Congratulations on winning two Grand Prix awards and several other accolades including ‘Design Specialist of the Year’ at the Abby One Show awards at Goafest. What is the creative strategy within Famous Innovations that led to this success?
It’s simple - do courageous work. Only courageous work can make a difference. In today’s cluttered content environment, incremental steps are not going to take any brand or cause anywhere. You need to take a leap. As a smaller younger independent agency, taking that risk is not always possible as we don't have the safety net of global alignments. But sometimes, you see a compelling reason, you have partners who take a bet on you and you go for it. The work that won this year was like that, and we hope that seeing its positive impact gives us the courage to take the right risks and push for daring work that makes a difference.
How do you describe the story of crafting the double Grand Prix winner Applegram campaign? What makes it such a big winner?
The seed of this campaign was sown in a very personal conversation. The founder of Radio Zindagi is himself from Kashmir and when the communication blackout was imposed, he could personally relate to the plight of all those people who could not connect with family and friends back in Kashmir. For many of them, it wasn't about the political conflict or historical debate - it was simply about not knowing whether their loved ones are okay. Today, we are used to living in such a hyper-connected world, we can't even imagine not being able to hear from your old parents or your child. Then one thing led to another, many dots were connected and Applegram came together. The initiative broke many rules, so we had to be very sensitive about it and ensure that it didn't draw too many eyeballs, until the blackout itself was lifted, anyway.
Raj Kamble |
Please tell us about the work done for Burger King and other campaigns that make you proud.
Our maximum points at the Abby One Show awards have come from work done for Burger King. All that work makes us very proud because Burger King has set such a high benchmark globally. Courageous work is practically their middle name! Besides, it's so difficult to do something new on the brand or something that isn't an off-shoot of a global idea. The brand's internal elimination process is tougher than any jury's! So, when we created something that was globally recognised as courageous - #LonelyNoMore for Valentine's Day - we couldn't help but feel delighted. In today's cancel culture era, you could imagine how difficult it was to take it from idea to release (it took a year!), but the results made everything worth it.
Apart from that, the work for Livpure, Monster.com, Tadoba all make us proud too. Livpure is a challenger brand in its own category and our strategy for them has been to build the brand via meaning, not just functional benefits (which the whole category relies on) - again a very courageous step against category norms which has brought the brand a lot of love. The brand purpose of ‘Work-Life Balance’ that was adopted by Monster.com (out of which the winning calendar piece was born) has actually been taken forward by the brand in many global markets.
What does this achievement mean for the agency? Tell us about some of the interesting things happening at Famous Innovations and your plans going forward.
As an independent nine-year-old company up against 100+ year-old companies, the playing field is never equal. It is only achievements like these that allow us to show that finally, it's the work matters. Work beats network, as we like to say cheekily! I don't remember the last time an agency won two Grand Prix awards at the Abbys. This kind of recognition puts the weight back on creativity in the industry, where it belongs.
Team Famous Innovations wins the second Grand Prix on Day 3 of Goafest |
Team Famous Innovations also won Design Specialist Agency of the Year |
HOW AN ‘APPLEGRAM’ WAS SENT
When Kashmir suffered Internet blockage in 2019 and all lines of communication were blocked with severe curbs in place, a conversation with the owner of Radio Zindagi, Neeraj Dhar, himself a Kashmiri, led to the seeding of the Applegram campaign. As apples are exported in huge numbers from Kashmir, a way was found to relay communication from Kashmiri families through stickers on these apples to let their dear ones know that they were safe. Volunteers went from door to door collecting these messages on stickers, which were then stuck on apples being loaded onto trucks. The campaign had huge impact, and at Goafest, it won two Grand Prix awards.
