Meet Yashashree Samant

We were lucky to catch up with Yashashree Samant recently and have shared our conversation below.

Yashashree, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Growing up, I was obsessed with stories, both historic and those unfolding at present. Stories both in fiction and reality inspire creation, innovation, can establish peace, or occasionally spew hatred. In advertising too, memorable campaigns tell stories of brands, products, and companies intertwined with our lives, taking a stand and improving our lives. Consuming all these narratives and more is how I manage to keep creativity alive. Unwinding with art, movies, books, or even news at times helps me understand the endless possibilities that exist outside one corner of my universe. Creativity is often thought to be an urban myth that comes out of nowhere but in reality it exists all around us, just waiting to be made tangible. Every person, profession, action offers us interesting observations and insights to finding solutions. As long as we listen, learn and unlearn everyday to push out better ideas.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a 26-year-young copywriter with a complicated name working at MRM New York. My journey started long ago but let’s skip forward to college.

While studying Mass Media in college, advertising was introduced to us as a subject and it was the first time I discovered a profession where each day one finds creative solutions, explores different writing styles, and most likely never gets bored. After graduation, I worked for a while at The Souled Store. As an absolute geek, it was the perfect first job. Later, I joined Miami Ad School to learn more about copywriting and creating ideas. One global pandemic, a few internships, two jobs, and award-winning campaigns later; I’m grateful to be here and driven to keep moving forward. My mentors helped me find my voice, so it’s only fitting to use it to let diverse creatives in. Outside of work, I volunteered as a mentor at The Workshop – a free program helping people from diverse backgrounds gain access to creative careers and taught a quarter at M-Ad School in Punta Cana.

There’s miles to go in this journey. I can’t wait to gather more experiences, meet more creatives, and write the next chapter.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
There’s no set formula to success in a creative industry. Moreover, as someone still early in their journey I wouldn’t claim to know any. However there are a few things which helped me and hopefully can do the same for others.

First is — Listening. It’s generic “bumper sticker” advice, yet most people don’t follow it. We live in an attention deficit world. Constantly bombarded with information and entertainment, in the race of tweeting first thinking later. Audience wants to jump to conclusions and advertisers want to jump on trends, often without knowing the complete story. All of which is ultimately futile. In order to grow, to create and innovate it’s very important to listen to what’s happening around. To take into consideration different points of views, to learn from those outside the immediate scope, to grow from unlearning. One can always filter out information later, but blocking it entirely restricts creativity.

At age 14, I saw “Batman Begins”. A line stuck out and stayed with me all these years. “Why do we fall?… Only to pick ourselves up again.” This has been a keystone in the way I’ve gone about work and life. Failure is inevitable even if you’re ‘Batman.’ But fear of failure is no reason to not try. Skills can be learnt, but being persistent ultimately helps one achieve their goals. Lastly it’s not a skill but a quality that I have always tried to develop is “paying it forward.” It took a long time to build Rome, it has taken longer to tear down bias in our world and industry. The only way to speed it up is getting more hands to join in. My achievements have been possible because of the leaders that championed me — something all of us need to do for those coming up next

How would you describe your ideal client?
Every client is a different challenge and only challenges can help creativity grow. So everyone, in their truest form, is an ideal client.

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