Prachi Gokhale

I think passion and a bunch of hard work. It's not like you wake up every day feeling so passionate - in the end, it's a job after a few years. But you have to find that passion, re-find it again, rediscover it again by being inspired. You read books, you listen to great music, you go in nature. You have to consciously make an effort to kind of keep yourself new and open to receiving all these new ideas that are constantly there. Ideas never expire, there's always an idea to be found. It's a holistic life kind of thing - it's not just you go to work. One of the successful things I'd written was a video for the company I work for, and I wrote it to the music, to Heart's Barracuda. I played that and wrote it to the beat of that song, and it just gave it this entire new level of energy and joy. You could just see it from the words that I wrote. So just finding ways to keep that passion alive, because I think anyone can do that.

That we're not saving lives. This is not life or death, it's advertising. It's actually a very smart piece of advice because what it does is it opens you up, it gets rid of the fear. Let loose, don't be afraid to take those creative risks. You're not saving lives, we're not in a war. Because sometimes you just take yourself so seriously, and I've done that as a younger creative. I used to wake up at 5 AM to write lines and come up with ad campaigns, and always have a notepad on my night table to come up with ideas at 3 AM. I was just very intense. That simple piece of advice - I tell my kids this too - it's okay, you know, you're gonna come up with something. It also gives you the confidence to let go of the fear and just lean into your confidence a little bit.

I think it's so important to seek out mentors. I've been fortunate enough to get so many amazing mentors, and I feel like for women, we have to seek them out. People want to help, but you have to go after it, saying hey, you know, you have all this experience, help me, tell me what you know. That always helped me. Also, doing great work and putting your heart into it is key. Loving what you do is so important because then it doesn't feel like work, as they say.

I think that the art of the big idea is a little bit lost because we're all into a quick hit with social media. It's always about speed, or it can tend to be about speed, but sometimes you have to slow down and say it still has to be about that big idea, because you're still branding. It's an Instagram carousel, but you're still branding, you're still the champion of your brand. The brand care doesn't go away just because it's social media. A lot of people think, oh, it's social media, we can do anything we want, we can do crazy stuff, but it has to come from the heart of the brand. We have to keep that in mind. Whatever we're doing, TikTok now, it's still about bringing the brand story to life.

Tell the truth, always. The consumer is a very smart person, they're very sophisticated. You can't BS them. So I always approach everything I write from the truth that's inside every brand. You have to tell the true story. I think that's really key, and I always live by that.