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OhHello - Nikhil Lai
23 Plays1 month ago
OhHello!
It's Episode 92 and this one features a wise old soul who carries himself with grace and curiosity. Good things come to those that wait...and for that, thanks for being so patient, Nikhil Lai!
Nikhil is a Senior Analyst at Forrester, so our conversation took us from the importance of creative and data-driven #advertising strategies, all the way back to the historical roots of #mentorship.
Why tune in?
⏳ Timeless Mentorship: Nikhil highlighted how centuries-old apprenticeship structures still fuel success—whether it’s for 17th-century artisans or today’s ad tech innovators.
🐵 Embracing Curiosity: His relentless curiosity has shaped an impressive career journey, from growing up in Connecticut to studying at the The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and now advising top brands at Forrester while living w/ his wife in LA and appreciating words of wisdom from his sister, parents, mentors- Dave Morgan, Jeff Immelt and more
🔬 Creative Ad Tech & Data Deprecation: If you’re a marketer or brand builder, Nikhil’s take on the future of creative optimization—particularly in a world where data signals are dwindling—is a can’t-miss.
Ready to access a community of empathetic mentors that want to help you and your business grow? Sign-up at OhHello.ai! Each week, we'll continue to highlight how our OhHello.ai 👋 mentors can elevate your business and teams' outputs. Let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments; we'd love to hear from you!
#marketing #advertising #career
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Recent Move
00:00:13
Nikhil Lai
Oh, very nice.
00:00:16
ohhello
Oh, hello, mr lie Hi, Nikhil.
00:00:21
Nikhil Lai
Hello, Jeremy. Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:24
ohhello
Thanks for being here. So I have the pleasure of knowing you. why don't you tell our guests, our audience, those viewing, those watching, who my special friend is that is here today to be on the Oh, Hello podcast and podcast.
00:00:38
Nikhil Lai
I am Nikolai, as you mentioned. i recently moved to West Hollywood, California, one from West Chelsea in Manhattan.
00:00:44
ohhello
o from where?
00:00:49
Nikhil Lai
I lived on the High Line with my then girlfriend, now
Role at Forrester Research
00:00:53
Nikhil Lai
fiance. Now we live pretty close to Runyon Canyon. So going from one naturally beautiful place to another.
00:01:01
Nikhil Lai
All of this one has much less concrete. I work for Forrester Research. I'm the senior analyst for performance marketing. and So I do a bunch of channel specific research on TV and search and social and out of home as well as sector level research about where the market's going.
00:01:20
ohhello
What a fun job.
00:01:22
Nikhil Lai
It's a lot of fun. it is...
00:01:23
ohhello
Yeah.
00:01:25
Nikhil Lai
like the most satisfied I've ever been professionally, which is saying something because I've worked for you before. And that was very satisfying.
00:01:30
ohhello
Worked. Worked with.
00:01:32
Nikhil Lai
worked with you before.
Career Journey Overview
00:01:34
Nikhil Lai
and yeah, I came to Forrester after stint at Marpipe. We evangelized automated multivariate creative testing.
00:01:43
Nikhil Lai
And I still believe sincerely and in that idea and in that concept. I worked at Silo Media for two non-consecutive stints. First evangelizing TV advertising for direct-to-consumer companies who'd never before been on TV.
00:01:52
ohhello
Great company. Yep.
00:01:58
Nikhil Lai
then selling the product that I helped evangelize. In between, I went to grad school in London and got a master's in history, government and law, worked in parliament. And I began my career at General Electric where my mom worked in the late 80s.
00:02:14
Nikhil Lai
And I grew up at the kitchen table, literally at the kitchen table, and dreaming of working for GE one day. So that was a dream come true. And so I've had, you know, that's my path to where I am today. you Everyone has a very circuitous path, I've been really lucky in my case and to be really standing on the shoulders of some giants.
00:02:34
Nikhil Lai
And so that's who I am.
00:02:36
ohhello
Amazing. So you're at Forrester. You had an amazing run at a couple different ad tech companies at one of the biggest companies being GE and then moved west.
00:02:47
ohhello
And now you're with your fiance, Mary Grace.
00:02:47
Nikhil Lai
Mm-hmm.
00:02:49
ohhello
With that said, Mr. Lai, what defines you? Tell us a little bit more about who you are and just what's important to you.
Curiosity in Career
00:02:59
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. Well, I've noticed in the last few years that the the curiosity I have about other people and about what defines them about how they make decisions, about how they represent themselves. That curiosity about others has been something that I've had for my entire life. I had it, I remember as a kid in kindergarten, talking to other kids about and how they chose to play the sports they chose to play and how they chose to love certain subjects over others. And that curiosity I think has been defining
00:03:36
Nikhil Lai
of my life and of my of my career as well. And so it's really been special to be at Forrester where I'm surrounded by so many other intellectually curious people. and And I mean that sincerely, it kind of reminds me of being in grad school or being an undergrad at Wesleyan. So that curiosity I think has been the golden thread throughout.
00:03:54
ohhello
Yeah, you have an innate curiosity. The fact that you went to Wesleyan, you went got your master's at the London School of Economics, and you worked for British Parliament, which is a really unique experience.
00:04:08
Nikhil Lai
but
00:04:11
ohhello
Your your curiosity and the way that you just want to consistently know what's happening and just peeling back every layer of the onion, I've always respected it.
Creative Ad Tech and Data Deprecation
00:04:21
ohhello
I think our audience will respect it Help us understand some areas that you find intriguing right now within our tech, within media, within software, within tech.
00:04:32
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. Sure. Yeah, one of the most intriguing areas is the area that you and I worked on at Marpipe, which I would broadly call creative ad tech, is how we define the the category at Forrester, and that encompasses vendors who are automating the creative process.
00:04:51
Nikhil Lai
It encompasses vendors who are providing intelligence and about how creative performs and why one ad is winning over the other. And it's a category that has been fueled, I think, by fears about what's happening to audience signals, third party audio third-party audience signals that markers have relied on.
00:05:11
Nikhil Lai
for decades and decades and decades. And so I'm really curious to see and make a call about where the creative ad tech market is going, who's going to win, who's going to lose, why, how brands, agencies and vendors can and adapt to the future that I'm going to call. So i'm I'm really curious about that space. And in fact, I'm kicking off a report this week at Forrester.
00:05:34
ohhello
amazingza
00:05:35
Nikhil Lai
about ad creative in the era of data deprecation is the very tentative title. And I'm excited to see what comes of that research.
00:05:44
ohhello
Amazing. Well, I'm excited to do a separate pod with you at another time to really geek out about this and and get deeper.
Mentorship and Historical Context
00:05:53
ohhello
turning the page and going back a little bit more on mentorship, on career guidance, on advice that you would give to to others.
00:05:57
Nikhil Lai
see
00:06:02
ohhello
Why don't we just, can you talk a little bit more about just your skill set? Obviously, we know that you're a curious individual, but understanding your skill set and just what what excites you about mentorship?
00:06:14
ohhello
What excites you about what we're building at Oh Hello?
00:06:16
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. What excites me most being being a student of history is how timeless this experience is. And i mean one of the biggest things when I was, so the history that I was researching in grad school and even in undergrad,
00:06:33
Nikhil Lai
was about this idea of European exceptionalism. And the question I was asking is why did some countries like the UK and the Netherlands and Spain and France and Portugal, why did they literally outperform others in Europe and others in the rest of the world for a couple of hundred years? and And I think that, you know,
00:06:53
Nikhil Lai
we are who we are today because of what those countries did. Not to be too Eurocentric, but that's one reading of the past. And and when you look into the archives, one of the biggest differences are the structures of mentorship and literally and structures of of of apprenticeship that those countries had that they institutionalized.
00:07:17
Nikhil Lai
And they were able to encourage young men and women too work as hard as they could to get to certain ranks in the military, for example, or to get in certain ranks in like a guild of potters or weavers because of that apprenticeship and because of the strength of it.
00:07:35
Nikhil Lai
And so I think what you're doing is in a way timeless and is consistent with is with what has worked for the last, you know, since since the dawn of man. and and And other solutions that are out there, I think, are seeking problems.
00:07:50
Nikhil Lai
and And they're very much tied to the flavor of the month, whether that may be AI one month or and ML next month. And what is happening here, I think, is is is not...
00:07:58
ohhello
Well, that
00:08:03
Nikhil Lai
dependent on the current moment so much as it is just dependent on like how the human condition evolves. And so I appreciate the historical durability of it.
00:08:12
ohhello
I appreciate that.
00:08:12
Nikhil Lai
i appreciate that.
00:08:13
ohhello
I respect that.
00:08:14
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:14
ohhello
And my AP European high school teacher would have appreciated you saying that as well. Nonetheless, and I'm glad that you remembered all of those details because you know i've I've got a decade plus on where I don't remember each detail.
00:08:27
ohhello
With that said, with that said, what would you tell your younger self?
00:08:30
Nikhil Lai
and
00:08:33
ohhello
What would you tell your peer
Advice to Younger Self
00:08:34
ohhello
set? What kind of guidance would you would you provide?
00:08:35
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. Yeah. I would tell my peer set and my younger self to pay attention to labels and what they can note, but be aware of how confining labels are as much as they are defining.
00:08:46
ohhello
Thank you.
00:08:56
Nikhil Lai
And I was so caught up. I grew up in Darien, Connecticut, about 45 minutes outside of New York City. very preppy community, very waspy community. There's some unsavory parts of Darien's past. It's a sundown town. There's a history of of of antisemitism there that the town is still reckoning with.
00:09:15
Nikhil Lai
Point being, the town is very focused on, and it made me who I am today, and I'm and i'm grateful you know to death for for that town, but it's very focused on label. It's very focused on what a certain brand of car connotes about your status, what a certain logo on a shirt might connote about how valuable you can be socially. And so I was conditioned by that for a long time. And I thought that my success meant literally, I had an iPhone note that I wrote when I was in high school. i was like, i have to buy Lamborghini.
00:09:47
Nikhil Lai
ae Like my life is going to worthless unless I buy Lamborghini.
00:09:49
ohhello
Not a Maserati, not a Ferrari, not a Toyota, not a Ford.
00:09:51
Nikhil Lai
Yeah, exactly. It has be Lamborghini. I have to go to certain schools. I have to work for certain companies. And that's the yellow brick road. Like, why would anyone want to do anything else? And I guess I had to think like that to know now that that way of thinking is is is very self-limiting and very self-sabotaging in a way. And so I would advise my peer set and my younger self to be uncritically curious and
00:10:21
Nikhil Lai
literally open-minded because you can make all the plans you want for what's going to happen. And most likely those plans are not going to come true. Sometimes they are, but most likely they're not going to come true. You know, man proposes and God disposes. of My mom always told me.
00:10:37
Nikhil Lai
And so you, man,
00:10:37
ohhello
Man, your mom your mom, your mom gave you the guidance that man proposes and God proposes.
00:10:45
Nikhil Lai
And god god God disposes of the plans that you propose, right?
00:10:48
ohhello
<unk>s Love that.
00:10:51
Nikhil Lai
And so I may or may not buy Lamborghini one day.
00:10:51
ohhello
Wow.
00:10:54
Nikhil Lai
i may or may not. I mean, I didn't go to certain schools. I did go to certain schools. Point being, that's not defining. it's really It's really confining. And so I wish I'd learned that earlier, but here I am as a 30-year-old, and I'm glad to have that semblance of clarity now.
00:11:11
ohhello
Well, that's a lot of clarity. That's great guidance and advice to those that are watching and listening. Who are some of your top professional mentors and or personal mentors?
Influential Mentors
00:11:20
Nikhil Lai
Yeah.
00:11:23
Nikhil Lai
My first mentor was and is my mom who worked for GE Capital in the late 80s. And that's why my first job out of Wesleyan was at GE Capital, because I just thought that that was the best place to be trained in corporate America.
00:11:36
Nikhil Lai
And my dad, too. I mean, I've i always admired the ways in which they both moved to the New York City area in the mid eighty s and They both grew up in India and I always just admire the way in which they were able to put their head down, work really hard, seemingly not get distracted.
00:11:57
Nikhil Lai
by labels, for example, or by what what other people wanted and of them and just really be the best versions of themselves. So the mentorship, I think, really began there.
00:12:07
Nikhil Lai
My sister worked for Forrester.
00:12:08
ohhello
Thank
00:12:09
Nikhil Lai
She frankly pulled me in to Forrester and referred me to the to the interview process. So I'm eternally grateful for that. And and she mentored me in terms of what it means to, you know,
00:12:22
Nikhil Lai
be a good forester analyst. And then the founders of the companies that I've worked for, including you, including Dave Morgan at SimulMedia, and including the outgoing CEO of GE, Jeff Fimmelt, and some of his some of his lieutenants, the CFO of GE, Keith Cern, was a great mentor to me.
00:12:30
ohhello
thank you, sir.
00:12:46
Nikhil Lai
So I've just always paid close attention to how people like you and them, you know, carry themselves and treat others and try to learn from them.
00:12:55
ohhello
Well, that's very sweet. Thank you very much for mentioning my name with Dave Morgan, some other folks that you've worked with.
00:12:58
Nikhil Lai
Of course.
00:13:01
ohhello
I genuinely appreciate that, my friend.
00:13:01
Nikhil Lai
Of course.
00:13:02
Nikhil Lai
Yeah, I mean it.
00:13:05
ohhello
Thank you. I was not expecting that, but thank you. As you know, as a hello, you're going to be able to donate to a myriad of different charities that are pumped into our platform.
00:13:16
ohhello
What is a cause that's near and dear to you? It doesn't have to be one that's in our
Commitment to Girls' Education in India
00:13:19
Nikhil Lai
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the causes that's always been dear to me that i noticed at a pretty young age is the cause of girls' education in in India.
00:13:19
ohhello
in our platform, just something that's important to you.
00:13:34
Nikhil Lai
And there are a lot of, i mean, most Indians are Hindu and there are a lot of rituals in Hinduism and, uh,
00:13:45
Nikhil Lai
stereotypes that girls are lesser than and that girls have inferior capacity. and and And I've always, dislike that aspect of some of the dogma and the religion is, is actively working on expunging, itself of that, of that dogma. But I think that girls in India, each and every one of them, you know, has, has enormous potential and,
00:14:11
Nikhil Lai
I want to do it and anything that I can to help them realize that.
00:14:15
ohhello
Amazing. Well, Nikhil, this has been great. I know that you have to jump to your next meeting. i appreciate you, everyone watching.
00:14:20
Nikhil Lai
Of course.
00:14:22
ohhello
Thank you, Nikhil Lai. Thank you, my friend. Thanks, everyone.
00:14:25
Nikhil Lai
guarantee
00:14:26
ohhello
Thanks for coming on the pod, Nikhil.
00:14:26
Nikhil Lai
Yeah.
00:14:28
ohhello
We will talk soon and excited for the next one.
00:14:31
Nikhil Lai
Sounds good. Thanks, man.
00:14:32
ohhello
Bye, everybody. Thanks.