Spirit W | Pitch fees should be mandatory: Cheil's Smriti Thakur

Adgully is really proud of the fact that successfully every week it takes you through the journey of an aspiring professional women in the media space. It's a moment of pride that we have spoken to so many young talented women with such high self- esteem and incredible jest for life. Just like every other week this week too team adgully presents one more diva of advertising space, Smriti Thakur, Client Servicing Director, Cheil WW SW Asia, who very proudly unshackled the apprehensions of her parents.

Answering to our query, about the start of her career, she spoke, "I come from a small town in Bihar where girls from good families don't step out of their homes after 6 pm but here I am, finishing a presentation at 6 in the morning! For my Dad it's not advertising, it's still "Vigyapan" and often wonders "What makes my daughter stay up so late in office?" Today my dad proudly remarks that his daughter works in Cheil Worldwide making ads for Samsung. I started off in a small agency called Air Ads as a management trainee, figuring out what PSU clients were all about. It was more of "others take 15% commission, we take only 8%" "quality assured". The journey has seen me work in BEI Confluence, Grey Worldwide, and JWT & Rediffusion Y&R."

It is a fact that everybody at sometime of his/her life gets a person who inspires him/her. Renowned people like CEO of Pepsico- Indra Nooyi, NDTV anchor Barkha Dutt and multi-tasking women of present era are some of Thakur's inspirations. "Trust me today's women is burdened by many overlapping dimensions of her life work, children relations, home etc and it's not easy," says Thakur.

While we were keen to know of some of her best works Thakur humbly pointed out some of her work that she is very proud of, "Well, quite a few, but the closest is the recent Samsung washing machine Bubble wash campaign with Priyanka Chopra. Like I said today's woman is burdened, multitasking like hell. The entire campaign idea was to bring back the fragrance of freedom and cheer in a woman's life by freeing her from the chore of washing clothes.

While signing off she told us about us some of media industry's hitches. "Remuneration structure is not valued by the clients. A vendor attitude towards the agency should stop. Pitch fees should be mandatory," said Thakur. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]