YouTube Shorts wanted to grow its presence in India and be the new Instagram Reels. We tapped into fitness, a genre that had started growing ever since the pandemic with Neeraj Chopra, the country’s newest sports star. We had to come up with something unmistakably Neeraj in a country that still loved cricket over Olympic medals and niche sports. So we watched the video of his 2020 win over a 100 times and had our AHA moment when we saw his run: a sideways run unique to javelin throwers. We created a challenge where the main action was Neeraj’s winning run, but context adds all the social-first fun.

As the lead on the campaign, I was neck-deep in everything: coming up with the challenge, choosing the influencers, leading the shoot, and even personally coming up with every piece of ancillary content.