MAM
Pinning down the zeitgeist: WPP plugs Pinterest trends into its planning machine
NEW YORK: Trends used to take time. Now they arrive fully formed at breakfast and die by lunch. WPP Media has decided to stop chasing them manually and start piping them straight into the veins of its planning operation instead.
The media giant has struck a deal with Pinterest to embed Pinterest Trends directly into WPP Open, its proprietary planning platform. The integration makes WPP the first agency with bespoke API access to Pinterest’s trend data—essentially giving its planners and clients a cultural early-warning system that updates in real time.
“Culture moves fast, and trends can make or break a campaign,” says WPP Media executive vice president and global head of data and partnerships Amanda Grant. “The challenge isn’t just spotting what’s popular—it’s knowing what matters and moving at the speed of behaviour.”
Pinterest, where 500 million users actively search for inspiration rather than scroll passively, has become something of a crystal ball for marketers. People pin wedding themes six months out, Halloween costumes in August, and Christmas gift ideas before the turkey’s cold. That forward-looking intent makes Pinterest’s data particularly valuable for brands trying to get ahead of the curve rather than jump on bandwagons already rolling downhill.
Through the new integration in Open’s Strategic Insights module, WPP teams can now access trends without leaving their planning console. No more manual research. No more educated guesses about whether “cottagecore” is peaking or “clean girl aesthetic” is yesterday’s news. The system serves up search volumes, seasonality patterns, and trend evolution data, filtered by demographics, categories, keywords and what Pinterest calls “moments”—those cultural inflection points when something goes from niche to mainstream.
The partnership reflects a broader industry shift. As cultural relevance increasingly depends on speed—and algorithms decide what gets seen—agencies are racing to automate the insights that previously required armies of junior planners trawling Reddit and TikTok. WPP is betting that hardwiring Pinterest’s signals into its planning workflow will help clients spot opportunities before competitors do, and avoid backing trends that are already fading.
“Today, cultural relevance is shaped by two forces: the trends that spark ideas and the creator voices that amplify them,” Grant notes. The Pinterest integration tackles the former; presumably, humans still handle the latter.
Whether this turns WPP’s planners into trend-spotting savants or simply gives them better excuses when campaigns flop remains to be seen. But in a world where “brat summer” can dominate global marketing discourse for three months before vanishing entirely, having Pinterest whispering in your ear certainly beats guessing. After all, if you’re going to jump on a bandwagon, you might as well know which direction it’s heading—and how long before it crashes.
Brands
Tessolve lands a semiconductor veteran to drive its next big push
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, who started his career at ISRO and has spent 35 years building chips and companies, joins the Bengaluru-based firm as president and chief operating officer
BENGALURU: Tessolve has never been shy about its ambitions. The Bengaluru-based engineering services firm already counts 18 of the world’s top 20 semiconductor companies among its clients, employs more than 3,500 engineers across 12 countries, and last year pocketed a $150m investment from TPG. Now it has hired the executive it believes can turn those assets into something bigger. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, a 35-year semiconductor veteran who once built satellite payloads for ISRO and has since scaled engineering organisations across three continents, joins as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.
THE MAN AND THE MANDATE
The appointment is, by any measure, a serious hire. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu comes to Tessolve after senior leadership stints at HCL Technologies, Altran and Wipro, where he managed large profit-and-loss portfolios and oversaw cross-regional teams. Over the course of his career, he has been instrumental in bringing more than 1,000 new products to market across the high-tech, energy and manufacturing verticals. Before the private sector claimed him, he began his working life as a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation, contributing to research and development in charge-coupled device technology and satellite payloads, a foundation that shaped everything that followed.
In his new role, he will lead Tessolve’s global growth strategy: expanding its engineering capabilities, deepening customer relationships and accelerating innovation across semiconductor and high-performance computing domains. The brief is broad, but the context is specific. Tessolve operates in the $550 billion global semiconductor market, and its recent moves, the acquisition of Germany’s Dream Chip Technologies and the TPG funding round, have sharpened both its reach and its expectations.
Srini Chinamilli, co-founder and chief executive of Tessolve, is characteristically direct about why Ravi Kumar Chirugudu was the choice:
“As we scale our global semiconductor and system engineering capabilities, Ravi’s appointment marks an important step forward. As global semiconductor demand continues to accelerate across industries, it is creating significant opportunities across the semiconductor lifecycle, from design, packaging, validation and systems integration. Ravi’s deep knowledge and leadership in this ecosystem brings the right mix of industry expertise, customer connect and execution capability, which will play a key role in strengthening our position as a trusted global engineering partner and reinforcing our market leadership.”
THE NEW ARRIVAL SPEAKS
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, for his part, frames the move in terms of timing and culture, two factors that veteran executives tend to weigh as heavily as title or compensation:
“I am happy to join Tessolve at a time when the industry is rapidly evolving towards more complex, AI-driven systems. What stands out to me is its strong people-first culture and its commitment to bringing value to its customers. The strength of its global team, combined with its deep expertise in semiconductor innovation and next-generation product engineering, creates a solid foundation to build differentiated, scalable solutions. I look forward to working closely with the team to drive strategic growth and strengthen its role in shaping the global semiconductor ecosystem.”
The reference to AI-driven systems is not incidental. The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a structural reshaping, driven by the insatiable compute demands of artificial intelligence. For engineering services firms like Tessolve, which offers end-to-end capabilities from silicon design to packaged parts and invests in high-performance computing, high-speed interfaces, photonics and 5G, the moment is both an opportunity and a test. The company says it is well positioned to capture the next wave of industry growth. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu is now the person who has to prove it.
He came in from outer space, literally, and spent three decades learning how the semiconductor industry works from the inside out. Now Tessolve is betting that accumulated knowledge can help it cross the next frontier. In the $550 billion global chip market, the gap between ambition and execution is measured in engineering hours and leadership quality. Tessolve has just gone shopping for both.
