You’ve got to be a lifeaholic to be in advertising: Shibnath Sen

Authored by Shibnath Sen, Senior Creative Director, Wunderman Thompson Kolkata.

Ignited we shine.

You’ve got to be a lifeaholic to be in advertising. Art to apps, books to bots, gizmos to graffiti, cryptocurrency to Kareena, Zen to Zoomba – there are no boundaries. That includes the goss at the water cooler. And the passing conversation that you hear in the Metro or the lift. Which means, don’t have your earphones plugged when you are moving. The more open you are to life, the more your chances to find insights.

A great insight is the first step to create stimulating creatives. Bald men wear wigs to hide hair loss. This is a lazy insight and leads to nowhere. Here is a different one: Bald men in wigs change wigs like women change their hairdo. It’s an insight that fires the juices of creative guys.

An insightful insight never articulates the obvious, but unearths the truth that lies hidden. Remember the ‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ series? There was one TVC in which Aamir Khan, a villager, draws from a well, not water, but Coke bottles, tied at the end of the rope, which quenches the thirst of a bunch of city girls who had stopped their car in a village, looking for a chilled drink. The cool insight came from an age-old rural concept of cooling tender coconuts by dunking them in wells or in stone water cisterns of village homes. One must mine deep into the values, attitudes, and lifestyles of consumers to discover such truths.

Whether it is a print ad, a Facebook post, an Instagram piece, a WhatsApp pic, or a TV commercial, any communication to consumers is always one to one. Even in a large gathering, a speaker who knows the ropes makes eye contact with individual listeners. No one addresses a faceless crowd. And a good presenter reaches out to each listener as if she or he is the only one present. So, any communication to grab attention ought to be fired by a brief. Not a lifeless one, but one which should be an inspiration and a powerful stimulus to create a campaign that connects one to one.

And that must start with finding a consumer insight. The more you search, the more you find. And with Google search engine, that is not all that difficult. No wonder, search itself became the story of that heart-warming, lump-in-the throat Google TVC featuring two old men, one in Delhi and another in Lahore, separated by the Partition when they were kids and reunited decades later in Delhi, by the initiative of the granddaughter of one of them, through the Google search engine. The insight behind the creative was ‘old is gold’ and ‘people when they age, long to relive their youth’.

My all-time favourite is the British Airways campaign that I saw years ago. BA, in those days, took pride in being the world’s largest airline. But they also realised that flyers don’t favour an airline because it is the largest. It had to stand for something larger than its size. BA chose to project itself as large and warm enough to understand the emotions of people the world over. The insight that triggered a campaign came from a simple truth: the oddities in human nature are the same everywhere. One TVC showed an old grandmother, somewhere in Africa, receiving a birthday card. Tears of joy trickled down her wrinkled face. The voice over said, “People the world over cry when they are happy.” Another TVC showed, squealing, giggling schoolchildren rushing out of school, running through a village lane somewhere in Europe. The voice over said, “Children the world over, walk to school and run back home.” The sign-off line for both TVCs: “The world is smaller than you think.” And the BA logo followed.

As advertising doyen Jeremy Bullmore said, “Good insight is like a refrigerator. Because the moment you look into it, a light comes on.”

Look for the light and ignite your creatives.