Guest Speaker Nihal Atawane Unpacks Advertising Evolution

On November 20, we were honored to have an AdLab alumnus, Nihal Atawane join us for All-Agency. Nihal is currently a senior copywriter at FCB Chicago. He has worked for many brands such as McDonald’s, Crocs, and Expedia.

Nihal mainly focused on three parts to introduce students to the evolution of life in advertising - media, industry, and work.
For the media, he used Volkswagen and Coca-Cola as examples to compare the differences between ads of the past and of now.

For industry, Nihal talked about the emergence of many new positions and a greater segmentation of agencies. Instead of focusing on a single segment like creative, strategy, and accounts, the industry now includes other roles, such as 3D artists, community managers, new business specialists, etc. He highly recommended all AdLabbers to challenge themselves, trying different positions in their career. “Just because you started somewhere doesn’t mean you have to end there,” said Nihal.

For media,Nihal showed video ads of IKEA and Kmart to illustrate that good ideas transcend mediums, and usually have a fantastic insight at their heart.

AdLabbers ask questions during the Q&A Session

In the end, Nihal held a Q&A session with AdLabbers. He further talked about pros and cons of traditional agencies and in-house agencies. From the discussion with Nihal, AdLabbers gained deeper insights about the ad industry.