Offbeat:My whole life, I’d wanted to be an Air Force pilot - Neville Shah

Adgully’s special feature section – ‘Offbeat’ – seeks to give a peek into the lesser known facets of our very well-known industry leaders. We present, Video interactions with the prominent industry leaders’ on areas that are not usually highlighted in regular media coverage – be it about their childhood days, secret skills that they possess, how they unwind from their hectic schedules, and much more…

In a candid interaction with Adgully, Neville Shah, CCO, FCB Kinnect, delves into various facets of his life and career. He shares his personal identity beyond the corporate title. Shah also talks about his stress busters, offers valuable advice for aspiring creatives, and discusses his love for travel, highlighting his favorite destinations. Additionally, he reflects on his childhood aspirations and more.

If we hypothetically remove the hat of CCO of FCB Kinnect, who is Neville Shah?

I’m literally no one. I am just a regular guy. I’m someone who’s struggling to be a human being. I’m also a comedian on the side. I occasionally dabble in good food. Actually, I very frequently dabble in it. I cook. Yeah, that’s me.

Could you share any of your projects or any of your recent or past projects that are your favorites?

We’re actually on tour with a podcast that I do, called “TIS”, which stands for “The Internet Said So”, with Varun Thakur, Kautuk Srivastava and Adar Malik and Kautakshi. The four of us are doing a live tour of the podcast. We’re doing it across India. We finished the first leg on Sunday, and then there’s going to be the second leg, which we’ll figure out. I’m excited about that. We did Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, and several shows in Mumbai.

What is your favourite genre?

I love Hollywood, Bollywood, and Tollywood. I love all of it. I just love films.

I love good stories, and I also like the not necessarily great films – you know, the movies that are so bad that they’re good!

‘Sholay’, ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’, ‘Shawshank Redemption’, ‘Catherine’, ‘The Dark Knight’ – I like them all. Even rom-coms – ‘The Devil Wears Prada is one of my favourites.

Where do you go when the travel bug bites you?

I like traveling and enjoy exploring. I don’t drink, even socially, so a lot of the experiences sometimes get cut out when my friends go out. But I do like to travel and enjoy exploring cities. I like history a lot, so that’s something I tend to focus on.

I’m a huge fan of New York City. I’m an open guy. I need the Internet when I travel. I need to stay connected. I’ve never been to Japan, but I want to go there. I want to visit the Faroe Islands and Norway. I’ve never been to any of these places, so most of my favourite spots are where I want to go. But New York is one of my favourite places in the whole wide world. I love it as a city.

In India, I really enjoy Leh and Ladakh. I think Kolkata has some really nice places to visit. I’m not mentioning Mumbai because I live here and love it.

I don’t like noisy places, so I prefer South Goa over North Goa. Coorg is nice too; I visited that place recently.

What was your childhood ambition?
My whole life, I’d wanted to be an Air Force pilot. But alas, I failed a couple of exams that I should have passed to become an Air Force pilot. However, my parents never put any pressure on me to become something specific. They were very supportive when it came to my career. They were just happy that I was doing something, I guess!

Advertising is an industry of people who wanted to do everything else, but then ended up here, because you need to be multifaceted to be in advertising. That's what I love about this industry.

What is your go-to stress buster mantra? Could you also tell us about your guilty pleasure?

Ice cream – just tubs of ice cream. This one’s not a hyperbole. I can eat tubs of ice cream. And so now it’s become a guilty pleasure because I’m not allowed to eat that many tubs of ice cream!

The other thing I do is play a game called ‘Football Manager’. It calms me down a little bit. I also watch ‘The West Wing’, which is a TV show from the nineties. I tend to rewatch a lot of that. These things just sort of, in some way, ground me more than anything else.

On a parting note, any words of advice for aspiring individuals entering the creative industry?

It’s very cheesy, very corny, but I think it’s important – ‘Don’t let someone tell you what you can and cannot do’. Discover it for yourself. I think that’s really important. There are a lot of people who will try to tell you that you can’t do something. They might say it’s not a good idea, but try it anyway. If you are a creative person, you’ll figure out a way to do it.

Just do something that makes you smile at the end of the day. No matter how hard or horrible it is, if at the end of it you have a smile on your face and you can say, “I did that”, then it’s worth it.