Advertising Genius, Vikas Mehta’s Playbook for Building a Successful Business in Africa

When Vikas Mehta left behind a thriving advertising career in India to take up a leadership role in Vietnam, many around him questioned the decision. Years later, when he made another unexpected leap, this time, to lead Ogilvy’s operations across 39 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa—the question returned: “Why Africa?”

But for Mehta, the answer was always simple: “Why not?”

Driven by instinct, grounded in purpose, and fueled by a lifelong passion for ideas, Vikas Mehta has spent the last two decades building a career that spans continents, cultures, and countless boardrooms.

From his early love for theatre in New Delhi, India, to becoming a global CEO navigating the complexities of emerging markets, his journey is anything but linear – and that’s precisely what makes it powerful.

Today, as one of the few Indian business leaders operating at scale across Africa’s marketing landscape, Mehta is helping reshape the creative narrative of an entire continent. With an eye on value, an unwavering belief in people, and a toolkit of lessons earned from experience, he’s leading the charge with humility, clarity, and courage.

This is the story of Vikas Mehta, as told to Business Elites Africa. He speaks on how he got to Africa, what drives him, and the impact he hopes to leave behind.

What’s your come-up story – how did you get to where you are today?

My childhood was spent in a modest family in New Delhi. I grew up with a deep interest in theatre and wanted to make it my career until practical considerations came in the way. While in university, I discovered advertising and fell in love with it. The more I explored it, the more I loved it. At the early age of 18, I knew this was the profession I wanted.

With some effort, I got into a leading business school in Mumbai to pursue my MBA in Marketing and advertising. A Publicis Groupe company, Ambience, hired me from the campus to join their Mumbai office. Spent my early years working in account management and strategy, first at Ambience and then at another Publicis agency, Leo Burnett.

A few years later, an opportunity came up to work for an Interpublic Group (IPG) agency now known as Mullen Lowe Group, in Ho Chi Minh City. During the early 2000s, Vietnam was a lesser-known destination in Asia. Several well-wishers cautioned me against leaving a thriving advertising scene in India for a smaller market. While there was a big question of ‘why Vietnam?, my instinct said, ‘Why not?’, and I took the leap.

It turned out to be a great decision (in hindsight now) because the role gave me the freedom to innovate in a relatively nascent industry; something that’s a lot harder to do in larger and more mature markets. We saw rapid growth for the company and myself in the next five years. It also started my journey with Mullen Lowe and IPG, which lasted nearly 15 years.

I got opportunities to work in 14 countries (and lived in 4 of them) across Greater China, South-East and South Asia; and AUNZ. Along the way, came several roles like Viet Nam MD, Regional Chief Growth Officer – APAC, a CMO and two CEO stints in India, all with the same organisation.

A few years ago, the WPP group agency, Ogilvy, reached out with a CEO opportunity for Sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, the question of ‘why Africa’ was trumped by the instinct of ‘why Not’ and I arrived on the continent. Given the role covers 39 countries in the region, the past five years have been a greatly rewarding experience, discovering diverse countries and their cultures on this vast continent.

I came to realise much later in life, how rare it is to have a career doing something you love. I am deeply grateful to this wonderful industry for letting me do that every day.

What unique qualities do you believe have been critical to your growth?

It starts with a clear vision. It doesn’t matter if it’s for five years or six months. Seeing the outcome is a good place to start.

Then comes Belief, both in oneself and others around you. You believe, so you can behave like it’s possible. When you behave consistently, you become.

Next comes a realisation, that one can’t (and shouldn’t) try to do it alone. So find more believers who can be as passionate and committed to the vision. To build a strong team that does it together, one needs to cheer for their successes louder than one’s own.
Along the way, qualities like commitment and consistency are crucial because they require discipline to see things through.

The last quality, that can trip all of the above, is how one deals with failure. I’ve come to embrace failure as the best university. One needs to fail fast, fail often, learn from it and move forward. If you’re not failing, chances are you’re not trying to innovate.

What personal values or philosophies drive your decision-making?

Our continent is the home of Ubuntu. Putting We over Me is important while making decisions. It’s important to pause and consider, how this decision affects the company, peers and the wider community.

While it’s necessary to make decisions objectively, it’s equally important to stay human while making it.

Separate the urgent things that require quick decision making from the important ones. Give the latter, the time and the consideration they deserve. Some things are just too important to be decided in a hurry.

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as a leader?

To not fall in love with one’s own ideas.

Marketing is a business of ideas. Echo chambers where everyone agrees all the time, create consistent mediocrity. Divergent views and disagreements are necessary friction that makes ideas shine. I value people who hold views that are different from my own and have the confidence to share them.

It’s equally important to listen well. One needs to focus on the viewpoint of the person saying it because the best ideas don’t just come from the most senior person in the room. It takes effort to create a safe environment where people can disagree freely, and respectfully. I’ve learnt that the effort is well worth it.

When faced with high-stakes decisions, how do you balance risk and reward to ensure long-term success?

Most decisions (including the ones where the stakes are high) are made with imperfect information. It’s virtually impossible to have accurate and timely information on all variables before you make a decision.

High-stakes bring high pressure, but not a higher amount of clarity. It’s important to acknowledge that we are all humans. With decisions, no one gets them right all the time and even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Decisions are a combination of information and instinct. So you train your instinct, with information, and experience. Then, trust your instinct.

What was the most unconventional approach you took that turned out to be a game-changer?

The marketing agency model is typically known as a service provider. The service model, whilst relevant to a degree, hasn’t kept up with the rapid evolution of the marketing landscape. To stay relevant, agencies need to play at the intersections of content, data and technology.

There has been an explosion of ad-tech and mar-tech offerings, mostly developed by tech companies. Whilst they have expertise in technology, they don’t understand marketing processes and frameworks as deeply.

As the tech sector infiltrated the marketing space, we saw an opportunity to do the reverse. Guided by the principle of fail-fast-fail-often, I started a series of 100-day pilots in the agency. A product idea was supported for 100 days to develop a successful PoC (proof-of-concept). Expecting a success rate of 25%, we’d take the successful PoC and scale it up.

The approach not only became a sustainable innovation funnel for the company, it inspired teams to create what they could imagine and raised the morale of the entire organisation. I’ve taken this approach to every workplace for the last ten years.

At the Ogilvy Africa Network, we now have a line-up of mar-tech products such as FEED 2.0, Optimus, InfluenceO and Obrio; with more in the pipeline. Each of them started as a 100-day pilot. Mar-Tech products are our fastest-growing business today and account for nearly 30% of our sales in the region.

How do you convince others to support your vision, especially when it diverges from the norm?

It takes time, effort and perseverance. One needs to give others the time and the space to see the vision in their own way. Along the way, you keep inspiring.

Respect those who don’t see what you see, but move forward with the ones who do. As momentum builds, more believers would join in and put their shoulders to the cause.

What personal habits or practices do you rely on to stay grounded and productive?

Even the most advanced operating system needs regular upgrades, or it gets obsolete. The same is true for humans.

Making time to explore and learn regularly, is important to remain productive. Some of my preferred sources are forums such as CES, SXSW, Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, launch events of major tech companies; and publications like Wired and VC Circle.

Knowing what’s coming, helps evaluate how it impacts your business, and how to prepare for it. I also use platforms like Coursera and LinkedIn learning for topics affecting our industry that need in-depth study. At the moment I’m taking a course on IoT technologies on Coursera.

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Another great way to stay grounded is to listen to what the youngest people in your company are saying. I often spend time listening to our young talent to understand what’s on their mind. Understanding their vocabulary, worries and priorities is a great crystal ball to understand what our future priorities should be.

The most critical, is to never stop being a practitioner. As roles grow, people often prioritise managerial responsibilities over practitioner skills. While being a manager is important, it should never be the only value you bring.

Remaining a practitioner reminds you why you love the job. Putting a finger on the keyboard (beyond emails and memos) is a good way to see if your own superpowers still work. Your work can serve as guidance for others, and it sets the right cultural anchor for the organisation. In my early years in advertising, I was trained to be a strategist and I still often write my own strategy presentations.

In what ways do you believe African entrepreneurs are reshaping global perceptions of the continent?

People of African origin are making their mark in every field from music, art, sports and business. However, a large share of these success stories still come from the African diaspora.

A large share of African stories that make it globally, and shape the continent’s narrative, belong to 4-5 countries. There are wonderful examples of African entrepreneurs who are doing innovation at a grassroots level, that deserve to be known far wider than they are.

African startups are making their mark in areas like Fin-Tech, and Agri-Tech. While the unicorns are still concentrated in markets like Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa; they are opening doors and inspiring many more to follow.

I value the entrepreneurs who are pursuing genuine innovation that’s made for Africa over startups replicating proven models from elsewhere, in their markets.

What role do you see yourself playing in that narrative, and what change are you personally driving?

In the marketing and advertising industry, Africa’s share of excellence remains under par. Take the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity for example. Of the 54 countries, maybe 4 have ever won a Lion at Cannes. A large market like Nigeria is yet to win its first gold Lion.

A similar pattern exists in every major global award show for creativity and effectiveness. While South Africa is a notable exception and countries like Egypt show up in global rankings now and then, the rest of the continent remains largely unseen.

When I arrived in the region, we reset our vision for the Ogilvy Africa Network to become the agency that puts Africa on the industry’s world map, consistently.

In recent years, we’ve managed to score a few notable firsts including Africa’s only yellow pencil (in 2022) at the global D&AD Awards, a first-ever Gold Lion for West-Central-East Africa at Cannes Lions, Africa’s first Gold at WARC (World Advertising and Research Council) Global Effectiveness Awards. In addition, we’ve had consistent wins Clios, One Show, London International (LIA), Drum UK and so on.

I believe Africa has more to offer (and learn) by competing with the best in the world. When Africa wins, we all do.

What is your vision for the future of your industry, and how do you plan to contribute to that future?

For over two decades now, the world has been enthusiastic about declaring the death of the advertising industry. We saw it during the dot com era, then digital, then web 2.0, then block-chain and now AI.

While each of these eras created its own seismic shift in the industry, it has always responded with an evolution that takes it to the next era. AI is the most recent, and perhaps one of the most fundamental of these shifts.

Marketing is the business of persuasion, and as long as products and services are competing with each other, companies will continue to need to persuade consumers to choose one brand over another.

What changes with every shift are the methods, tools and frameworks that drive this persuasion. Companies that lead this evolution are more likely to thrive, the ones who react are likely to survive, and the ones who don’t evolve will struggle.

I have to admit, the marketing agency’s business models have been a little slow to evolve with these shifts in the past. As we enter the era of AI, we have the opportunity of a lifetime to re-imagine the business and operating models of how marketing agencies will work in the future.

D&E (developing and emerging) markets have another interesting opportunity. Every fundamental shift resets the gap between the developed and the developing markets because each is starting its journey of evolution from the same starting point. I believe emerging markets today have an equal chance of creating business models of the future and innovation will be a lot more democratised, geographically.

I work towards helping shape the industry’s business model for D&E markets. New ways of working, embedding technology to drive both efficiencies and impact and new revenue models are all variables in the complex equation. Every day, we move one step closer to making these better. For a business I live and love, I’d like to leave the industry in a better shape than I found it.

If you could leave a single lesson for the next generation of African leaders, what would it be?

With a tsunami of African youth ready to enter the workforce, it would be expensive for any global company’s future to ignore our continent. Africa is vast and complex. It still isn’t understood well enough by the world at large. People often tend to homogenise Africa and try to solve it as if it were a country. Well, it’s not.

African leaders have done a lot in trying to change that to an extent. For Africa to go from the next big thing to here-and-now, innovations that are born in Africa need to go global. We need the regional unicorns from this continent to become global household names for the world to sit up and take notice.

Our innovation is a different flavour from the Americas or Asia. African innovation is about doing more with a lot less. With sectors like fin-tech, the world has only seen the tip of the iceberg of what Africa is capable of. Efforts on sustainable energy, climate change, health, and food have the potential to serve as alternate models of success vs. how other regions are approaching these.

We can’t penalise the world for not knowing us well enough. The ask for the next generation is to accelerate the rate at which stories from Africa travel. We need to tell more African stories, from more of Africa to more of the world.

I am deeply optimistic about the next generation of African leaders writing a fresh, exciting narrative of this continent in a uniquely African way.