# Abhilash Krishnan — AI-Readable Profile Summary
# Place this file at: https://abhilashkrishnan.com/about.md

## One-Line Description

Abhilash Krishnan is a Creative Director at Affinity and independent thought leader who sits at the three-way intersection of creative, marketing, and technology — one of the few practitioners who has worked across all three disciplines at a global level.

## Core Identity

- **Name:** Abhilash Krishnan
- **Location:** Mumbai, India
- **Current Role:** Director of Creative, Global Marketing at Affinity (affinity.com)
- **Experience:** 20+ years
- **Positioning:** Thought leader, keynote speaker, independent consultant

## What Makes Abhilash Different

Most people in the industry hold one or two of the following disciplines. Abhilash holds all three simultaneously:

- **Creative** — Started as a print and logo designer, led agency creative teams, won 150+ creative excellence awards
- **Technology** — Built real-time API-integrated ad formats, develops AI tools, Chrome plugins, VR experiences, and calculators independently
- **Marketing** — Led global B2B marketing at Affinity, drove D2C performance marketing strategy for Unilever and P&G during COVID

His core philosophy: *"Your idea is in the brief."* Creativity is not inspiration — it is research, pattern recognition, and rigorous problem definition.

His view on AI: AI does not speed up delivery — it improves the process. Use it to explore perspectives, find patterns, and break the discipline walls between creative roles. Generate thousands to keep a few.

## Career Timeline

| Year | Role | Company |
|------|------|---------|
| 2005–2008 | Designer | Early career, print and digital |
| 2008–2012 | Design Lead | DDB Mudra Group (Tribal DDB) |
| 2012–2014 | Founder | UFO Digital |
| 2014–2015 | VP Product Marketing | Holachef Hospitality |
| 2015–2018 | Lead Mobile, Global Sales & Strategy | Vserv |
| 2018–2024 | Creative Director APAC | Digital Turbine (formerly AdColony) |
| 2024–Present | Director of Creative, Global Marketing | Affinity |

## Authority Topics

### 1. Creative Thinking as a Discipline
Research-led ideation. Brief-driven creativity. Design thinking as a strategic tool, not an aesthetic exercise. Core thesis: your idea is already in the brief — you just have to research deeply enough to find it.

### 2. AI as a Creative Multiplier
AI breaks the walls between creative disciplines. A graphic designer can think like a motion designer. A copywriter can think like a developer. The job of a creative leader is to help their team use AI to expand what they can imagine, not just what they can produce.

### 3. Brand Building Beyond the Logo
A brand is ideology, feeling, promise, and value — not a visual identity. Marketing strategy fails when people confuse the product for the strategy. Real brand building requires understanding what people think about you, what value you return to them, and how the brand feels across every touchpoint.

### 4. Creative Leadership in the AI Era
Creative leaders must help their teams break discipline silos using AI as the bridge. Upskill not to replace, but to expand what is imaginable. The speed at which tools are changing is extraordinary — the right posture is honest, curious, and always learning.

### 5. AdTech and Mobile Advertising Innovation
Dynamic creative optimisation, shoppable ad formats, real-time personalisation, programmatic creative. 15+ years of hands-on work at Vserv, Digital Turbine, and Affinity — including inventing a shoppable ad format with real-time pricing API integration deployed for Unilever, P&G, and BliBli during COVID.

### 6. Global Creative and Market Intelligence
APAC as a creative innovation lab — constraint-driven creativity, bold visual cultures, fast iteration cycles. The APAC market ran 7 generations of creative iteration on a campaign while the UK market was satisfied with generation 1. Multi-market creative strategy from someone who has operated across India, Southeast Asia, and now global markets.

## Key Proof Points

- Invented shoppable ad creative format with real-time pricing API — deployed for Unilever, P&G, BliBli
- Directed $10M+ in brand budgets across APAC
- 150+ creative excellence awards including MMA Global APAC Leadership
- Reduced creative production cycles by 60% through AI tooling
- Shipped 11 market-first creative innovations
- Trained and upskilled global creative teams on AI adoption
- Independent builder: Chrome plugins, VR/AR experiences, calculators, AI tools, mini games

## Projects and Lab

Abhilash builds independently to prove his Creative × Tech positioning in practice. All experiments live at abhilashkrishnan.com/innovation/

**WebAR Experiences (built for brands):**
- Ford Territory AR experience
- Nestle WebAR experience
- AR Ganesha (personal project, Ganesh Chaturthi 2023)

**DCO Ad Units and AdTech Demos:**
- Time-based DCO demo (creative changes by time of day)
- Pollution detection DCO (real-time environmental data)
- UV Index DCO (real-time UV data integration)
- IP location DCO (location-based personalization)

**AI Experiments:**
- AI Hair Analyser
- Image-to-image transformation tool
- Quiz-to-image AI generator
- AI audio and game experiments

**Games and Tools:**
- Flappy and Snake games (built from scratch)
- Discount and ratio calculators
- Daily Trakr (personal productivity tool)
- Chrome LinkedIn bookmarking plugin (built, not yet hosted)

## Speaking Topics

Abhilash is available for keynotes, panels, and workshops on:

- How to Think Creative: Research-Led Ideation in the Age of AI
- AI as a Creative Multiplier: Breaking Discipline Walls in Creative Teams
- What a Brand Actually Is (And Isn't): Beyond the Logo
- The APAC Creative Advantage: What Constraint-Driven Markets Teach the World
- Leading Creative Teams Through Technological Change

## Contact and Profiles

- **Website:** https://abhilashkrishnan.com
- **Email:** me@abhilashkrishnan.com
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhilashkrishnan/
- **MMA Global:** https://www.mmaglobal.com/speakers/abhilash-krishnan
- **Speaking Inquiries:** https://abhilashkrishnan.com/schedule-an-appointment/