How GCPL’s in-house creative pivot paid off

GCPL operated with multiple agencies, fragmented briefs and inconsistent execution across geographies

- Suneera Tandon

GCPL's decision to bring all creative work in-house was led by managing director and chief executive officer Sudhir Sitapati.

In 2023, when Mumbai-based fastmoving consumer goods (FMCG) company Godrej Consumer Products Ltd GCPL) decided to fold up its longstanding roster of external advertising agencies and bring creative work entirely in-house, it seemed like a bold experiment.

Two years on, the move appears to be reshaping how GCPL approaches brand building across India, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The company’s Lightbox Creative Lab feeds creative campaigns for its hair colour to room freshener brands worldwide from an in-house team of about eight people.

In India, GCPL folded up accounts from agencies such as Creativeland Asia, Leo Burnett and JWT to merge all creative functions in-house. “Creative is now as core to our business and no longer a support function,” the company said.

In fiscal 2025, Lightbox helped the company save 40 basis points in costs and improved its creative hit rate.

The move was led by GCPL’s managing director and chief executive officer Sudhir Sitapati, who believed the company had both the right size and culture to make an internal agency viable.

“Sudhir said, ‘Look, I am taking this call. I want to do this because for a company our size, it felt like the right way to run advertising,’” Ashwin Moorthy, global head of categories and head of marketing in India, said in an interview with Mint.