What are your preferred pronouns?

she/her

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Where's your hometown? 

Cerritos, CA

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How would you describe your current role at Oatly? 

I'm a Creative Director for North America. A lot of my Oatly projects lean more on the non-traditional side, like limited-edition upcycled fashion drops, an episodic cooking show, and a comedic emotional support hotline.

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Is working at Oatly as fun as it looks? What's a typical day like?

Yeah, I definitely think it's pretty fun! A typical day is attending meetings, concepting any new briefs that may have popped up and pushing forward any projects that have already begun.

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What was your path to your current role? How did you get your start?

It's been a long 18 year path, but it started as an intern at W+K in Portland. After that, I moved to SF and worked my way up from junior designer to art director to CD and then moved to Brooklyn. I've worked mostly agency side and freelance, but this is my first time in-house.

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What (or who) are your go-to’s for inspiration or trends that influence your work? 

Pinterest remains one of the best places I go for inspiration. I'll start a Pinterest board every time I start a new work or personal project and it really helps me articulate what I'm envisioning.

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What are some skills beyond creativity and vision that make the biggest difference in your work?

I think patience and emotional intelligence.

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Oatly’s brand has an off the cuff irreverence that is really dialed in. Can you talk a bit about the strategic framework your creative team works within? How do you decide what would and wouldn’t work for the brand?

Yeah, it definitely takes some trial and error. Generally, if an idea feels like any brand would or could do it, we look for that extra twist that would make it feel Oatly. 

For example, the cooking show I helped create called Will It Swap? featured some "chefs" with pretty questionable cooking skills, who often said the name of our brand wrong on-camera. But we prefer the ridiculousness of that to something more polished and scripted.

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You led the launch for Oatly on TikTok - tell us a little about that process? Any TikTok learnings you want to share?

I worked very closely with our Global Social team and our Community Managers to build out a content calendar for the first couple months on the platform. As far as learnings go, I think listening and trusting the (younger) people on my team who spend a lot more time on TikTok than I do was invaluable. This also feels like a no-brainer, but being really intentional about what kind of content you put on there is important. It's not a "just cut our :30 spot in vertical format and throw it on there" kind of platform.

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You've led creative for some amazing brands, do you have a career highlight so far?  

I'm really proud of a 10-episode web series for Spotify that I made a few years ago. At the time, I'd only really worked on :30 commercials, so diving into 10, 3-4 minute episodes that had to be visually and narratively cohesive was totally new to me.
I ended up being co-director, creative director, designer, and even, hand model, on set. It was, hands down, the hardest project I've ever been on because of a pretty lean team and grueling production schedule, but I learned a ton about production, writing, set design, etc.

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What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced so in your career? How did it work out?

Being a South Asian woman (with a hard-to-pronounce name) in advertising has definitely been challenging. I'm often in rooms where no one looks like me and it's tough to feel like I have to constantly prove myself. I think it's something that I will always have to navigate in this industry, but it gets easier with time and more experience.

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What piece of advice would you give young creatives just starting their career?

I'm a huge proponent of side projects and making things outside of your advertising day job. I feel like all my side projects throughout the years really allowed me to develop my voice and figure out what I'm most interested in working on. It also gave future employers a peek into my brain when it's not restrained by a client brief.

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As a multi-hyphenate - creative director, author, and illustrator (impressive!) - how do you find balance and motivation across many demands? (In short: do you ever sleep?)

Haha, yes! I really believe in rest. A lot of us millennials came up in this industry at a time where we were told we should always be hustling, but I think that can really lead to burnout too. I go through really prolific periods where I'm drawing, writing, and making a lot of things outside of work. Then I go through really slow periods when I just want to curl up and watch Project Runway reruns and do nothing, and that's totally ok too!

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Where can The Subtext readers keep up with you? 

Yeah! I'm on IG @rineeshah and my website is rineeshah.com

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Bonus Round: Favorite Seinfeld quote? 

This is a bit obscure, but my partner and I often will quote Kramer's question of "do you ever yearn?" to each other often.

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Bonus Round: Top Albums of 2023 (so far) 

Daughter - Stereo Mind Game

Death Cab for Cutie - Asphalt Meadows

Beirut - Artifacts

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Bonus Round: Dream brief - what does it say in one sentence?

Get us sued.

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