi, AV cut hui padi hai - ismein bas supers daalne hai." I nodded in confidence on the outside. Inside? Blank. "AV kya hota hai? Supers, hain?" Is it a font? A transition? I didn't bother to ask because everyone around me looked stressed out of their minds, and dropping a "what does that mean" in the middle of a crisis felt like a rookie mistake. I just put on my best corpo-poker face and went with it.
I sat down with the strat rep, and he gave me a very vague rundown. I was handed a picture, a video, and the "VO" - another acronym I had to add to my mental dictionary (Voice Over, for the uninitiated). "Bhai ismein video done hai, bas end mein supers add kar de, aadhe ghante ka kaam hai max!" he said. I smiled, confident in my ignorance, and got to work. Five minutes in, I realized the VO was completely out of sync with the visuals. So much for "video done hai." I had to manually slice up each piece of audio and align it perfectly with the captions. All said and done, I handed the video back to the strat rep and mentally checked out for the day. Supers ended up being what you see at the end of an ad, a CTA essentially. It needs to give off a message and look cool doing it.
"Bhai, last change, ismein ek clip change hogi."
The AV had a line that went, "Ek aur ek do nahi, gyaarah hojaata hai," basically putting two cricketers together to show that team spirit brings out results. Now, having little to no understanding of this specific campaign, and not being a cricket guy myself, I told him I couldn't be sure what clip to use. "Theeke, mujhe 5 aur minute de, mein tereko clip nikaal ke deta hu," he replied.
I checked the time. It was 4:40 PM. Usually, I try to leave by 4:45 PM with my TL to beat the afternoon metro rush. I chased the rep for the clip, but got hit with the classic "Bro aur 5 minutes." My TL intervened. "Chal, you're off the clock, work on this tomorrow now." I actually insisted on staying back, but he hit me with a solid dose of corporate gyaan about making a habit of leaving on time. Hard to argue with that. So, I grabbed my bag. That metro ride was something else. I was shoved into a corner built entirely by the stomachs of post office beers. My phone buzzed twice - the strat rep calling, but my arms were practically pinned. I couldn't even reach into my pocket. When I finally got home, I called him back. He sounded disappointed. "Bhai, aaj chahiye." I told him I'd give it to him first thing in the morning, but he insisted. I agreed and I figured, what's the worst that could happen? Thirty minutes? An hour and a half at most? I stayed up till 3 AM finishing this project.
When my CD got wind of this he told me not to come in and to just work from home the next day. I gladly accepted, envisioning a lazy morning in bed before the long weekend. Wrong. The AV required dozens of changes before finally settling at 2 PM. Only then did the long weekend truly hit. Monday was a chutti.
Monday rolled around, and I was getting ready for the office for the next day when my TL called. "Prithvi don't come tomorrow, we have a visit to Mother Dairy so there's no use you being alone in office." Me, being me: "Mein bhi aajaun?" Him: "Nahi yaar, there's a guest list."
A guest list. For Mother Dairy. Sad. I sat at home and watched Tuesday pass by too. Wednesday was another WFH day with no new briefs coming in, just minor copy changes on an older post.
But Thursday? Thursday was redemption. I got a brief for a Ghadi reminder post for the contest. My TL trusted me to handle the concept and execution entirely on my own, and to my surprise, it went through! I realized I was getting faster. What used to take me four or five hours was now taking one or two. The muscle memory was kicking in; my hands were hitting the right keystrokes without me even thinking about it. Genuine growth.
As I was leaving for lunch that day, I heard my name. "Prithvi!" I turned around to see the strat rep. He walked up and shook my hand. "Thank you yaar, sahi kaam nikal gaya - the client loved it." He then introduced me to his CD. "Hi Prithvi, amazing work on the AV, client loved it on the first go." For the rest of the day, a few people waved at me and felt that I was being noticed. After the sheer exhaustion, the confusion over acronyms, and the 3 AM grind, it genuinely felt good to produce something that actually made an impact.
And now, as I write this on the 23rd, it's been a quiet four days. No new briefs so far. But this week, I'm slated to work on a campaign from start to finish for India Gate Rice, plus my biggest project yet: in-store branding for Plumber.
Bring on the briefs. Just... maybe not at 4:40 PM this time.
BLESS / 28 JAN 2026
JAN 28 TO FEB 12, 2026 / WEEK 5 & 6
Wayfinding.
Trust is a pretty weird construct, there's many pre-requisites to it. It doesn't come by itself - what lies behind it is what builds towards it. Friendship, vulnerability, confidence, so many things that were & still are unfathomable in the real world.
These past few days have been uncertain, there hasn't been too much new work, it's just been revisiting old briefs and altering them to fit universal and client needs. Plumber KV was approved, the only change involved replacing the Plumber logo with Aquini's logo - their more premium line of products. It should go out soon - my first mainline deliverable, out into the world. I've been keeping a steady rapport of delivering briefs on the day they come, and thankfully all of them have been approved in house, a few didn't make it out - but that's expected. I stayed back in office till 8 PM some time this week, working on a task for one of the VPs; Interns are usually bhagaofied by 5:30 PM, it's policy; but nobody asked me to leave, I was one of the last ones to check out of the office, made me feel like I'm incubated quite well into the rat race, if you can call it that.
I've been thinking a lot about college; how much more independence lied in sitting alone at campus, free of any classes, working on work that was pending from a semester ago. All of a sudden, Nidhi Mam's reprimanding sessions don't feel so bad. What I'm trying to say is that college had something new to look forward to each day - whether its a new brief, meeting a prospective student, making a roadmap for Krea that we know we wouldn't go through, or even just a nice long conversation with any of the juniors. Comparatively, college was slow, but slow still felt enjoyable. I've finished a month here at Ogilvy now; here, slow isn't enjoyable, it's monotonous. There aren't too many people to have conversations with, there's things to learn - but you can only will to learn so much in a day. The work feels like… work. In college, no matter how much I dreaded it, work still felt like something to look forward to with every new brief - and now I know that it was because I got to express myself the way I wanted to express myself, creativity was uncapped - imagination could go the point where Mars rises in the East and Pluto sets in the North. But here, creativity is rigid. Creativity is what the client wants. You can only imagine so much for brands that have been set in their ways for a little over half a century. Alas, another thing to get used to.
Monotony isn’t just a preference I lack; it is a state that actively works against my nature. I’ve realized that my creativity is linked to momentum. Monotony is like my kryptonite. I need to be moving, solving, and doing function. When I am forced into a standstill, the experience is almost mechanical. Imagine a car engine that is topped up with premium petrol every single morning; but not fully used up before the end of the day, only to repeat the process the next day onwards. There is potential to drive it much further, but it isn't taken to that point. It's sad.
I've been thinking about that 'rat race' lifestyle, where work becomes your entire identity. I feel myself drifting toward it, and I know I have to stop. It brings me back to what I said about trust. The monotony I feel is a symptom of silence; there is no conversation here, and I think that’s because the prerequisite - trust, is missing. I chose design because I love the noise of reaction and the joy of creation. But recently, it's been too quiet. I have strayed away from the feeling that made me start. It is time to rethink and rebuild.
BLESS / 12 FEB 2026
FEB 24 TO MAR 9, 2026 / WEEK 9 & 10
Thrown Through the Window Seat.
There are days when the agency ramps up to a hundred, and there are days when it completely dies down. It's impossible to know which version of the office you’re walking into on any given morning. This particular day felt like it was going to be a slow crawl. It came on the heels of a chain of similarly quiet days. We had no festive posts lined up, Holi was completely wrapped for nearly every brand, and we were caught up on most of our upcoming work. I figured I’d take the opportunity to wander. I walked around the campus, hit up the cafeteria, nodded at a few people, and eventually headed back upstairs, fully expecting the rest of the day to be a gentle coast to 5:30 PM.
Then, I heard it.
"Bhai, supers."
Ah, yes. That word. Supers. We haven't exactly had the best history. "Accha?" I replied, bracing myself. "The CCO has specifically asked to hand this over to you." My ears stood straight up. The CCO. "Mastercard ki nayi film aa rahi hai, you decide the look of the supers." I was being given the opportunity to decide the look and feel of an official campaign video for Mastercard. My CD told me the content and brief would be provided by a different Client Servicing team shortly. So, I waited. And waited.
I waited a week. For an urgent project, I waited an entire week. Classic. When the brief finally landed, it was: "We're showing travel through the lens of Mastercard. The client wants a silhouette of the card in the beginning, and then the supers." I asked the logical question: "Does the client know what they want their card and supers to look like?" "No, it's up to creative interpretation." I got to work straight away. I cracked a way to show the card with a glass-esque, "window to the world" effect; think Apple’s liquid glass aesthetic. The supers were essentially a thin line left behind by a card swipe, through which the text emerged. Simple, clean, effective. Right? Yes, but actually, no.
Every video usually has about 30 to 40 supers. This one had around 25. Being on the art team, my job was to create a reference that would be sent to the Production House, who would then replicate that super wherever needed in the video. I packaged the look and sent it over to the CS rep handling the project. What followed was a marathon of back-and-forth that genuinely tested my sanity.
"Give me the packaged file." "No, not the intro, just the supers." Ma'am, I literally gave you a ZIP file with both. "Please send an MP4 of the supers." Okay, MP4 sent. "Please send a PNG sequence." Okay, sent. "I need you to speak with the production house."
Pause. Hold on. I am an INTERN. I do not spearhead projects. I do not negotiate with external vendors. I absolutely do not wish to jeopardize twenty to thirty lakh rupees worth of ad production because of a potential miscommunication. But, I got on the phone with the PH.
"We need Alphas," the PH guy said. Bro, what the f*** are Alphas? I gave you a PNG sequence. "Actually, we don't need Alphas," he corrected himself. Brother? Hello?!
Eventually, the PH asked: "Please send a video that shows exactly where goes what." Fine. I made a brand new video, attaching basic placeholder text for every super, timing out the duration and sequence so they knew exactly where everything went.
Ten minutes later, the CS rep calls me: "Prithvi, why aren't these animated?! I'll have to get them approved by the client again." Woman, they are literally just placeholders for the Production House so they know where the text goes!
I was tasked with delivering a "Window to the World," and instead, I got thrown straight through said window. Alas, the AV eventually went through. CS was happy. PH was happy. The CCO was happy. I was just happy it was over. Mission accomplished. But this is becoming a trend. Those 10 to 11 PM days are becoming painfully consistent - but I was enjoying them, villainously. I like complaining on the surface, but it's addictive.
Take yesterday, for example. It was the final T20 match between India and New Zealand. On Friday, when the office was a ghost town, my TL and I sat together and proactively designed a T20 "Win" post for a brand - a washing powder brand, the name of which rhymes with Sadi, we'll call them that for this blog. Sadi hadn't sent a requirement, but we wanted to stay ahead of the curve. We cracked the look, leaving just the copy blank since CS hadn't briefed us yet. We were feeling pretty smug about it.
Fast forward to Sunday. The match happens. India wins, obviously. Cue the panic from Sadi: "Where is the win post?!" I confidently pulled up the file we made on Friday and dropped it into the group chat like a rare pokemon card. Bazinga. I was ready. Hero of the weekend.
Too bad, though. By the time our masterpiece was sent over to the client, they had already uploaded a hideous, AI-generated artwork to their official page. Beautiful.
Four years of design school and a Friday evening of proactive problem-solving, completely rendered useless by someone who probably typed "happy cricket man washing clothes" into an AI prompt.
BLESS / 9 MAR 2026
Switching Lanes.
I've always had a thing for red. Not a preference, more like a reflex. If red is on the table, I'm picking it before my brain even gets a vote. My mom is the opposite. Lifelong blue loyalist, no contest.
There's this memory I keep coming back to - wandering through a market in Goa with her, a chaotic little display of coloured stone rings laid out in front of us. She asked me to pick one. My eyes went straight to it: deep, burgundy-red. I was already raising my finger when something stopped me. This isn't for you. It's for her. I swallowed the instinct, shifted, and pointed at the blue one.
That moment is the cleanest way I know to describe where I'm standing right now.
If you've been reading this blog, you know Ogilvy has basically been my entire world. It's the Red Pill in every sense: the logo, the office, the whole gravitational pull of it. It is the established advertising world, in a lot of ways.
Somewhere over the last two weeks, something quietly clicked. I'm still young enough that experimenting isn't a gamble, it's kind of the whole point. Three months at the agency taught me a lot. I got thrown into the deep end with over a dozen legacy Indian brands and figured out how each of those massive machines actually runs. It was genuinely valuable. But if I'm being honest with myself, it got monotonous in a way that started to grind. Real creative freedom doesn't get much room when you're working inside a rigid corporate structure. I started missing the feeling of just making something from scratch.
Then my CD walked up to my desk and casually said, "Prithvi, full time karega?"
I won't pretend that didn't land. Ogilvy doesn't really do that with interns, everyone knows it. So yeah, it meant something. And I get it: staying would've been a near-guaranteed, comfortable climb up the ladder.
But I've always thought contentment has to come first. If the engine room isn't doing it for you, the view from the top doesn't fix that. It just gives you a nicer place to feel unfulfilled.
Even before the offer came, I'd already been watching something from the sidelines: Gully Labs. The Blue Pill.
They'd just announced $3 million in Series A funding, a genuinely staggering thing for a two-year-old startup. But the money wasn't what pulled me in. It was the vision. The cultural DNA of what they're building lines up with the kind of storytelling and design work I've been wanting to do for a while now.
The Red Pill keeps you comfortable. It keeps you employed, validated, and moving upward in a straight, predictable line. The Blue Pill is messier. It asks you to bet on something unproven, to trade a guaranteed trajectory for a shot at something that actually sets you on fire. Most people look at that choice and call it reckless. I looked at it and thought: I'm twenty-two. If not now, when?
So I did what any reasonable person would do. I sent a cold email to the founders and the public domain listed on their website. Hail mary, why not. If I get a revert, lovely. If not, I don't really lose much. A friend of mine once told me she locked down a job at District by directly emailing Deepinder Goyal. I took the same approach.
No response, as expected. Sent another one a few days later. No response again. On the 30th of January, I walked into their store, bought two pairs of shoes, and sent a picture of them to the same email thread. Still nothing. I fully gave up at that point.
Or did I?
A few weeks later, they posted a story on Instagram. "Hiring a Senior Designer." I thought about something Nidhi ma'am always used to say: apply regardless of the position in the JD, it might land in your favour. So I said, fuck it. I pitched myself as a potential intern for the Senior Designer role. One week, nothing. Two weeks, nothing. Sent a LinkedIn message to the hirer. Nothing.
Until the hail mary gave back.
An email landed in my inbox: "I'm impressed by your enthusiasm, let's get on a call."
I was ecstatic. Agreed immediately. The call happened, and I stuttered my way through it, broke my flow more times than I'd like to admit. But it worked out. They told me they didn't have an intern position open and that they were only speaking to me because they liked the work and wanted to find a way to bring it into the GL pipeline somehow. I nodded. The call ended.
Silence for a week.
Then an invitation to meet them in person at the flagship store. I went, we talked.
Full time offer. Junior Designer, International Growth Team. Sometimes the red pill is right there, obvious and familiar. And you still point at the blue one. New chapter. Switching lanes. Remember when I said my mum's favourite colour is blue? She was rooting for Gully Labs all this time too.
