Cut The Crap with Jagdish Acharya

Executive creative director Jagdish Acharya has decided to call it a day at Mudra DDB. He has started his own creative shop, interestingly called Cut The Crap (CTC).

Speaking to afaqs!, Acharya says that after spending close to fifteen years at Mudra, things were beginning to get repetitive and a little boring. Friends and colleagues also encouraged him to start his own venture.

Acharya says that CTC will be a virtual agency, with no actual office. Translated, this means that the team will work from home. According to him, this will ensure that all employees work when they are at their creative peak – and not mechanically throughout the day just because they have to. They will also have the freedom to pursue other interests such as salsa and short film direction.

As of now, the CTC team consists of three-four employees, but will expand over time. A couple of Acharya's colleagues from Mudra have joined him.

CTC has already started work for one client, the details of which will be revealed soon. To ensure better output, Acharya says that Cut The Crap will work for just four or five clients at a time and he will personally head each project.

The name, CTC, came up in a brainstorming session during which the team realised that they ended up doing a lot of things mechanically, and not because they wanted to do them. For instance, people are usually expected to report to work at a certain time in the morning. Working for a virtual agency will cut out the formality and give the employees creative freedom. However, the team plans to meet at least once a week to brainstorm.

CTC does not have a servicing team and the client will interact directly with the creative person to help build relations.

Acharya has spent his entire career at Mudra. He started out in client servicing and planning, followed by servicing and creative, and finally settling in creative.

Reliance ADAG, Lipton, Johnson & Johnson, Dhara, Rasna, TTK Prestige, Sugar Free, Paragon and McDowell's are some of the clients that Acharya has worked for in the past.

Recently, Sukumar Menon, who was executive creative director at Leo Burnett, started his own agency called Black Swan Life. Incidentally, he has also done away with the servicing department in his venture. At this rate, one wonders if client servicing will soon become extinct.