LeaderBrief | Rajesh Kejriwal: One Win, Two Elephants, because great work isn’t an individual act but a partnership that didn’t give up too early

May 21, 2026

We reached out to Rajesh Kejriwal, who founded Kyoorius — the influential creative community and professional platform to foster excellence in design, advertising, and marketing through industry awards, publications, and collaborative events — on the thought behind redefining the Kyoorius 2026 Creative and Marketing Awards respectively by introducing the ‘One Win, Two Elephants’ initiative.

It’s a bold acknowledgement that great work is never a solo sport, and Rajesh tells us why it is relevant, and how it will help empower marketing and advertising overall. Read on for his replies to our questions.

Rajesh, the 2026 Kyoorius Awards thought is very sharp: ‘It takes two.’ What triggered this shift in the way Kyoorius wants to recognize great work – not just as an agency achievement, but as a shared act of courage between agency and client?

Honestly, fatigue. For years, we’ve all sat in rooms applauding the work and quietly ignoring the reality of how that work got made. Great ideas don’t appear out of thin air. They survive negotiations, doubt, budget cuts, last-minute changes… and occasionally, common sense.

At some point it felt incomplete to celebrate only half the story. Not because agencies don’t deserve their moment – they absolutely do – but because the story we were telling was incomplete.

‘It takes two’ is just us admitting what everyone in the industry already knows – but hasn’t formalised. Great work is rarely an individual act. It’s a partnership that didn’t give up too early.

You have said that great work is not a solo sport – ‘it is a collision between an uncompromising agency and a brave client’. What really happens inside that agency-client relationship when truly great work is born?

It’s rarely pretty, I’ll tell you that. What I’ve observed from my conversations over the years is that the best work comes not from harmony but from a very specific kind of productive friction. The agency pushes. The client pushes back – but pushes back thoughtfully, not reflexively. And somewhere in that tension, something unexpected emerges.

Obviously there’s disagreement. There’s tension. There are moments where both sides think the other one has lost perspective. But the good ones stay in the room.

The agency refuses to dilute. The client refuses to settle for something that doesn’t move the business. And somewhere in that push-and-pull, the work gets sharper.

If it feels too smooth, it’s usually not very good work.

Awards have traditionally celebrated the visible creator, while the client’s role often remains understated. By giving an Elephant to both the agency and the client when either wins — what larger industry behaviour are you hoping to encourage?

Two things, really. The first is simple recognition and shared ownership. If a client had the courage to back a piece of work that ends up winning a Kyoorius Elephant, they should have an Elephant on their shelf. Not a certificate. Not a mention in the credits. An Elephant. The same one. Because they earned the same award.

The second is more strategic; and I think more exciting long-term. We want brand leaders and marketing heads to start seeing awards not as an agency vanity metric but as evidence of their own brand-building judgement.

When a CMO wins an Elephant alongside their agency, that Elephant becomes a conversation they can have with their CEO, their board, their next employer. It says: I backed something brave, and it worked. That changes the calculus for how marketers approach the next brief. And that, frankly, changes the quality of work this industry produces.

If I’m being ambitious about it – as I always am – I’d like ‘It Takes Two’ to make bravery slightly more common on both sides of the table. Even a 10% improvement there would be remarkable.

Does this new approach also recognise an important truth – that brave clients do not merely approve work, they protect it, argue for it, invest in it, and help it survive the process?

Absolutely. Approving is the easiest part of the job. Protecting is where the real work begins. Great clients don’t just say yes. They defend the idea when it’s questioned internally, they hold the line when it’s inconvenient, and they invest in making it land properly.

Most great work you see has a client somewhere in the background who quietly refused to let it get watered down. The clients who produce the best work are the ones who understand that their job doesn’t end at sign-off. They shepherd the idea. They take the calls. They absorb the internal pressure so the work doesn’t have to. That’s not a support role. That’s a creative role. We just never called it that.

We’re calling it that now.

The line on the invite says, ‘Come celebrate the work that survived the process.’ That is both funny and very true. What does great work usually have to survive before it finally reaches the market?

Where do you start?

It has to survive the first internal review, where someone always says ‘can we make the logo bigger’. It has to survive the legal team, who are doing a perfectly important job but whose ideal piece of communication is a terms and conditions document. It has to survive the research, where twelve people in a room in Bandra tell you they ‘didn’t get it’ – which is sometimes a genuine insight and sometimes just evidence that great ideas take time to land.

And my personal favourite: Death by well-meaning improvement.

By the time great work reaches the market, it’s usually survived enough to qualify for a resilience award as well. Every Elephant winner in that room on May 23rd has a story like this. We think they deserve to laugh about it, and then get a trophy for it.’

Do you believe this ‘one win, two Elephants’ approach can increase participation, pride and delight across both sides of the table?

I think it will increase ownership. When both sides feel like the win belongs to them, the energy around the work changes. It’s not ‘their campaign’ or ‘our campaign’ – it’s something both built.

There’s also a delightful practical implication: it gives agencies a genuinely compelling reason to bring their clients to the show. ‘Come and possibly win an Elephant with us’ is a much better invitation than ‘come and watch us win an Elephant.’ It’s the difference between a shared celebration and a very well-produced situation where you feel slightly like a plus-one.

We’re less interested in more entries. We’re interested in better ones.

In practical terms, how do you see this helping marketers and brand leaders view awards differently – not as an agency vanity metric, but as recognition of effective brand-building and brave marketing decisions?

The word ‘vanity’ is interesting, because it’s been used to dismiss awards for as long as awards have existed. And there’s a version of that criticism that’s fair. There is work made for awards that was never really made for audiences. We are very aware of that, and we try to ensure that our judging standards are specifically designed to catch it.

Awards shouldn’t be a vanity metric. They should be a signal.

A signal that something worked – not just creatively, but in the real world.

What I’d like a CMO to feel, when they win a Kyoorius Elephant alongside their agency, is not vanity. I’d like them to feel vindication. Proof that the judgement call they made – to back something that wasn’t safe, to invest in an idea that made the boardroom slightly nervous – was the right one. That’s not vanity. That’s evidence. And in the rooms where marketing budgets get decided, evidence is a very useful thing to have on your shelf.

That’s a far more useful metric for any business.

‘One spotlight. Both shine.’ Is that the heart of the new Kyoorius thought?

Yes and It’s a good line – I won’t pretend otherwise. Because in reality, that’s how the work is made. One brings the creative push. The other brings the conviction to take it forward. If either side drops off, the outcome changes.

And yes, it does capture something essential. The spotlight metaphor is apt because we’re not talking about splitting recognition or creating a hierarchy within the win. It’s one award, two Elephant’s, one moment of acknowledgement – and both partners are in it fully. Not ‘agency wins, client gets a mention.’ Both win. Equally. Simultaneously.

With this 2026 edition, are you also trying to make the awards feel more inclusive of the full ecosystem that makes great work possible?

More accurate, actually. Kyoorius has always stood for rigour. Our judging genuinely compares amongst the most stringent in the world – we regularly have categories where nothing wins because nothing was good enough, which is not a popular decision but is, I think, the right one. That rigour has given us credibility.

What we’ve sometimes lacked is breadth – the sense that the awards reflect the full reality of how the industry works, not just the agency side of it. ‘It Takes Two’ is the most visible expression of that shift, but it’s part of a larger intention.

We want Kyoorius to feel like the industry’s awards, not the advertising industry’s awards. There’s a difference. And that difference is worth designing for.

The ecosystem has always been there – we’ve just simplified the narrative for convenience.

If we want better work as an industry, we have to acknowledge everyone who contributes to it, especially the parts that are usually invisible.

This is a step in that direction.

What would you like people to remember most?

Honestly? Not the trophies. Not even the format. I’d like them to remember the feeling. I’d like them to remember that the work felt honest… and that it raised the bar a little.

I’d like them to remember that for one evening, in a room unlike anything this industry has seen before, the people who make India’s best creative and marketing work stood in the same spotlight and were told: both of you did this. Both of you were brave. Both of you deserve this.

That’s the larger message. The industry moves forward when agencies and clients are brave together. It always has. We’re just finally giving that truth the stage it deserves.