Masterclass: Creating impactful & clutter-breaking festive advertising campaigns

Nishanth Anathram, Executive Creative Director at Grey Group, discusses the approach to creating impactful festive advertising campaigns, highlighting the importance of innovative ideas and social conversations in his masterclass, ‘How much clutter could a clutter-breaking ad cut if a clutter-breaking ad could cut clutter’ at Social Samosa’s Festive Marketing Camp.

Anathram shares his take on how to create impactful and clutter-breaking festive advertising campaigns. He highlights the importance of developing innovative ideas, emphasising the need for constant engagement and emotional payoffs to keep the audience hooked. 

Below are a few key takeaways.

Advertisers don’t make ads; they make films. They make ads because ads are a very powerful tool, but they don’t want to be associated with the word ‘ad,’ probably because they are conditioned not to like ads, because of bad ads

What brands can do throughout the year is be a part of the social conversations

Every opportunity that brands get to be a part of a social conversation is something they should jump at, and festivals give them that opportunity.

Festivals are a great opportunity to start conversations and to be a part of the conversations. 

At Grey and Grey Bangalore, when an idea comes, they say it should not be obvious; the idea should be surprising, it should stand out and not be obvious at all. But the model is very simple: it should be surprisingly obvious. It should be so obvious, but it should still surprise. 

Surprisingly obvious is the first starting point that the agency uses to evaluate its campaigns. The second thing is, if there is a community to champion it. 

If it is surprisingly obvious, the chances of someone watching it as an audience are higher. If somebody relates to it so much, the chances that they might share it, and it has to be true to the brand. 

What media tells us is that we will show you an ad that reaches people who might be interested. What good ads can do probably is get shared by content channels and accounts, garnering a bigger number of views. Which is zero cost, earned media. 

There are multiple types of ads one can create during Diwali. One of the most common is sentimental ads because sentiments are high during Diwali

If agencies make an ad that works for the brand and the ad has content that is relatable to the people, even people who would not share ads would share it. 

In terms of storytelling and long content, it’s not about how long it is; it’s about how long it feels. 

The Gadbad (dessert delicacy from Mangalore) Theory: Gadbad has enough layers; if you are eating this for about 10 minutes, you have something new to relish every 3 minutes. You don’t stop getting small/mini surprises. This is what brands need to do.

In an ad, there is a setup and there is a misdirection to keep somebody hooked to watch what is being talked about, and then there is the reveal followed by the tension point. When the resolution happens, you can set up the callback.

Every 30 or 40 seconds, there has to be some payoff for the audience. There is a massive gratification at the end, and this is what it means to utilise ‘The Gadbad Theory’ in an ad.

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