Templating isn’t the enemy; mindless execution is: Kunel Gaur of Animal

In an industry often defined by mergers and predictable growth models, the independent creative agency represents a persistent outlier. It operates on a different set of rules, where the tension between creative integrity and commercial viability is a daily negotiation. This was the landscape into which Animal was launched, founded on a desire to break from what its founder saw as an industry that had grown "too safe." The agency was envisioned as a space for interdisciplinary collaboration, aiming to produce cultural artefacts rather than just campaigns.

This interview explores the trajectory of that vision. Animal's Founder and Creative Director, Kunel Gaur recounts the pivotal moments that shaped the agency, from early campaigns that validated their risk-centric approach to the strategic hires that defined its capabilities.

The conversation delves into the practical realities of maintaining creative independence, the financial decisions required to protect the agency's core ethos, and a growth model that has deliberately avoided a traditional business development team. It offers a glimpse into how a modern creative entity strikes a balance between global expansion and local relevance, navigates the integration of AI, and cultivates a culture that aims to be resilient against the pressures of scale and speed.

Edited excerpts: 

What was the core itch that led to the birth of Animal? At the time of starting out, what gap were you trying to fill in the agency ecosystem—creatively, culturally, or structurally?

I started Animal because I felt the industry had become too safe, too comfortable repeating formulas. I wanted to build something that broke that rhythm. A space where bold thinking wasn’t diluted by hierarchy or legacy, but amplified. Where strategy, design, writing, and technology could all collide without walls.

Animal was also meant to be a place where people from different disciplines and backgrounds could come together—not just ad folks, but artists, coders, writers, makers. That mix, that friction, created work that felt more alive. It gave us an edge—because when you cross-pollinate perspectives, the output naturally becomes sharper and more unexpected.

I didn’t want to just make ads. I wanted to make things that stirred something. That felt like culture, not campaigns.

Looking back, what have been some defining inflection points—campaigns, hires, decisions—that you feel shaped the agency’s ethos and trajectory?

One of the earliest was our partnership with Housing.com. They had just undergone a massive rebrand with Moving Brands and came to us with a bold brief: create a campaign using only the logo. Inspired by our Species project, we presented 40 ideas, shortlisted 4, and landed a national campaign that was everywhere—from highways to cityscapes. That project turned into a retainer, which led to our first big scale-up—from 4 to 14 people, and a new office. We weren’t even two years in, but that moment validated the kind of work we wanted to put out: simple, striking, and unapologetically visual.

Another key chapter was our collaboration with Adidas Originals. Projects like the launch of Pharrell’s Pink Beach collection gave us the space to completely reimagine how a brand could speak—through VR, physical installations made from ’90s tech, and creator-led activations. Stan Smith himself posed with our work. That kind of cultural resonance shaped our appetite for risk and originality.

Then came Bhima Jewellery’s Pure As Love campaign—a deeply emotional story about a trans person’s transition. It struck a global chord and reminded us that meaningful storytelling doesn’t need to shout to be heard.

With Budweiser, we crafted Kings Are Made Overnight, a campaign born in India that was later adopted globally—for Messi, for Halsey. It was a proud moment, proving that good ideas travel when they’re rooted in insight.

But beyond the campaigns, it’s really been the people who’ve defined Animal.

Sayantan Choudhury, a longtime collaborator, joined as Senior Partner and brought with him a strategic and multidisciplinary lens across design and communication. Jaynish Shah, with an architecture background, led our foray into product design and tech, helping us evolve into more than an agency—into an incubator of sorts.

Pranay, one of our earliest and longest-tenured team members, built the motion design team from the ground up and also had the curatorial vision to lead projects like Indianama. Sugandha began as an intern and went on to lead some of our most compelling creative work over the course of four years. Samya brought bold visual direction and an artful command of color in graphic design. Yash obsessed over typography—especially vernacular type—and shaped the typographic soul of our work. Naveed blurred the lines between art direction, photography, and illustration, adding an organic depth to the team’s creative mix.

Then there were Baptiste and Clémentine from France, who arrived with fresh eyes and minds about India’s creative landscape and helped lead key projects, such as Uniqlo’s India launch and Airtel’s brand refresh. Vishank, a motion designer, quite literally brought it all to life—his work added a whole new dimension to how our ideas were perceived. Last year, we collaborated with Rajshree, an Animal alumnus and recent NYU grad, to develop AR assets for a platform I co-founded. And Sheetal, who wrote the Bhima and the Budweiser films, continues to lead the creative team as a Junior Partner and Creative Director.

Today, we’re building new partnerships with super-creative minds across Toronto and New York—working on projects that we’re incredibly excited to launch in the weeks ahead.

The list is long—and that’s the point. Animal has always been a place where people from different backgrounds come together to push ideas further. That cross-pollination of talent is what makes the work sharp, unexpected, and alive. It’s what keeps us going.

Is there a particular campaign—either one that succeeded wildly or one that didn’t go as planned—that taught you something critical about storytelling, pitching, or client psychology?

The Bhima Jewellery film was a turning point—not just for the brand, but for us as an agency.

It was a long-form piece about a trans woman’s journey, rooted in empathy and told without spectacle. No shock tactics, no background score manipulating emotion—just a quiet, powerful narrative. And it went viral globally. That response cemented our position not just as a creative studio but as a full-service agency grounded in real-world insights and ideals.

It also killed the myth that long-form is dead. This wasn’t a 6-second swipeable ad—it was nearly two minutes long, and people watched, felt, and shared, not because of the format, but because the story was worth it.

What it taught us was simple: if the truth behind the idea is honest, and the storytelling respects the audience’s intelligence, you don’t need to chase trends. You just need to stand for something real.

How did you navigate the tension between growing the business and staying true to a creative-first model? Were there specific frameworks or turning points that helped Animal scale without becoming 'just another agency'?

For us, the balance has always been clear—work begets work. That’s been our moat.

We’ve never had a business development team. Not because we didn’t want to scale, but because we believed that if the work spoke loud enough, the right people would find us. And they have. Every opportunity we’ve had—from startups to global brands—has come from the work itself. That’s only possible when the creative comes first, every single time.

Scaling, for us, hasn’t meant growing fast. It means growing right. Adding the right people. Taking on the right kind of work. And protecting the creative-first model that got us here in the first place. We are not a network agency that can automate large parts of the system. The important bits at Animal are, and will always be, wildly human.

In a market where many independent agencies eventually get acquired or diluted, Animal has retained an independent identity. How do you balance creative independence with financial sustainability? Have you ever come close to compromising on vision for revenue—and how did you deal with it?

Creative has always taken precedence at Animal—but it’s the people behind that creativity who matter most. And we love them for it.

We’ve been able to retain our independence because we’re willing to make tough calls to protect the work and the people. For almost half of Animal’s journey, Sharon and I didn’t draw salaries—her idea, and one that helped us stay sustainable while investing in talent. During COVID, when incoming work took a hit, we absorbed the impact ourselves so the team could stay afloat.

From the outside, it may seem reckless—especially with projects like Indianama, which we fund from our own pocket every year. We only tried once to get a sponsor, in 2018, for a street signage curation involving designers and local vendors. It didn’t happen. We did it anyway.

Because we don’t just protect creative vision—we live it. Not for revenue, but because we love being part of the culture we’re helping shape.

As founder and creative director, you're wearing multiple hats—business builder, brand architect, team mentor. How has your definition of leadership evolved since Animal began? What does ‘creative leadership’ look like to you in 2025?

For me, leadership has never been about control—it’s about influence, inspiration, and creating a culture where curiosity thrives.

At Animal, it starts with existing as the kind of person I’d want to work with—someone genuinely curious about the ever-expanding creative universe: design, technology, storytelling, trends, subcultures, tools. That mindset has quietly shaped the culture here. We don’t chase talent—we attract it. Because the people who find their way to Animal tend to mirror that same hunger, that same openness.

Creative leadership in 2025, to me, is less about top-down direction and more about being a magnet. A magnet for ideas, for people, for clients who resonate with how we think, make, and evolve. It’s about staying curious, staying sharp, and making sure that energy is contagious within the team.

What are the most unexpected insights you've uncovered while trying to take Animal global—whether culturally, operationally, or creatively? How does your approach shift when designing for global vs local audiences?

Taking Animal global—especially into North America—has come with some great learnings.

First, the market here is far more saturated than India. Clients are heavily data-driven—creative decisions often lean on performance metrics rather than visual instinct alone. It’s not that aesthetics don’t matter, but they’re validated through numbers. That’s been an interesting shift in how we pitch and build narratives around our work.

Second, the talent pool is incredibly deep. Even junior creatives here bring the kind of sharp thinking we’d earlier expect only from seasoned folks back in India. That’s created real synergy—it allows us to experiment more, push the envelope, and trust the team to meet that bar. What’s exciting is that we can now tap into this global talent base even for projects in India, lifting the overall quality across the board.

Culturally, the pace is different. There’s less urgency, more space. Projects unfold more gradually, and that changes how you manage time, process, and even feedback loops.

AI has rapidly entered the creative process, from moodboards and copywriting to design iteration and even idea generation. As a creative leader, how do you see the role of human originality evolving in a world where generative AI can produce 'ideas' in seconds? Is the creative director of the future more of a curator, provocateur, or something entirely new?

At Animal, creative thinking has always been human at the center. The soul of the work comes from taste—that instinctive, emotional catalyst that’s hard to replicate with machines. It’s not just about ideas; it’s about the lens through which those ideas are filtered. And that lens is deeply human.

That said, we see AI as a collaborator, not a threat. We use it in two key ways: to strengthen our foundation through research and data, and to speed up execution where it makes sense. We recently wrapped two campaigns built entirely through an AI pipeline, across video and static. It allowed us to move faster, test more, and push creative boundaries.

Right now, AI helps us expand our thinking, whether it’s through generative moodboards or rapid visual iteration. But the taste, the intent, the direction—that’s where the creative director still leads. 

With scalability and speed becoming dominant forces, many agencies lean on templated thinking, from brand identities to campaign formats. How do you protect against creative dilution in an environment where speed often trumps depth? Do you see templatisation as a threat to originality, or can it be a creative constraint that fuels innovation?

At Animal, scale and speed aren’t challenges—they’re familiar terrain. Over the past decade, we’ve built communication systems for large-scale organisations across India and created content for unicorn startups operating at breakneck pace. In all that time, we’ve never had to rely on templated thinking to deliver.

That’s because we’ve always followed a process that prioritises intent. We bring the client team into that process early—giving them full visibility—and from there, we build outward. It’s a system that’s resilient, no matter the size or speed of the project.

That said, when a brief demands templatisation—say, for consistency across markets—we treat it as a creative constraint, not a compromise. We’ve used that structure to our advantage, infusing originality within the framework. The output still carries the same sharpness, because the thinking is intentional from the very beginning. 

Templating isn’t the enemy. Mindless execution is.

The traditional ‘copywriter + art director’ duo has long given way to hybrid teams—strategists who can design, designers who can code, and generalists who challenge silos. What does an ideal creative team look like to you today? How do you balance specialisation with fluid, interdisciplinary collaboration—especially in high-stakes campaigns where agility is key?

At Animal, we moved past the traditional art + copy duo a long time ago. We saw that shift coming over a decade back, and built a more fluid, hybrid structure from day one.

We like to mix it up—skills, opinions, obsessions. That blend shapes the work in ways rigid roles can’t. Most of our team are generalists by design—people who think laterally, adapt quickly, and thrive in ambiguity. It’s what allows us to stay agile, especially on high-stakes campaigns where speed and depth are both non-negotiable.

And when a project demands a very specific style or aesthetic—something deeply tied to the idea—we don’t hesitate to bring in specialised talent from outside. We’ve done that more times than I can count. The point is: we’re not married to structure. We’re married to the work. Whatever the work needs, we build around it.

Agencies often prioritise process and productivity, but it's usually culture—shared values, creative hunger, psychological safety—that truly powers standout work. How do you see the importance of culture and design, one that fosters experimentation, resilience, and healthy creative conflict—especially across geographies and time zones?

Just like work begets more work, it also draws in the right people. The kind of talent that naturally shares the energy and ethos of the work we put out. We’ve never had to force culture—it’s built itself around the type of thinking we value: curious, generous, sharp.

Post-COVID, like everyone else, we navigated the chaos of remote everything. We missed the in-person collisions—coffee breaks, spontaneous jokes, the unplanned energy of being around each other. It was messy at first, but eventually, it became the new normal. And with that came a strange clarity: time zones don’t really exist—not in the creative world. Voids and gaps are part of the process. Silence is often where the spark hides.

That adaptability, that rhythm across geographies, has now become second nature. Culture, for us, isn’t a framework. It’s a feeling. A shared hunger. A creative wavelength you either vibe with—or don’t. And when it clicks, it shows in the work. Every time.

The hierarchy in agencies is flattening. Junior talent often brings viral instincts, while senior leaders bring systems thinking. In this mix, what have you learnt about leadership? What principles guide your leadership when it comes to mentoring young creatives while also learning from them? Further, what do you think leaders in the industry ought to focus on more, or aspects they should change?

Leadership today is a two-way learning curve—and in a creative space like ours, we acknowledge that at every step.

Some of our most impactful work has come from conversations that cut across hierarchy. It’s not unusual for a sharp idea to come from a junior team member, or for a senior to find a fresh lens through a casual chat with someone new. We’ve even brought in people who felt like misfits within a traditional workflow—and each time, it’s taught all of us something new.

I think the role of leadership today is as much about spotting potential as it is about shaping it. Take a chance on the intern who’s still figuring it out. Take a chance on the wild idea dropped during a coffee break. If you’re paying attention, you’ll often see the spark before they do.

The industry doesn’t need more control. It needs more curiosity, more belief, and more willingness to bet on the unexpected. There's magic in the chances we take.

The agency landscape is rapidly evolving; from AI tools to creator-led branding, the old models are being reimagined. What trends are you most excited about—and which ones do you think are just noise? How do you decide when to embrace a trend vs. resist it?

We’ve always kept an eye on the shifts, and more often than not, we’ve spotted them early.

Take, for example, creator x brand collaborations. We experienced that firsthand years ago with Adidas Originals, bringing together six designers from across India to feature in a VR-led idea for a collaboration that felt ahead of its time. Since then, creator-led branding has become a full-fledged vertical within Animal. We’ve built campaigns with Budweiser, Google, OnePlus, Absolut, OPPO and others around this model—and it continues to evolve.

More recently, we’ve leaned into a new kind of working model: combining our in-house teams with specialised talent from around the world. These collaborators often bring niche skill sets, including AI-native workflows, which have opened up exciting new ways of building and executing ideas.

We don’t blindly follow trends, but we never ignore them either. Our approach is simple: try everything. Explore, test, adapt. If it fits the work and sharpens the thinking, we lean in. If not, we move on. Either way, curiosity keeps us honest—and that’s what Animal has always been built on.

In the short term, what’s a challenge or opportunity you’re laser-focused on solving? Subsequently, what are your long-term goals? 

Right now, we’re laser-focused on refining an AI-powered workflow that can help us visualise and produce creative in ways that make older execution models feel slow and outdated. We’ve already tested a mix of tools across recent projects, and the results have been promising—faster iterations, sharper visuals, and more room for conceptual exploration. We’re keen to expand that across other brands and formats.

Long-term, the goal is to build something more permanent in that space—an agentic version of Animal. A system that allows us to collaborate with a broader range of clients who may not have been able to work with us earlier due to time or budget constraints. It opens up new possibilities, and personally, I’m very excited about what that future looks like.

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