Developing memorable characters was our key focus for Winkies campaign: Ashish Khazanchi

The Covid-19 pandemic has been particularly hard on small businesses that have faced massive losses during the lockdown. From long shutdowns of shops to dwindling finances, the past two years have been quite nerve-wracking for the industry. However, there have been as many good samaritans who have tried and helped these small business owners through these challenges. Winkies, a premium bakery brand popular in east India, celebrated these good samaritans in a thoughtful Christmas campaign last month, which has since gained a lot of traction for its emotional storytelling and binding narrative. 

In a recent conversation with exchnage4media.com, Ashish Khazanchi who is the managing partner at Enormous - the agency behind the ad, shared, “The brand had come to us for a campaign that went beyond just talking about the cakes but built a lot of saliency for the brand with a strong visual narrative. We, at Enormous, were also looking forward to creating a film that stood out in the clutter of festive ads and we were glad to have gotten this opportunity.”

He shared that the team got excited about the aspect that they will get to create a long-form ad that will go just beyond the product and will have a strong focus on the story. 

Speaking about the process of creating the campaign, Khazanchi further shared, “We had a month-and-a-half to make this film, which is about half of the time one would usually take to create a good animated campaign of this length. So, we had to be pretty hands-on with the process, right from the inception to sourcing the right kind of talent who would work on animating the characters, to the right kind of music. I ended up writing and directing the film myself and the team at Enormous worked collectively to streamline the process.”

He added that they went on to create the film as they would work on a live-action film. “Our core focus was on developing memorable and lovable characters. So, character development was a very elaborate process – right from how the kid, the barber, and the Santas would look to how they will emote. We then connected with a number of artists on Instagram to design and develop them. The background was also very carefully curated to make each frame a unique one. We also sourced the best music and the whole film turned out to be beautiful.”

Khazanchi is proud that the film quickly got feet of its own and went viral across platforms including Whatsapp. “I am so overwhelmed to see the love this campaign has been getting right from the audience to people in the advertising community. I also shared with my peers in international markets and have heard very kind and encouraging words from them too.”

While Enormous’ attempt at creating a memorable animated film is getting celebrated, many are of the view that there is very limited attempt from Indian brands to use this form of storytelling in advertising. On being asked the same, Khazanchi said, “I agree that the animated ads market is very limited in the country. But we also have to consider that brands are creating exceptional live action films too. Why make an animated ad just for the sake of it; it has to sit well with the brand image and the story they are trying to tell. There are also brands like Amul who have built their whole personality using animations.

He highlighted that the scope for this form of content will continue to be limited in the future too but he expects the attempts to be more serious and meaningful.

He concludes by emphasising, “It will always be about what the brand stands for and how it wants to communicate the same.”