The Creative Question: ‘How do brands capture attention before it’s gone?’

Welcome to The Creative Question, a new series where we invite leading creative agencies to unpack the most significant challenges and opportunities shaping advertising today—and how they’re adapting to stay relevant. Each edition will spotlight a single issue at the heart of the industry and the strategies agencies are using to navigate it.

For our pilot, we turn to Schbang, where the speed of culture is colliding with the speed of briefs. Six-month campaign cycles are giving way to six-hour meme turnarounds, and the question is no longer just what brands should say, but how quickly they can say it before the moment passes? That’s the question Deepshikha Bhardwaj of Schbang is answering every day, balancing the demands of speed, data, and storytelling in an industry running faster than ever.

Bhardwaj is the National Lead - Media Strategy at Schbang, who has built her career on connecting creativity with measurable outcomes, her view is clear-eyed: “Earlier, we used to have one big campaign in the year with multiple bursts. Now brands want instant, relatable content that can tap into every meme and moment.” It’s a new kind of pressure - but also, she argues, a new kind of opportunity. The long cycle of campaign planning has collapsed into real-time responsiveness. Where once agencies could take months to refine a concept, now clients want to see a meme in market tomorrow.

Read On: Schbang appoints Deepshikha Bhardwaj as National Lead - Media Strategy

“Brands keep budgets aside for moment marketing,” Bhardwaj explains. “There is a requirement for fast-paced solutions, not six-month thinking. It has to be very quick, very relatable.”

At Schbang, that means starting with audience insights and deciding the right central idea, one that can flex across YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, display, or even TV. “We decide on a central idea based on the target audience and then take it across multiple platforms,” she says. The shift is not just in speed, but in structure: ideas are no longer built to sit in one medium.

Another shift is in the way brands brief agencies. Once, briefs were steeped in cultural truths and emotional hooks. Now, they arrive accompanied by Excel sheets of data, demanding specific reach numbers or ROI projections.

“With the influx of data things have become clearer because there is a backing of facts,” Bhardwaj acknowledges. “But too much of data also interferes with creativity.”

Her solution is to split the problem in two: at the annual level, set clear business and brand objectives; at the campaign level, work with those objectives to shape agile responses. “Ideally we should always go for an objective-out approach rather than a budget-out approach,” she says.

Read On: How Indian brands are winning with storytelling, speed and trust

The industry’s temptation, she warns, is to let numbers cage ideas rather than fuel them. “If we define each and everything, then for the agency you have defined everything. The role of the agency is to interpret, to create.”

Despite the complexity of metrics, many marketers still default to a simple one: reach. “Generally, the creative is judged on whether it has reached 60% or 70% of the audience,” says Bhardwaj. But she argues that this is an incomplete picture.

“Engagement is what basically translates into conversion,” she explains. “People may watch, but only if they interact will it sustain a brand.”

In her view, the future of measurement must balance upper-funnel reach with deeper, mid- and lower-funnel metrics that reveal how audiences are engaging with the work.

If there is one creative constraint every planner and creative director now feels, it is time. “We cannot make 60 or 90 seconders anymore,” says Bhardwaj. “We have to stick to a 10 or 15 seconder and communicate within that.”

That brevity has pushed storytelling into regional and short-form formats. “Regional short form content is where the industry will now move,” she argues. “How can you share your story in that short form, that’s where the real storytelling skill now lies.”

She also points to a stylistic shift. Audiences are increasingly comfortable with creators speaking directly to them, collapsing the distance between screen and viewer. “Breaking the fourth wall is becoming the new cool thing. It feels interpersonal,” she says.

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Few technologies have impacted agencies as quickly as AI. For Bhardwaj, the upside is undeniable. “Earlier it used to take 2-3 days to create dubs and multiple edits of a creative, now it takes 2-3 hours,” she says. This efficiency has led to 15-20% savings on production-heavy workflows, and in some cases, “50-60% if an ad is made entirely with AI.”

But she is just as quick to emphasise the limits. “For proper storytelling, the human angle is still missing,” she warns. “You need actors, directors, proper human intervention. Audiences are smart enough to see when a brand hasn’t put in that much effort.”

AI also raises regulatory questions. “It has to be regulated. There are chances of misuse,” she says, pointing to growing cases of celebrities restricting voice and likeness usage. The paradox, she notes, is that while licensing AI versions of celebrities might lower costs, it also opens the door to abuse.

Perhaps the most telling part of Bhardwaj’s perspective is her breakdown of how media money now flows.

• TV still leads but has shrunk: from nearly 80% of budgets a decade ago to around 35-40% today.
• Digital now accounts for about 40%, with 25% going to display, 10-15% to performance, and the remainder to social.
• Social media budgets are dominated by influencers: “At least 15% out of the 20% for social goes to influencers. Around 80-85% of social money is going into influencers, the remaining into post-promotion.”
• Print and outdoor hold smaller, category-driven slices, sometimes higher in auto and electronics.

Her budgeting principle is deliberately simple: “Keep 70-80% for your regular hygiene, 10-20% for innovation, and 10% for testing.”

Read On: Brands now realise our connection with audiences is better than celebrities: Dolly Singh

With influencers commanding such a large share of budgets, agencies often fear disintermediation. Bhardwaj sees it differently.

“Influencer or creator economy is a very big ecosystem now, so it is required to collaborate,” she says. “If the brand objective is imagery and ethos, you need big storytelling and campaigns. If it’s education or relatability, influencers are better. So you arrive at a perfect mix.”

She also touches on one of the industry’s oldest sore points: the unpaid pitch. “You create 100 dummies, so much work goes in, and 90% dies there. There has to be some stipend,” Bhardwaj insists.

She notes that some brands now conduct paid pitches, or bring in third-party monitors to keep the process transparent. At Schbang, the preferred model is workshops. “Workshop is more mutual. And if clients want to use the creatives, we ask for a stipend.”

Looking ahead, Bhardwaj sees Schbang strengthening its media arm alongside its creative and tech capabilities. “Schbang is already very good in creative and tech. With me coming in, there will be focus on media now,” she says. “Clients are already asking, if you handle creative and performance, why not media too?”

That reflects the broader integration she believes agencies must deliver: balancing numbers and narratives, national campaigns and hyper-local stories, AI speed and human nuance.

“Collaboration is key, whether it’s with influencers, production houses, or clients’ in-house teams,” she says. “The ecosystem is evolving, but the goal is the same: to create work that engages, resonates, and delivers.”