Last month, Moonshot won three IndIAA Awards. The awards celebrate real work and are not entered by agencies or clients.

When the agency's founder Devaiah Bopanna was invited to the awards night, he wasn't sure what to expect. Leaving as the second-most awarded agency that night was certainly not on the agenda, nor did he have an idea of the scale of the event.

In conversation with Manifest (full chat available in the September issue), among the topics discussed were talent.

Calling it a challenge for Moonshot and the industry, Bopanna said, "Finding the best writers is most important. Earlier, the best writers didn’t have many professional options. When I got into advertising, if I wanted to write, it was the only option alongside journalism. Now, writers as a category have been democratised across the industry. There’s entertainment through the likes of web series, and they are in good demand too. It’s harder to get good writers now."

He added, "Earlier, everyone who had to do the likes of feature films etc, had to come via the advertising route. Now, that’s not the case. You can directly go on to start writing a web series or movie show. Writing talent is the biggest problem to solve for everyone right now."

Working alongside Tanmay Bhat

Industry leaders have been stating how the glamour associated with advertising is dipping. Moonshot's advantage is that its co-founder Tanmay Bhat of AIB fame comes with more than 2 million followers and is fairly well-known outside of advertising. 

Is this fan following an advantage?

"More than anything, we have access to his mind. He understands content, and users, and has built multi-million subscribers across every single platform. He’s always in touch with what’s happening through his content. Clients come if there’s good work and that's our endeavour. The core team – Puneet Chadha, Deep Joshi, Tanmay and I have been working together for almost a decade now. We have had a journey and that helps. Puneet and Deep are introverts and are not seen outside (of the agency). We end up getting a lot more credit due to them being behind the scenes," he stated.