'Boundaries have blurred when it comes to creative ideas for a brand campaign'

When it comes to coming up with a creative idea, the boundaries between a brand and other agencies have blurred, said creative advertising experts at the e4m TechManch 2023, the two-day event held in Mumbai.

During a session on ‘The need for intelligent creative’, Manesh Swamy, Chief Creative Officer and SVP creative, LS Digital, said anyone can come up with creative ideas for a campaign.

“When it comes to who comes up with the creative ideas, the boundaries have blurred. These days media agencies come up with ideas too. You get ideas from PR agencies. We have to look at what the clients want and think whether it can be solved from a digital point of view,” he said.

Talking about the importance of data in creating a campaign, Hemant Shringy, CCO, BBDO India, the man behind Ariel’s ‘Share the load’ campaign, said data gives not just facts and figures but also speaks the sentiment.

“For a conversation which is so emotionally and culturally led, you can make a hypothesis of it but you need numbers to make the conviction stronger. We came across an article at one point in time that women spend 5.5 hours in a day on household chores and men spend 19 minutes. That data in a way led us to this conversation.

“With such a campaign, data is not just about facts. It also tells you the sentiment. You realise from comments the tone people have. Each year the tone changes. With each passing year and a new piece of information through data, you know where the sentiment is going and how you match up to it,” he said.

During the session, moderated by e4m Associate Editor Neeta Nair, experts were also asked how they think that creative agencies can fight the monster of social media outrage.

Keigen Pinto, CCO, FCB Ulka, said that the time has come for marketers to be less paranoid and be able to stick to their stance and brave the outrage.

“Is outrage resulting in pulling out campaigns instantly? I think more often than not. It is time to manage outrage and not be outraged by social media outrage. A brand sticking to its stance and defending with dignity and articulation can get double love for it. I request marketers to just be braver and more courageous because we are polished and have the power of digital agencies managing us being our verbal stylists and managing our journeys,” Pinto said.

Ram Jayaraman, Chief Creative Officer, Mullen Lintas was of the view that agencies should be able to own up if it’s a mistake, do damage control of it and move on.

“Sometimes outrage can be a strategy to get eyeballs but a sweet sorry always helps because you never really know what offends people nowadays. As long as you are honest about an idea and the people you are serving, an apology should work in case you have crossed the boundary,” said Jayaraman.

During the power-packed session, experts also discussed where a creative agency’s job ends and how much they have to be involved in populating the videos in the age of performance marketing,

Pinto explained how one step can beat the typical ideas that agencies stick to, by giving the example of his campaign #twobinslifewins which was tweeted by Ratan Tata and became viral.

“Sometimes we create something that may be powerful or not and you send it over to the media guys who may not be a part of the nerve and the tears of the idea. We spent two days on the campaign and we thought we were getting it right until we felt that it was typical.

“The film was about manual scavengers. It was very powerful and we had an intuitive feeling that we might have got the media plan wrong. So we junked all ideas and just got Mr Ratan Tata to tweet it. It exploded and went viral,” he said.

Speaking on the same, Swamy said, “If your core is right, you automatically will get the audience.”

Asked about RoI for agencies and how investments help, Amaresh Godbole, CEO, Digital Technology Business, Publicis Groupe India, said it depends on the objective and what role you are playing.

“If you are taking end-to-end ownership of the campaign, then you could measure it and uplift in sales and promote additional metrics but if you are playing a niche role, then you can measure only niche metrics.

“The more ownership the client gives to a particular partner to take end-to-end views, the more you’ll be able to deliver RoI in terms of end metrics like business conversion and sales,” he said.