Mr Suresh Mohankumar
Alumnus of the month, February 2012
AAC is pleased to announce Mr Suresh Mohankumar (Class of 1993) as Alumnus of the Month – February 2012.
Suresh Mohankumar an alumnus of the 1993 TAPMI batch is a seasoned advertising professional with over 18 years of experience. He is currently the National Head of Planning at Dentsu Communications. His tryst with advertising happened due to a guest lecture which happened in his second semester at TAPMI. Till then he had set his mind on becoming an investment banker. The lecture painted a picture of advertising as the cutting edge of an ever changing world of marketing. A place where you could work on multiple categories and consumer segments; a hallowed ground wherein the presiding deity is that most powerful yet elusive force called ‘ideas’.
Utterly smitten by what this lecture held advertising out to be; he decided to get a taste of advertising. This first taste of advertising happened in the form of a summer internship at RK Swamy/BBDO, Chennai. He worked on a couple of projects there and was lucky enough to inter with one of the rising stars at RK Swamy. He found his first taste of advertising extremely appetizing. When the good folks at RK Swamy asked him if he would join the agency after graduating from TAPMI he jumped at the offer.
In his first 7 years in advertising he worked in the Account Management department. And worked on a slew of accounts - Nutrine, Old Monk, BPL, Carbon, Tanishq, Flying Machine, Ruggers …
The real turning point in his career happened when he was working on Tanishq at Lintas, Bangalore. The ‘Karatmeter’ campaign that he worked on was instrumental in turning around the fortunes of Tanishq and paving the way for Tanishq to be what it is today. Working on this campaign gave him a first- hand understanding of the power of advertising and the primacy of strategic thinking in the process of creating an advertising campaign.
The switch to the Strategic Planning function was essentially due to the learnings he gathered from the ‘Karatmeter’ campaign. And it happened in 2000. It was early days for Strategic Planning in the Indian advertising industry. Not many agencies knew what it was, not many planners knew what their job was. But it became increasingly fashionable for an agency to say that they had a strategic planning team. In time the role became clearer; today Strategic Planning has carved its own space within agencies. Planners today represent the voice of the consumer. Their role is to navigate through the complexities of a market and form a deep yet simple understanding of the task at hand. And then to inspire the creative teams within agencies to come up with a campaign that delivers on the task at hand.
As a Strategic Planner Suresh has worked on Ford, Volkswagen, MRF, Johnson & Johnson, Lipton, McDowells, Henkel, Fa amongst other brands. What keeps him going in advertising is the sheer unpredictability of the industry and that constant search of that elusive yet power force – ‘ideas’
He lives in Bangalore with his wife and their eight year old Golden retriever – Gigi. He loves reading, is into photography and going on really long drives; the last one was a 15 day road trip to Sikkim.
