Azazul Haque on his new job, challenges and why advertising is turning boring

A brief chat with the new chief content officer of Media.Monks India.

Recently, Mullen Lintas' chief creative officer Azaul Haque announced that he would be stepping down. While his next move was unknown for a few days, he later announced that he would be joining Martin Sorrell's digital first agency, Media.Monks.

His designation at MediaMonks is a little different from his last tint as chief creative officer. The abbreviation stays the same, but Haque is now the Chief Content Officer at MediaMonks. Prior to this, he has worked at Ogilvy, McCann, Contract advertising and Rediffusion, to name a few.

“For the last ten years, I’ve been working with advertising in the traditional sense, creating TVCs, ATL campaigns, etc. I wanted to shift from the traditional agency to something more modern. There are so many avenues that have opened up which enable us to interact with consumers in a better, more efficient way,” says Haque.

He adds that this shift is worldwide - advertising and content are battling each other right now. “Consumers are engaging with content now more than ever and brands need to intervene accordingly. Most of the content unfolds on tablets and laptop screens as well. There are events like the IPL that make viewers switch on the television set - but even that is being widely viewed on an OTT platform now,” he says.

Haque says his role at Media.Monks will require him to work closely with content, supervising it, creating it, ideating it, across multiple mediums and platforms. He adds that he may not have a lot of experience with the digital medium but he comes with a wealth of experience from the brand side and is looking forward to working with the team at MediaMonks.

“My learning curve has remained largely static in the last decade or so and I’m looking forward to learning and trying new things.”

He recalls a time when advertising had a certain oomph factor - and came with its own fair share of memorable ideas. “A lot of agencies have good ideas, but these ideas have a very short shelf life. They may not be memorable, say, ten years down the line.” He recalls examples such as Vodafone’s ZooZoo campaign and Idea’s ‘What an idea sirji’ campaign to drive his point home.

Haque adds that he's had his eye on Media.Monks since their inception. He had been keeping a close eye on what the agency had been doing in India and when he saw the time was right to move on, he took the leap.