Yet another #MeToo revelation shook the advertising fraternity industry on Thursday with a tweet from awardwinning author Meghna Pant (@meghnapant) carrying anonymous accounts of two women on the sexual acts of veteran adperson Ravi Deshpande.
Other than helming agencies like Contract in the past, Deshpande has now set up his own agency called Whyness, and also runs a design school at Ecole Intuit.lab.
When we asked Deshpande and Whyness to respond to the allegations, this is what we receive via email: “We are surprised to learn about the allegations made against Ravi. We will look into and verify this.â€
There have been several allegations against advertising professionals ever since the #MeToo revelations rocked the country earlier this month. The co-founders of Happy Creative Services, now a part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, and a few other senior professionals have already faced the axe from their respective employment.
There have also been allegations against the founders of Creativeland Asia and Famous Innovations. According to sources, some leading advertisers who have retained big to small-named agencies are also conducting their own investigations and may terminate mandates if the acts of agency professionals are found to be in dissonance with their own values and ethics, and if the agencies do not act against the ‘erring’ professionals.
It’s been doing the rounds for many months, but when the news came in of Dentsu Aegis Network of acquiring Bengaluru-based creative agency Happy Creative Services, there was much happiness all around. Happy has being doing some spending work in the past and the Dentsu Aegis acquisition will ensure that it grows bigger. Plus with this, mcgarrybowen enters India and it will possibly carry some of its global mandates here. A few hours before complete the final legal formaties of the deal on Thursday, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia and Happy co-founders Kartik Iyer (also CEO) and Praveen Das (also Managing Director) took time off to speak with Pradyuman Maheshwari and Santosh Jangid. Excerpts from the interviews.
To me the most important thing in an acquisition is chemistry: Ashish Bhasin
One more acquisition?
Yes, it’s another global brand that we have managed to bring to India with this and now Happy Mcgarrybowen is going to be our fifth creative agency in the market.
While the Happy acquisition is significant, the big other story is that you have got a large full-service agency like mcgarrybowen to India. Tell us about that.
mcgarrybowen is one of the most creative agencies which started off in the United States. It’s really huge there and some most outstanding global brands that they have worked on. Their philosophy is that they don’t want to have 200 offices in 180 countries. They have picked up few centres of excellence of places where they will operate from – in Asia, that is China, India and Singapore and we are very proud that they have selected India as one of those markets. They are now present in several European countries and perhaps in South America and few countries they are gonna take on. So it is a very big opportunity for us that such an agency which is known to be one of the most successful and large creative agency networks, we are able to bring in to India with this partnership with Happy. So that’s going to be Happy mcgarrybowen
How will it be different than the other four agencies in the Dentsu Aegis Network fold in India?Â
Each agency that we have has its own independent leadership, its own independent creative directors and its own independent set of clients and they operate as completely separate agencies. Each of them has a different flavour and that depends to a large extend on the leadership, the creative directors and the business heads as well as on the flavour of clients that they have. So you will see each one of them having a very different flavour, different sub-culture. What we try to do is we allow each of our businesses to maintain their own sub-culture which they use to growing up with, which is healthy and which is why they have been successful. But we bring it under the over arching umbrella of Dentsu Aegis Network’s culture. We all subscribe to same vision, same values and that’s what binds us. But we don’t want to make any agency or any part of the business look like another part of the business.
So why Happy?
To me the most important thing in an acquisition is chemistry. When you meet somebody you must get that sense that these are people I want to wake up with every morning on a work day for next ten-twenty years. Their quality of work has to be superb because that’s what clients really want and value and their value system should be very similar to our value system. We had very straightforward meetings, we had two quick discussions and by the end of the second discussion itself both of us were very clear that we wanted to go ahead. Of course this being India and processes being what they are it takes a long time from that time to the acquisition to be finished but the actual decision-making process in my mind happened the fastest in this instance because the way the chemistry just stuck.
Are you going to grow the mcgarrybowen network in India in terms of more acquisitions?
I’m not sure in terms of more acquisitions but I’ll be happy if Kartik and Praveen are in an agreement, i would be happy for them to go to more bigger clients, I would be happy that we target some of mcgarrybowen clients which are there globally but we don’t have here in India because we are just setting mcgarrybowen now. I will also be happy if need be and if clients want more offices of Happy mcgarrybowen in rest of India I don’t think another acquisition is what we will go for mcgarrybowen but definitely we would like to go for different clients, different cities, different set of challenges we work it.
If you want to stay in business, stay relevant, you have to keep growing: Kartik Iyer and Praveen Das
Why the sell-out after nine years as an independent creative agency?
Kartik Iyer: We are not looking at it that way because we are still sitting here and doing everything we did up until now and in our perspective this is only going to help us do it better. Happy is an organically grown debt-free company and anybody who has been in business knows that at various stages of growth, money is what makes more money and we have done everything in our capability without pulling too many favours to bring this agency this far and our clients and campaigns have worked and our campaigns have brought to life the fact that what we are trying to do works and is correct in a lot of ways. It just came to a point where we had to give Happy everything it needs. We have always been very clear with that. We both are the founders of Happy and we are not Happy and to be able to compete in a market with the biggest guys we needed to equip the agency with everything that it could require. Happy has come to a point where we can’t turn away10 people especially because we are handling large clients saying that we can’t do this or you will have to find somebody else. We must have it all. Not saying that we provide every service that’s available but I think it needs that kind of muscle to pull forth from every angle.
Does your acquisition and that of various others in the past meant that there isn’t much of a future for independent agencies
Praveen Das: I don’t believe that. It’s a fact of life but when we started Happy we said we would just be 35 people and we will do some really kickass work but though we did that with that bit, there were a lot of people who wanted to join us and at that point we reached a stage where we were neither small nor big. So we thought why not just go to the other end and become a large agency with the same culture of a small agency.
Kartik Iyer: Let’s not forget there are independents in the industry today who have aspirations to buy networks. So there is no hard-and-fast rule that the network is the end-game. For some it could be end-game for some it could be means to the end.
Is acquisition the only way out to go to the next level?
Praveen Das: We had Flipkart and Myntra when they started off and as they grew bigger we also had to grow bigger.
Kartik Iyer: I wouldn’t look at it as a way out. It depends on what kind of business you are. Growth is the only law of business. So if you want to stay in business, stay relevant, you have to keep growing, at various stages capital is a very important ingredient. So far you can provide it yourself it’s fine but at a later stage you need that capital to be coming in and lastly it’s got to do with what is your vision, what kind of agency you are and what is it that you want. For some it could be a way out, for some it could be a way in.
At which point did you think this is the way to go?
Kartik Iyer: It’s a matter of perspective. Are we aligning ourselves with a large one or are we taking on the backing of a large one? Are we wiring into the nervous system or are we using their muscle? So it is a matter of perspective and that is the difference between different agencies. There is no single formula, there is no single perspective.
Why Dentsu?
Kartik Iyer : We met pretty much everybody. We have always had the belief that it doesn’t matter what organisation or brand who represents if long as the guy sitting on the other end is a monkey run. So it didn’t matter and it was all depended on the individuals we met. There was a certain no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point-kind-of person that Ashish is that we felt very comfortable about.
Praveen Das: We met a lot of people before we met Ashish who came to our office and met us but we never found any fire on the other side but when we met Ashish we knew there was a leadership that was on fire.
Kartik Iyer: We were very clear that at some point we would merge with someone. It wasn’t so much of a network but we wanted to merge with someone who would really bring in to the agency that would be a match in the philosophy and Ashish came speaking to us about mcgarrybowen. DAN was just the holding company. The brand and the philosophy that we were marrying into was mcgarrybowen and mcgarrybowen has a pretty much similar story as Happy. So we saw their work, we met them and there was a match in culture. At one end you have the DNA of a Japanese firm which we both are a big fans of Japanese culture and the work that they produce and on the other end there was a brand which was coming out of New York. It was a dream come true.
What would be tangible difference apart from a name and ownership change?
Kartik Iyer: One is opportunity, two is working with global units on global pictures, third is exchange of in talent which we had no one to ask, other agencies write to someone and dust it off and say, send me your presentation on this, but we had no one to send us any presentations.
How are you looking at growing the mcgarrybowen brand in India?
Kartik Iyer: We are not seeing Mcgarrybowen as a separate brand, we are not seeing Happy as a separate brand. How we are going to grow Happy Mcgarrybowen in ways that we didn’t till now. We plan to go and take a shot at bigger accounts.
SABMiller India has launched a five-part documentary series that traces the history and legacy of the Haywards brand from a family brewed spirit to one of India’s most popular beer brands.
The video series titled ‘2 Men and a Beer’ features the exploratory journey of Benjamin Hayward (the grandson of Sir Anthony Hayward) across India, tracing the origins and heritage of the brand that was founded by his grandfather.
A BBC news channel report on one of India’s famous beer brands – Haywards 5000 – caught the attention of Ben Hayward, a young member of the Haywards family. Based in the UK in Birmingham, Ben was curious to understand his family’s journey in India and got in touch with SABMiller (the holding company of Haywards 5000) to help him understand more about his family’s past. SABMiller helped him travel through India and discover his family roots as well as the evolution of Haywards 5000 beer. This journey has been captured into a video series by the Bengaluru-based Happy Creative Services.
The video has been released on online entertainment platform TVF Play as well as on both Facebook and YouTube.
Said Ben Hayward: ‘’I am delighted to learn that Haywards is one of India’s most reputed beer brands. As I spent time understanding tracing my family’s journey, I felt very proud of my legacy. I am thrilled to bring this story to you.’
It was such a fantastic experience to travel around India exploring the heritage of the Haywards 5000 brand. The journey gave me an appreciation for the sheer size of both the country and scope of the brand; and I particularly enjoyed meeting the many people that brew, distribute and enjoy the beer on a daily basis. It was a really special trip that enabled me to see, first hand, the legacy that my great grandfather has left in a country he loved so much”
Added Karthik Iyer, Co-Founder, Happy Creative Services: “There is nothing more powerful and inspiring than a true story. When we heard that Ben Hayward saw a BBC documentary about the iconic Indian beer Haywards 5000 sitting in Birmingham and realised it was started by his grandfather, it actually prompted him to apply for an internship at SABMiller – the parent company in India. We knew right then it was a fabulous opportunity to document Ben’s journey to trace the actual roots of the brand and his family. It’s not every day such things happen. This journey goes beyond an advertising idea or a content opportunity. It is the true story of a great Indian beer, its founder and the family pride of a young man from England. Two Men and a Beer is easily one of the most exciting projects we have worked on as an agency. It has history, transcends geography and gave us the opportunity to create visual poetry. It is a story that deserves to be told, so it can live on forever.”
Happy Creative Services has strengthened its Design and B2B/Enterprise division to offer a complete suite of services to their clients. This includes brand identity and logo creation, packaging, environmental graphics, UI/UX Design, interactive product design and a range of B2B offline and digital solutions with a keen understanding of enterprise marketing.
Arnab Ray, leads the creative members as Group Creative Director; Akshaye Madhok heads Business Growth for both the functions; Nandita D’costa is Business Head, Design; Avneet J is Business Head, B2B/Enterprise; and Kiran B.S. is the Technology Director.
The 25+ member team is replete with a Creative Director for B2B, senior and junior designers who specialise in graphic design, UI/UX, environment and space design; writers who specialise in design writing and copywriting; programmers as well as a dedicated brand strategist.
“Since inception, Happy has always had a strong Design team, and has won many awards for Design work. Today with the evolving market and fragmented media scenario, Design & Digital, with a strong technology component, are being leveraged to find solutions for brands, internal communication, BTL and B2B. Communication and engagement is being done through good design thinking and compelling content. To keep pace with these changes we have now created an exclusive, super talented team of top notch industry professionals to tackle design, digital and B2B. From UI/UX to Augmented Reality and VR, Apps to Games, groovy product design to cool packaging, corporate identity to quirky videos, we deliver the entire spectrum,” says Praveen Das, Chief Creative Officer and Co-founder, Happy.
“Everything is melting in the advertising and design space today. Lines are blurring each day. In this scenario, its imperative that we have internal specialists to be able to meet clients’ needs and more importantly maintain consistent quality of output. There is no other way to build a solid brand today. It has always been a constant effort for us to build Happy as a medium agnostic agency with the ability to deliver hybrid services to clients. This is just one step closer to make that happen better for us,” says Kartik Iyer, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder, Happy.
Arnab Ray was previously Creative Lead at Brand Union (Bangalore), Ogilvy, Rediffusion Y&R, JWT and ITSA Brand Innovation. With a body of work that spans across a decade and several design awards to his name—One Show, Kyoorius, Abby’s—Ray has a proven track record and humble, calm demeanour to go with it.
Having been with Happy for over 16 months, in his new role Akshaye Madhok marries his decade long expertise in technology development with brand development.
Armed with over 14 years of Marketing and Corporate Selling experience, Nandita D’costa, has recently moved back to India. Prior to Happy, Nandita was an Associate Account Director at Nebula, Dubai where she managed Nestle Purina, BlackBerry, Microsoft Gulf, Estee Lauder, Glaxo Smithkline, HTC and L’Oreal.
Before joining Happy, Avneet J. was the client services director at Access Leo Burnett, Kenya. Where he was handling key clients such as Orange Telkom, Samsung East Africa, L’Oreal, Guinness, StarTimes, Africa Internet Group. A self starter and former entrepreneur, Avneet packs 14 years of client servicing and business experience.
Kiran B.S. comes from a strong technology background. Having worked at Ogilvy, Pixel Mavericks and Geek, Kiran specialises in manifesting creative ideas into digital reality.
Myntra has launched a 360 degree campaign to announce the arrival of its flagship fashion sale – ‘End Of Reason Sale’, to be held on the 2nd and 3rd of July. The core campaign thought is expressed by the tagline, “Tayyar Ho Jaoâ€, which means “Get ready†and also translates to getting dressed. This is a loud call for all fashion shoppers to prepare for the country’s biggest fashion event.
The 30-second ad film takes viewers through a series of settings, where people are gearing up for Myntra’s EORS in their own exaggerated ways – by measuring body sizes, setting up reminders for midnight sale start and preparing elaborate wish-lists of products to fully focus on shopping during the sale. Adding charm to the film, the video showcases Hrithik enthusiastically blocking dates and gearing up for the sale. The actor is seen wearing his active lifestyle brand, HRX, which is retailed exclusively on Myntra.
The TVC is directed by Razneesh Ghai, produced by Asylum Films and conceptualized by Happy Creative Services. Apart from presence across TV channels, the campaign also uses other media channels like print, radio, OOH, digital, DTH across 10+ leading cities.
Speaking about the campaign, Myntra’s CMO & Head of International Brands, Gunjan Soni said, “The upcoming edition of EORS is the country’s biggest online fashion sale event to date and we are confident of providing a delightful, memorable sale experience to all customers. Hence, we are reaching out to all our existing and new customers, to help them get ready to enjoy and get the best out of the sale event. Opportunities like this come rarely. Toh India, Tayyar Ho Jao!â€
Kartik Iyer, CEO, Happy Creative Services said, “The End-Of-Reason sale as a concept has been running successfully for a couple of seasons now. With this year’s sale being bigger and better we needed to capture the scale and excitement of people around the country. We were also trying to make the sale relevant to a larger audience. There is a certain energy & style to a brand like Myntra so we wanted to capture that even through the Sale offering. So India, tayyar ho jao! No reason to miss this Sale.â€
Chai Point, an omni-channel beverage brand, has handed over its creative and digital mandate to Bangalore based idea shop Happy Creative Services.
Chai Point is one of the early entrants in the organised tea chain business and targets the market of young working professionals via its network of stores, dispensers on corporate premises and their delivery business. Since their start in 2010, Chai Point has achieved a scale of 90+ outlets across 7 cities, namely – Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore.
The creative portfolio will cover three major verticals of Chai Point – Retail Hubs, Chai@Work and Chai-on-Call. As the brand expands its offerings, Chai Point aims to be known as the preferred breakfast and snack delivery channel.
Speaking on the association with Happy, Amuleek Singh Bijral, CEO Chai Point said, “We are really excited to have Happy Creative Services as our partner; and we look forward to working with them to build our brand.â€
Kartik Iyer
On the partnership, Kartik Iyer, CEO and Co-Founder of Happy Creative Services said, “Its really exciting for us to partner with Chai Point. It only goes further to prove our capability in birthing new brands and growing them into household names. That too a category like chai is as traditional and basic as it gets. To take something that simple and add consumer experience to an un-organised sector can be challenging. The energy of the founders and the passion with which they have built their business truly inspires us. We look forward to creating some fun and insightful work for the brand.â€
Happy Creative Services has won the mandate for two design projects to the Team Swachh initiative: brand logo and identity; and the creation of a play-based school kit called the Team Swachh action kit. Happy won these design mandates after a multi-agency pitch held in Delhi by WASH United, a Berlin based non-profit organization, and UNICEF India, who have jointly initiated Team Swachh.
In support of the Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Mission, Team Swachh seeks to spark a social movement for sanitation and toilet use. This movement plans to cut across urban and rural population, class, gender, age, region and religion to help make India a clean nation, where everyone uses a toilet. To achieve that, Team Swachh taps into what Indians unanimously love: cricket. And Sachin Tendulkar is the captain of this team. Team Swachh aims to move people from apathy to concern and taking action. By joining the movement, people become team members and will be given options, online and offline, to become active agents for change.
For the logo, the insight was that toilets alone won’t change India. People wanting to use toilets will. Hence, the logo merges the universal sign of good with the icon of an Indian toilet. The message: toilets are fantastic. The composition also brings out a keen eye for cleanliness. This logo was launched on 18th January 2016, with ICC and Sachin Tendulkar. And the Team Swachh initiative will be officially launched at the ICC T20 World Cup 2016.
The second design project – The Team Swachh Action Kit — is designed specifically for schools. It is based on the principles of play-based learning and rule-based habit formation. It uses thoroughly thought out, tested games and activities, interspersed with discussions. The team at Happy, WASH United and UNICEF India have collaborated to ensure that the activities in the kit create a joyful and exciting experience, while at the same time driving life-saving behavioural change. The kit is created in English, Hindi and Bengali. And it will be adapted in other official regional languages to reach schools across India.
Praveen Das, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Happy Creative Services, says, “Happy since inception has always been keen on communication for good. Team Swachh gives us an excellent opportunity not only in terms of doing good work but also working towards a bigger goal of educating the country on clean toilets and making India a young, healthy and vibrant nation.â€
Kartik Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Happy Creative Services, adds, “We have always believed in work that makes a difference. It is a matter of great pride to be collaborating with WASH United and UNICEF. The cause, which is very basic, is something that our country needs to wake up to while we race into the next decade. We strongly believe in the solutions we have created for the movement. We look forward to a considerable impact by 2019.â€
Sören Bruhn, Chief Creative Officer, WASH United says, “We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Happy from day one. The Happy team very much bought into the goal of Team Swachh to create transformative social change across India and went above and beyond to deliver outstanding quality. We look very much forward to teaming up again on other projects.â€
Bangalore based Happy Creative Services has strengthened its strategic planning team by bringing on board Phalgun Tiruvasu as Head of Strategic Planning.
With a career spanning over 15-years across communication, research & journalism, Phalgun’s previous stint was with Lowe Lintas & Partners, Bangalore where he led the strategic mandate on Tanishq, Britannia, Tata Tea, Arvind Brands, amongst others. Prior to Lowe, Phalgun was the lead strategist on ITC Foods & TVS Motors at McCann Bangalore. Apart from Bangalore, Phalgun has also worked at Publicis Ambience, Mumbai on Marico & Diageo and with Y&R Jakarta on Danone. Well experienced in qualitative research, Phalgun worked with Quantum on Tata Motors & Unilever and also briefly ran his own research consultancy firm. Winner of multiple Effies, Phalgun has been integral to many noteworthy campaigns, namely Tanishq “Re-marriageâ€, Tata Tea “Andar Wala Snaanâ€, Arrow “Bold New Professional†– just to name a few.
Phalgun will lead manage a hybrid team comprising of strategists from communication (offline, online), data & design to further Happy’s prowess in delivering medium-agnostic, efficacious creative solutions to brands & businesses. Phalgun will be supported by Ravi Bhat, an old Happy stalwart, who recently returned to Happy after a short stint with Lowe Lintas Bangalore. Besides Ravi Bhat, the team also stars Ashwin Dravid (ex- Maxus, Jack-n-the-Box) looking after content strategy, Hari Nair (ex- Razorfish) on leading data & Anusha Pinto on design.
Praveen Das
Kartik Iyer & Praveen Das, Co-founders of Happy are equally emphatic about the new strategic impetus. Says Kartik: “Happy has always been a strong believer in strategic planning. We have taken great care to put together a team that has a multi dimensional approach to delivering strategic solutions. Under the able leadership of Phalgun, we sincerely hope to carve sharper insights and further success to all our clients. This is another step closer to our vision of being a truly hybrid agency in the country.â€
Praveen Das adds: “With Phalgun at the helm of strategy and him being a national level dart player, we are sure that he will hit the bulls eye for all our clients in terms of strategy. And will inspire our creative team to come up with great output.“
Lookup has appointed Happy Creative Services to handle its creative partner. The appointment is for both the communication mandates, traditional and new age media.
Lookup is a free hyper-local messaging app to chat with any local business. The application was launched earlier this year without much fanfare. Even so, due to its simplicity and relevance to consumers and businesses, it has managed to hit a million downloads within the first 9 months with over 70,000 merchant signups.
Deepak Ravindran, a serial entrepreneur, who has spent over a decade in the messaging industry believes that chat is the future of commerce and envisions Lookup to become the Google of Offline for finding and ordering anything from a cup of latte to a prescription drug from any local store near you.
Currently serving Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, Lookup will soon be launched in 10 major cities by end of this year.
On the partnership with Happy, Deepak Ravindran, Founder of Lookup said “Happy brings to us the perfect combination of sound strategy, creativity, professionalism and young perspective. The brands they’ve built are proof of their capabilities. The team is made of young early adopters who have a pulse on what’s happening today as well as foresight of what will set us apart in the future. That’s very important for a tech-business like ours.”
Speaking on the association, Praveen Das, CCO and Co-Founder of Happy Creative Services said “It’s interesting when both parties are wowed by each other. Deepak is a young founder. And he already has a few startups in his portfolio. He is bold, unafraid and just goes for it. His previous ventures have circled around similar themes, so his learnings are vast. We believe that hyper local is not the next big thing but the way forward now. Lookup partners with us during exciting times.”
Following a multi-agency creative pitch, Kolkata based Joy Cosmetics has appointed Happy Creative Services, Bangalore to lead the creative mandate for them.
The portfolio consists of multiple variants of face wash, face scrubs, face packs, creams, lotions and shampoos, catering to different personal care requirements. The annual marketing spend on the portfolio is estimated to be around Rs 50 crore.
The retail footprint of the brand includes both general and most notable modern trade outlets across 23 Indian states. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh & Uttar Pradesh are the strongest markets. The brand is also available in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Middle East & Africa.
Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma has been endorsing Joy Skin Fruits Face Wash range since 2012.
Poulomi Roy
Poulomi Roy, Head Marketing Joy Cosmetics said, “The personal care market in India is still at a nascent stage in comparison to the developed countries and there is ample growth opportunity in years to come. Joy perhaps being one of the very few Indian companies who is purely into the personal care space and is here to stay as a prominent player. Keeping this objective in mind year 2015-16 is a crucial year for the company; some strategic alignments have taken place within the organization and also with our partners, having Happy on board is a part of this process. We believe the young energetic team of Happy will play a vital role to help brand JOY achieve its defined milestone.â€
Kartik Iyer
Speaking on the association, Kartik Iyer, CEO and Co-Founder of Happy Creative Services said, “It’s an honour to be chosen with a brand like Joy Cosmetics. The fact that they were open minded about working with an agency based in another city itself proves that they are a forward thinking organisation. We look forward to breaking some category codes and giving birth to a fresh new brand in the personal care space. And if you haven’t cracked the Happy-Joy joke yet, we already have.â€
Mobile Wallet player MobiKwik has recently launched their first integrated brand campaign. With an estimated annual media budget of Rs 100cr, this campaign is a key step towards MobiKwik’s growth plan of increasing its user base from 17 million to 100 million and its retailer base from 50,000 to 200,000 over the next 7 months. MobiKwik aims to create India’s largest payments network with 100M digitally paying users on one side and 200,000 retailers on the other side.
The campaign, conceptualized by Bangalore based Happy Creative Services, comprises of four TV commercials highlighting some of the user cases of the MobiKwik. The TV campaign is being amplified across OOH, Radio & other online platforms… to drive home the brand’s promise of being ‘more than a wallet’.
On the campaign, Saurabh Srivastava, Chief Marketing Officer of MobiKwik said, “With this 360 degree campaign, our goal is to take to the larger audience a product that has been successful for the last 6 years. The team has worked long and hard to bring to the market a lightweight mobile-wallet that works seamlessly to pay bills, recharge, shop, transfer money and more. The first campaigns are always memorable and with our series of 4 ads, we’re hoping to carve out a space for MobiKwik Wallet in the user’s mind.”
Kartik Iyer
Kartik Iyer, Chief Executive Office and Co-Founder of Happy Creative Services shared, “Thanks to technology, user behaviour is being altered on a daily basis. A product like MobiKwik has more than one dimension to it. And to be able to communicate that all under one umbrella was really the challenge. I think we have managed to charmingly communicate the different facets of how MobiKwik delivers on being more than a wallet. May the downloads begin.â€
When they are not playing successful admen, Kartik Iyer and Praveen Das, are dutiful husbands and loving fathers. Five years back, the duo joined hands to launch Happy Creative Services and there’s been no looking back since. Interestingly, the duo had never partnered before and their first work together was at Happy. What makes Happy an interesting story is that these men were no celebrities before they started their venture unlike many on the entrepreneurial road who have reached at the helm of an agency and then decide to go on their own. So pretty much a risk that Iyer and Das took but a risk definitely worth taken.
L to R: Praveen Das, Kartik Iyer
Happy was first noticed for its work on Lee which came to them when they set shop. Since then they have gone on to do many notable work. Their association with the e-commerce behemoth Flipkart has won them both awards and accolades. In fact, Flipkart works have catapulted Happy if one may say in a ‘Happy state’ as these works have been noticed by many. Besides, the works have helped Flipkart in debunking many myths related to online shopping and the biggest achievement being that it helped in creating the brand Flipkart. If people know of Flipkart today the credit to a large extent also goes to Happy for helping in creating the brand.
Mr Iyer in fact pointed that with changing economies and new age companies being launched, there has emerged a need for new age agencies. He said, “The world is changing at a rapid pace. While there are old school companies that are married to their agencies and the creative team might come and go or the quality may differ but it would not impact their relationships as they are pretty much set in stone. But in an era when new businesses are being born not from HUL and Tata, there also is a need for new age people and new age thinking.”
“In any market one is willing to try anything that is new but the key is that you should be good to succeed. Initially when we launched, I think we were like a new packet of juice in the market, every client wanted to meet us especially after the Lee campaign but the challenge is to take new businesses and delivering quality work which is superior and consistent.”
The Bengaluru-based agency has recently expanded its footprint to Mumbai. However, the decision to be in Mumbai has to purely do with the fact that it helps them in servicing their clients better who are based in the city. The base camp very much remains Bengaluru. In fact, their inspiration to set shop and be successful in the laidback city of Bengaluru which is known more for its IT than its creative prowess comes from the city’s other success story- Nirvana Films. Nirvana has done several successful big brands films even though they are based in Bengaluru so pretty much a good example to follow for Happy.
When Messrs Iyer and Das who were both at Ogilvy decided to start on their own, they pretty much didn’t have a plan in place but oodles of energy and enthusiasm. They chatted and discussed for almost 30 days and from there emerged Happy. Mr Iyer said, “That’s the secret of our story that we didn’t have any plan. But yes as we talked, we became clear how we will be different, what will be our offering, what will be special about us and that’s how a broad framework emerged. Even today we are totally open to learn and adapt. I think the uninformed choice is much better which we followed when we started.”
Mr Das, the quieter of the duo however added, “It’s definitely not been an easy run but both of us are ambitious as well as driven to make Happy happening. If we were to start all over again today and knowing what all we had to do in the process, I don’t know if we could do it.”
The agency takes pride in the fact that almost 80 percent of their clients have come back to them for more work in future. As any business, there have been hits and few misses but the key has been to move away as quickly as possible once realizing that it’s a bad deal they have got into.
On the Happy edge, Mr Iyer pointed, “We try and work on big ideas. We are good at building brands and that’s our forte.”
Mr Das too added, “There is no bigger joy than creating a brand from scratch. We can always do campaigns for existing brands but to create something new is where we excel and that is our difference. We bring enthusiasm and new energy to brands we work on.”
The agency has 35 people on board and that’s been a conscious decision on their part to not grow mindlessly but be small and be involved personally with their clients brands. Focus being to deliver work that is result-oriented after all that is what matters – creativity that is geared towards achieving results for the brand.
As for the duo and their equation with each other, as Mr Iyer puts, “There are no arguments or fights, that’s not a culture we endorse in our agency. We listen to each other but there are no ego clashes. If there were any, we wouldn’t be Happy people!”
Happy Creative Services has strengthened its Design and B2B/Enterprise division to offer a complete suite of services to their clients. This includes brand identity and logo creation, packaging, environmental graphics, UI/UX Design, interactive product design and a range of B2B offline and digital solutions with a keen understanding of enterprise marketing.
