During the 2022 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), one of the brands that stood out with its unconventional advertising was the Jaquar Group. The company took a never-seen-before approach to promote its lighting products range. Enormous Brands conceptualised the ads. The agency highlighted the brand’s lighting products for homes, offices and outdoor spaces, while reminding audiences about the company’s bath and sanitary ware range, keeping humour as its centerpiece and without making it look like a catalogue. The ads were a play on human imagination.
Cut to the end of December 2022. The agency’s work for AIS Windows became a chatter on social media. The ad for the company, which is into the doors and windows segment, has the right amount of humour, curiosity, and brand messaging.
Enormous Brands has been glamming up categories that are not often perceived to be glamorous. Ashish Khazanchi, managing partner of the agency, tells Storyboard18, that they “don’t judge opportunities.”
“As agencies, if we give opportunities that come our way the respect they need, we can come up with breakthrough solutions. It will also attract marketers to reach out to you who have the appetite for innovation,” Khazanchi says.
No pitch, please!
AIS Windows had reached out to Enormous Brands to participate in its creative pitch. Khazanchi politely refused the request because his agency doesn’t actively go for pitch meetings. Here’s why. “We don’t usually go for pitches because it short-changes the clients who actually pay you for your time. Pitches short-change the strategy in favour of shortcut ideas,” he explains.
Interestingly, AIS Windows reached out to the agency again, this time with a project. The team at AIS Windows picked ads that were simple and easy to decipher which hit the spot right. Khazanchi and his team spent time in understanding the consumer insights and purchasing behaviour of doors and windows. What works for companies like AIS Windows and Jaquar is to create advertising that’s sticky, opines Khazanchi — just like how Ogilvy India did with refrigerator brand Kelvinator, recalls Khazanchi.
Kelvinator’s ad campaign, ‘the coolest one’, was a clutter-breaker in the nineties. “Look at the time when Piyush Pandey created ads for Kelvinator and Fevicol. If it worked, I believe many such categories have a huge headroom for advertising that’s simple at heart and that stands out in the crowd,” he says.
Recall value of ads falling
According to Khazanchi, the recall value of advertising has dropped because clients’ focus is shifting to efficiency rather than impact. “There are very few clients who mean it when they say they want impactful work. A lot of clients look at cheaper and faster solutions, that too in a certain quantity. I think this is a by-product of performance marketing. We also do performance marketing. However, I do think you can use the same formula of keeping it simple yet effective to create an impact,” he adds.
Enormous Brands was launched in 2013. Since then, the agency has worked with a host brand, mostly recently with Rapido, Digiboxx, Winkies, Finolex, Zomato, Shopeclues, among others. The agency has about 70 employees across Delhi and Mumbai.