Feni finey fo fun, I smell the blood of a Goan woman...

Goa and I go back a long way, ever since I stepped foot on its hallowed beaches on a college trip. I actually think I was a Goan in a previous birth. I don’t know a thing that’s bad about the place..what’s not to like about tropical sunshine, fine feni and chill people? I even love the monsoon in Goa – you can dance in that warm rain!

As I landed in the spanking new Mapo airport in North Goa, I was filled with anticipation. This was an easy breezy two-days-of-work, three-days-of-fun kind of trip. Indipop singer Saket Valdez was in the process of launching his music label in two months. Goobe, as the branding partner, was working with Saket’s digital marketing agency, Rasta, to get his brand positioning right in the marketing collateral. I was to sit with the Rasta and review their proposed marketing roadmap and collateral.

Like I said, easy breezy. After that, I could hear the names in the wind calling my name – Palolem, Baga, Anjuna, even the noisy Calangute!

Be she serene or be she livid, we’ll grind her thoughts for our lovely brand!

It didn’t take much for my mood to alter drastically after an interaction with fellas and fellis from Rasta. These ‘digital marketers’ had totally disregarded the well-thought-out brand manifesto we had crafted for Saket's label ‘Matchbox’ and made beautiful mincemeat of it.

“What’s not to understand?? Don’t you guys get it at all??”, I screamed as we sat across the table in Saket’s dining room. Saket had splurged some of his well-gotten gains as India’s top Indipop (and inevitably, Bollywood playback) singer into his ancestral Goanese villa. The place reeked of lived-in luxury and invited you to relax.

But right now, Saket and the Rasta folks – Mira, Rasta’s head and Rahim, her underling – looked at me in alarm. I suppose I am a sight to behold when I’m mad.

I took a deep breath and tried again. “Guys! Mira, Rahim. We went over this a few weeks ago, right? The brand manifesto is holy. It’s all your holy books rolled into one. You cannot deviate from it when you build out your marketing collateral.”

“But Pity, we have adhered to it!” Mira quickly defended her team’s work. “The colours are as per the brand palette, don’t you see?”

“What is the brand palette? What is it?” I asked. Saket sat with us, his wiry goatee ping-ponging back and forth in alarm.

I picked up my Mac and scrolled down to the palette section. “It’s two shades of grey, black, white and shades of fire – orange, yellow and a couple of colours in that spectrum. Don’t you get it? He’s lighting a match to the music scene in India. Your campaign needs to light up the market. And what are you guys doing?! You’re going Goth on us. What’s with the mournful black-and-white theme for these social media creatives? This is not an ageing European rock band!”

Rahim nodded furiously. “We got that, Ma’am! But our designer felt that sticking to a stark black and white initially may make it all look very cool. We could introduce the shades of fire later.”

“Hang your designer!”, I snarled. “I’m the owner of the brand voice here. No Goth. Am I clear? The brand message is ‘Set the world on fire’. Matchbox is going to push aside the grey copycats who are dominating the music scene and bring in originality. Light. Fire! I want that in my visuals! Whereas, your design team has just focused on the funereal.”

Mira and Rahim looked at each other. Mira reached for her bag and pulled out some glossy pictures.

“What do you think of this set, Pity?”

I looked through this new set. Desi pirates in dreadlocks looking out of a cityscape. Rough-looking men and women in colourful headdresses in front of a grey shipwreck, Saket at the helm with a wicked smile. They were composite images based on our video shoot with Saket and his band for his single ‘Afire’, but the treatment was just right – and on brand!

“Why didn’t you show me this before? See how closely this aligns with the visual guidelines and inspirations we gave you in the brand manifesto? This is genius!” I exclaimed. “I like! Strike that – I love! Now, this is cool.”

Mira and Rahim had wide grins on their faces. “She’s a junior designer, new on the team. I wasn’t sure if her work passed muster. So I started with what the senior team had put together.”

“Mira, darling!”, I drawled. “Please, promote her, will ya? I want to work only with her for this campaign!”

Saket sat back, relieved. His label release was back on track!

****

Translating a brand manifesto into actual campaigns is hard work. It requires discipline and creativity. Discipline to toe the brand line as it were, and creativity to draw inspiration from it and soar high. It gets all the more tricky when two agencies are involved. The originators of the manifesto would have built a narrative that closely matches the founding or managing team’s vision. The language, whether visual or in messaging, must flesh out this narrative more.

When in doubt, go back to the beginning.

See if the collateral being produced gives you the same feeling or mood that you envisioned when building the brand. Trust your instincts…

When it comes to campaign execution, marketing teams get into the nitty-gritty of what collateral they must create to fulfil the campaign’s goals. Depending on the campaign – brand awareness, user acquisition, event, product launch or something else – the channels change, the customer journey changes and the type of collateral changes.

For example, Saket’s Matchbox campaign was designed to build on his already existing personal brand as a top singer. So we drew upon his desi boy image and built upon it. Although he was an industry insider, Matchbox would focus on newer fusion artists and bring in elements of rock as well as classical music into its releases.

The Rasta team had decided to go big in the digital space, building a website, focusing on Instagram and Facebook, for the label launch. They had also lined up a series of interviews with TV and YouTube channels, as well as a release of the single Afire on Matchbox’s new YouTube channel.

The launch party was attended by the who’s who of Bollywood, and some heavyweights from other music streams. The creatives Rasta deployed across the channels supported all the beautifully. Afire got a million hits before launch day.

A branding campaign well done!