THE BIG IDEA STILL MATTERS: AJITH GOPINATH ON CREATIVITY IN A CHANGING ADVERTISING WORLD

Ajith Gopinath has spent more than 25+ years in advertising, building ideas, brands and campaigns across some of the industry’s most respected creative networks, including OgilvyOne, DDB, FCB and Wunderman, in India and abroad. Now, as National Creative Director of Stark Communications in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, he brings together global experience, a deep understanding of people and an enduring belief in the power of a compelling idea.

At a time when advertising is being reshaped by algorithms, reels, artificial intelligence and rapidly changing platforms, Gopinath argues that the fundamentals of creativity remain remarkably constant. Technology may change the way messages travel, but advertising, he believes, begins with a far more enduring question: why should anyone care? For him, the answer lies in understanding human behaviour and discovering truths that can be expressed in ways that surprise, engage and stay with people.

In this exclusive interview, Gopinath reflects on the evolution of advertising, the creative strength of Kerala’s cultural contradictions, the difference between good and genuinely award-winning work, and the continuing relevance of the big advertising idea in an age of shrinking patience and endless content. He also discusses how local insights can become universal, why an idea must be able to live across different environments, and how his background in English literature shaped his understanding of storytelling, observation and the art of saying more with less.

With experience spanning digital and mainline advertising, direct marketing, copywriting, ideation, conceptualisation, film and radio scripts, events, guerrilla marketing and social communication, Ajith Gopinath offers a perspective shaped by both the industry’s transformation and the timeless complexities of human nature. In a candid conversation, he explains why the future of advertising may not belong to campaigns that merely appear everywhere, but to ideas powerful enough to live, travel and become part of people’s conversations.

How has your approach to advertising evolved over the years?

One of my creative directors always asked these questions whenever I presented something: Why would someone care? Why would they read it? Why would it mean something to them?

That’s when I realised that advertising is much less about making an ad and much more about understanding people.

The industry has changed enormously since I started. Technology, platforms and formats will keep changing. Human behaviour doesn’t change quite as quickly. I still believe the starting point is the same: find something true about people, and then find an interesting way to express it.

Over the years, I’ve also realised that the best ideas aren’t dependent on a particular format. They have a central thought that can travel. That’s probably one of the biggest shifts in the way I approach advertising today.

How can advertising agencies use the state’s local insights, language, humour and cultural nuances to create work that can also resonate beyond Kerala?

Regional and hyper-local is something no brand can overlook these days. But you can’t take a Malayalam word, put it into an ad, and call that a Kerala insight.

Kerala has an incredibly rich cultural landscape, but what makes it interesting is the contradictions within it. We’re traditional and progressive. Deeply rooted in our communities but extremely connected to the world. We can be incredibly serious about something and make a joke about it five minutes later.

Those contradictions are great raw material for memorable campaigns.

And I don’t believe that work has to be stripped of its local character to travel beyond Kerala. You just have to make the Malayali truth so human that someone in Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru recognises themselves in it.

Local isn’t the opposite of universal. Sometimes, local is the route to universal.

You have been part of international juries such as the AdForum PHNX Awards and the New York Festivals AME Awards. What separates an award-winning campaign from a merely good piece of advertising?

“Why didn’t I think of that?” That’s what comes to mind when you see truly award-winning work.

When you judge work from different markets, you realise that production values aren’t what separate the great from the good. A beautifully made film can be completely forgettable. A very simple idea can stay with you for years.

For me, great work often has that quality of feeling both surprising and inevitable. You haven’t seen it before, but once you see it, you wonder why nobody thought of it that way earlier.

An award is recognition of the work. It shouldn’t be the reason the work exists.

In an age of short attention spans, reels and algorithm-driven content, is the traditional big advertising idea still relevant? What makes a campaign capable of cutting through today’s clutter?

I think the big idea is more relevant than ever. What’s changed is how much time we have to get people’s attention.

People often say we have short attention spans today. I’m not sure that’s true. What we have is a low tolerance for things that don’t interest us. That’s a very different problem.

A big advertising idea still cuts through because it gives people a reason to stop. But today, the idea also has to be able to live differently in different environments. It might start as a film, become a meme, turn into a conversation, invite participation and then take on a life of its own.

So I don’t think we’re moving from big ideas to lots of little pieces of content.

We’re moving from big campaigns to ideas that can live.

Your academic background is in English Language and Literature. How has your study of literature, storytelling and language influenced your work as an advertising creative?

Surprisingly, me studying English literature had nothing to do with me becoming an advertising guy.

But literature taught me to be interested in people. Great writing is essentially great observation: understanding why people behave the way they do, what they say versus what they actually mean, and the contradictions in human behaviour.

And there’s something else I love about the relationship between literature and advertising: compression.

A novelist can take 300 pages to explore an idea. A copywriter might have three words.

That constraint is fascinating.

You have to find the one thought, the one phrase, or the one image that can unlock everything else in someone’s mind.