Women to Watch 2021: Charu Menon, Heckler

Charu Menon

Partner and executive producer
Heckler
Singapore 

A recent SK-II Olympics campaign was a monumental project spanning three years, seven countries, countless creatives and clients that have come and gone. One constant through all of it was Charu Menon, partner and executive producer for production house Heckler, who helped piece together the ambitious campaign, keeping all the disparate parts in sync. 

The complex campaign was hardly Menon’s first ambitious project. She has led production and post-production on several global campaigns over the past year, including IBM’s first suite of social films via Ogilvy Singapore, including 20 films that were shared across 10 countries in four languages. This garnered over 69 million social impressions in just a few weeks, along with 1 million engagements. Menon also produced Heckler Singapore’s first remote shoot for Singtel, the 5G launch brand campaign by BBH Singapore directed remotely by Andrei Juradowitch from New York. 

Menon started off as a features producer at CNBC TV18 Mumbai, and then moved to Sydney in 2012. She was commissioned by Tourism Australia to produce and direct Australia Diaries, a series of 16 web-videos shot across the country, promoting Aussie destinations to an Indian audience. These were released to 4.2 million viewers on the digital platform Fame. She also received a federal government grant from the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade to produce and direct five short films chronicling the everyday lives of Indian students studying in Australian Universities. Menon has also produced noted global TVC campaigns including Nike’s Hyper Court, Myer Wonderland, and Tinder’s Interracial Couple Emoji project. 

During a time when production houses were hobbled by the Covid pandemic, Menon’s remote shooting expertise helped Heckler survive—and thrive. She established a Heckler footprint in Southeast Asia by securing large projects, building teams and delivering complex projects. During the pandemic she also supervised production and post for Special Group’s Uber Eats campaign in Taiwan as part of the ‘Tonight I’ll be eating’ series with Taiwanese celebrities Jolin Tsai and Lin Meixiu.

Menon earns a place on this list not just for her enviable portfolio of work, but also for her significant work outside of the office. She is a passionate advocate for gender equality and diversity and post-produced 'Singapura Queens', a music video that launched at Pink Dot, Singapore’s annual event in support of the LGBTQIA+ community. Directed by filmmaker Choānn, the film showcased larger-than-life drag queens against local motifs. The pandemic affected this community drastically, so the concept paid tribute to drag queens by celebrating their strength and spirit despite such adversity. 

Elsewhere, 'By the River', a short documentary about ‘death hotels’ in India, which she wrote and produced as a passion project, won an ACS Golden Tripod—the highest honour for cinematography in Australia.