Mumbai: 82.5 Communications was set up as an agency to help brands succeed in the Indian market and to help take Indian brands abroad. It is part of the Ogilvy Group and a WPP company, the young agency already has two Grand Prix at the coveted EFFIES to its credit and a host of Indian and MNC clients in its roster. The agency follows an open source model, which brings together its core services of strategy, creative and brand custodianship, along with the best of WPP partners’ allied skills, for its clients.
After the exit of Sumanto Chattopadhyay (fondly called Sumo by his friends and advertising colleagues), Mayur Verma and Anuraag Khandelwal were elevated as Joint Chief Creative Officers at 82.5 Communications.
Varma prior to 82.5 Communications was one of the youngest Group Creative Directors at Ogilvy, Mumbai. He has won several international awards including the Design Gold Cannes Lion. He has the rare achievement of completing a clean sweep at Kyoorius, winning the Black Elephants at both Design and Advertising Awards.
Beyond advertising, Varma has been a Ted speaker and also likes to design his own clothes hoping to turn that into a label someday.
Khandelwal entered Ogilvy India over two decades ago armed with a BFA in Applied Art and a short stint at Ambience Advertising.
He was instrumental in launching the Indian Premier league, the Indian Soccer League and the Indian Hockey League. Khandelwal’s first prestigious award was the Young Cag he won in his final year of art school. Since then, he has won over 80 national and international awards for campaigns including the Grand Effie for the BJP 2014 political blitz.
Khandelwal’s passion for creativity and his ruthless compassion has given birth to the award-winning Red Ramp Project that brought to light the lack of accessibility issues in India for the physically challenged. He has graced the cover of Forbes India magazine and makes the time to mentor university students. Outside of work, Khandelwal dabbles in cooking and wants to start a chain of gyms which will break down doors for the physically challenged.
Anuraag Khandelwal (AK) and Mayur Varma (MV) in conversation with Indiantelevision.com discuss their roles as Joint Chief Creative Officers, their creative passions and how 82.5 is home to them and much more…..
On 82.5 launched as an India specific advertising agency three years ago?
AK: 82.5 is not an agency, it’s our home. We wake up, we brush our teeth with some ideas, have some coffee…lunch on ideas, we banter, we play around with new tech, we fight over the best form of media for the brand and the idea, be it social, digital, phygital, traditional, guerrilla whatever.
We are basically an ideas powerhouse! Every creative, planner, client servicing and finance person has ideas. Even our clients contribute to our ideas.
And like any household, we’ve had our ups and downs. Our share of successes and failures. We celebrate, we learn, we move on. But most importantly, we have lots of fun.
MV: 82.5 is an ever-evolving dream - to see Indian brands grow to unimaginable levels. Today, when we think of huge brands, mostly international brands come to mind. With so much innovation in products, services and technology happening in India now, there are these absolutely amazing Indian stories being created that the world ought to know.
We have been galloping to work every day to tell these stories. It reflects in our growing partnership with small, medium, and large Indian businesses and also with the international brands that are keen to imbibe India and write the most exciting chapter of their brand story.
On your individual journey’s?
MV: Advertising is a profession one chooses to be in. No one ever forces anyone to join advertising. Have you ever heard of anyone joining advertising because of peer pressure? When you join a profession of your choice, you want to learn, contribute and achieve. After my first day at Ogilvy, I remember feeling there is so much here to learn, contribute and achieve. And after almost two decades I feel the same here at 82.5. The similarity, in some ways, ends there. My journey at Ogilvy was where I thrived in its great culture. At 82.5 my journey will be a tad more challenging and exciting – for here I will get to contribute to shaping an absolutely new culture with and for an enthusiastic team to thrive in.
AK: When I first walked into Ogilvy, I felt exactly the same buzz as I feel when I go to visit my relatives and their huge joint families. It was a collection of the wildest mix of creative, planning and client servicing talent in India! It is a family that is still glued together by Piyush Pandey. My journey has been nothing less than extraordinary.
The people I have had the honour to work with, the characters that touched my life, the opportunities I got, the successes I enjoyed, the failures that I never experienced alone, the handholding, the mentors, the friends, the love… everything and everyone has played a role in where I am today. I have learned and continue to learn from big brother. 82.5 gives me the same excitement today as Ogilvy did.
The excitement of creating together and celebrating together.
On being joint CCO’s what will be your creative strategy for the agency?
AK: We want to create work that is both loved and feared.
Loved by our consumers and feared by our competitive agencies or clients.
We want to have John Wick like qualities – focused and committed along with sheer will to move our clients businesses above and beyond. We want to achieve this by going beyond just campaigns as our currency – but, help brands become a part of culture and build through communities and collaborations. I personally want to bring back the art in advertising.
MV: We want to see 82.5 evolve into a creative platform where individuals and teams can plug and play their most creative selves and approach brand story telling in their unique ways. We believe in diverse creativity. We all have always known that there is never only one right perspective or one right solution. Especially while architecting a brand voice across different mediums and over a period of time, I’d like 82.5 to be a place where a bartender, an acapella group, a sommelier, a Lego sculptor feel excited to express their idea of what an agarbatti can be. Those ideas viewed through 82.5’s brand lens will be priceless for the agarbatti brand!
On some of your most exciting campaigns?
MV: Since I have been thinking a lot about cultures and communities of late, I am reminded of the ‘Future Hai Football’ campaign we did for Indian Super League. It marked that moment in Indian football where we started believing in our football players at a national level and wanted to know their back stories. I am also proud of the “Wear Her Name” campaign we created for Star Sports where Indian cricketers walked into a cricket match wearing their mother’s name on the back of their jerseys. #CleftToSmile became The World’s Most Tweeted Logo and also Ogilvy India’s first ever Design Gold at Cannes. Vodafone iFold roared at Cannes too while saving 800 trees every month by adding an extra fold to bills that were mailed in those days.
AK: The BJP 2014 campaign was a once in a lifetime learning.
It was extremely fulfilling to create the “Acche Din Aane Wale Hain” campaign
and see very different reactions to it.
I’ve really enjoyed creating is the Bisleri Camels #SamajdaarBisleriPeetenHain campaign. The camels appealed to the hearts of the people and Bisleri, for the first time in its 50 years of existence, became the No1. Most Trusted brand in India!
And to top it all, both BJP and Bisleri won the Grand Effies. ‘
Launching IPL in India, launching the Indian Super League with the #LetsFootball campaign, turning Tata Motors into a new force to reckon with the famous Leo Messi #MadeofGreat campaign and more recently, digital campaigns for IDBI bank with #BankAisaDostJaisa and Bisleri Limonata #LetLoose.
On the vision, hope, plan, for 82.5 in 2023 and beyond? What would be the main focus areas?
As mentioned earlier, we want to deep dive into communities, cultures and collaborations. While Gen Z is a hot topic, we would also like to do some future gazing and look beyond Gen Z. We want to create fabulous relevant brand stories that are consumed by the consumers without them feeling “oh this brand is trying to sell me something”. If we can appeal to the right communities with the right cultural insights and collaborate with the right partners be it media or tech, we will hit home. Every time.
On the thoughts you would like to share with your colleague’s at 82.5 in this context?
The message is clear. Create work that will be loved and feared. Collaborate with the right partners to achieve this end goal. If the idea is relevant, fresh and exciting – nurture it with your life. Fight for it. Get the right people involved. Make it happen. Keep your constructive egos alive and get rid of the toxic ones. And make sure to have lots of fun along the way.
On talent today and as an agency, how have you been nurturing, retaining and growing talent?
There’s an organization that works in the so-called efficient MBA way. People delegate. It makes super-efficient use of talent. The output is measurable. Everyone goes home feeling they have done their bit. Then there is an organization that works like kids in a play area. Here talent has fun. Here the output is priceless. Everyone goes home feeling excited to come back the next day.
We would like to see ourselves increasingly become like the second organization. Our wish list to our CEO, our clients and the McKinseys of the world is to devise a business model where maintaining creative topline and bottom line is made as equal a measure of success as financial metrics.
On the changes in Media & Advertising, how are you seeing creativity changing from then to now?
In two or three specific ways. Earlier, each piece of execution had a lot of importance – there were craft specialists and idea specialists (who usually became creative directors and leaders). Today, social has turned creative pieces into inventory and AI would also be good enough to handle it. The average youngster cracks smart lines memes and limericks on a good morning. So, human creativity at its pinnacle, at its very best must focus on #breakthroughs and what is the overall large brand narrative that these number of posts/per day or memes are parts of it. Can we write it, control it, direct it, produce it?
Second, #collaboration. The new-age agency doesn’t have remits and definitely not sequence. A takes brief, gives to B, B mulls and creates a creative brief and hands to creative. It is slow, industrial and counter-productive. Agile creativity will be the new norm – a room, specialists like planners, social media people, creative techies and creative minds each building on their ideas to build a SOLUTION.
Third, if you can dream it, you can find a way to make it. We call it “#limitless” – it is way beyond mediums or even metaverse. The conception of a world of a solution or an idea and then going about making it happen.
You can call it our 82.5 BCL formula if you like!
On being CCO’s how are you seeing relationship between new age clients and an agency as compared to say the past decade?
In our experience, new age clients are far more willing to listen and trust.
They come from the same connected world as ours and so the understanding of an idea is often better and sharper. They understand that if they want to get the best out of us, giving us the space to play is very important.
Most of our agency-client relationships are human, open and respectful.
While there are exceptions, the mindset of “I am the client, so do as I say” is dwindling fast. There are healthier, respectful debates and sharing of POVs. Today, smart clients understand that their agencies are not mere vendors, but #BrandShareholders - lifelong partners to whom the same outcomes matter and there is a shared vision of what success looks like.
But then there will always be a variety of clients who want to engage for a bit and move on. Practically, they come for interventions they need specialists for – the business calls these projects.
On the surge of regional and vernacular communication
We began on this way, way earlier before it became a mainstream discussion – so, we are not in the early days of “tackling this”. In fact, we saw it coming and it has been one of our raison d'être and a favorite service amongst our clients.
We have Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Marwari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati and Bihari language specialists who have refreshed ABP Network’s regional news channels across 7 states, captured state specific regional campaigns with cultural nuances for PhonePe and created winning regional communication for Bisleri, Ghadi Detergents and Nestle Milo.
Nothing connects better than a story told in your own language.
