The film has been narrated by lyricist and actor Piyush Mishra.
Azadi hai kya?
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Azadi wahi.. jiska khul ke mazaa uthao
Jidhar kona dikhe wahi shuru ho jao..
…..
Tu likes talashe nalayak
Un likes ke layak bann to ja
Khud se bhi ghin ajayegi
Apne andar to jhank zara..
That's part of the copy of an Independence Day ad (#InTheNameOfLiberty) by 65-year-old footwear brand, Liberty Shoes. The ad highlights the hypocrisy in our daily lives and prods us to re-look/rethink the meaning of 'azadi', all in the context of our social realities. The voice over artist is actor and musician Piyush Mishra and the background score has been composed by Indian Ocean, an Indian fusion rock band. What's striking about the advert, besides the way it's written of course, is the fact that it's conceptualised by the marketing head of the brand – Barun Prabhakar.
afaqs! spoke to the chief marketing officer about the thought behind the script. "I chose to listen to my inner voice, and made up my mind to go ahead with this concept, as it goes well with the brand’s ethic", Prabhakar says, adding, “On an individual level, misusing freedom is something that has been bothering me the most. It's happening around us every day, every hour, where people are doing it in the name of liberty. May it be the liberty of speech , liberty of expression, liberty to choose, liberty to refuse… we are now crossing the line everywhere...”
Barun Prabhakar
The initial concept building took Prabhakar around three weeks. He equates advertising to experimenting with different concepts. When he felt confident about its execution, he partnered with a Gurugram-based production team – Flamingo Digital.
"Given the concept, reaching the audience aggressively in a way they can't get away from easily was important,” says the 35-year-old marketer, who joined Liberty Shoes in December 2017.
Some of the noteworthy commercials he has been closely involved with ever since he came on board include #ChalBadhChal released last year and #EveryDayIsFathersDay rolled out early this year, among others.
"One should always listen to his/her inner voice and I have tried to do just that in my short career," he says, about his decision to get involved with the creative side. "Initially, it was my individual call and I discussed the idea with Anupam Bansal, director- retail, Liberty Shoes who liked the concept... and I could complete the project with his support."
He wouldn't call himself a scriptwriter just yet, though. "I have just drawn the lines for the production team to work on; the technical process and operations bit was done by them," he explains.
About Mishra's voice over, Prabhakar says, "The day I started visualising this story, I could only hear Mishra's pixyish voice in my head; it has its own kind of temperament... his compelling narration has done justice to the concept... and we had to work extra hard to keep the music minimal, so that the narration doesn't get diluted."
He admits, "When I first started working on the potential subject lines for the film, there were many more, which would have added value to the story. But we couldn't fit them all into a two-minute film, and for the sake of brand hygiene, we had to let them go..."
The main collective aim was to not do a run-of-the-mill Independence Day film that fades out in a couple of days, says Nishant Singh, the creative director(copy) at Flamingo Digital, who has penned the lyrics of the spot. "We wanted to make it unique in narrative and hard-hitting so that it remains in the general conscience for a longer period of time. During the initial research on the subject matter and also drawing analogies from lived experiences, we came to a few conclusions which ultimately became the foundation of this film. As a society, we are not alien to the concept of liberty and moreover how we abuse it every now and then - knowingly or unknowingly," Singh tells us.
“We found the same insight in the writings of social thinkers and theorists like Berlin, Rousseau and Mill. That's how we integrated the concept of 'negative liberty' in our film. The idea was to strike a perfect balance between raw words, complex sentiments and unapologetic sarcasm so that it appeals to the conscience of our audience.” he adds.
The film is directed by Asad Ahmad, who heads Flamingo's in-house video production unit.
A footwear designer turned marketer
An alumnus of Central Footwear Training Institute (formerly CFTC), Chennai, Prabhakar has worked with footwear brands Relaxo and Woodland as designer, before taking a leap into the world of marketing in 2017, with Liberty Shoes. He tells us that his exposure to international product sourcing and vertical management in his footwear-designing days has helped him grow as a marketer. “Having learnt the core product category and its operation thoroughly, I moved to the marketing domain as this area always had a special place in my heart,” he shares.
We also asked him about the hot subject of in-housing on the part of marketers - a trend that's picking up steadily. "Advertising and content creation are my hidden talent areas and I have started working on them lately. I am already loving the outcome," answers Prabhakar. "Going forward, I am certainly planning to strengthen my foothold in this area," he reveals.
So, how have his expectations from his agency partners changed in the recent past? Prabhakar, who feels the ideas conceived by a brand manager are not necessarily the creative agency's final product, says, “I am a bit particular about it. Being from the brand side, I believe I understand the brand tonality, its consumer psyche well, so why not hold the brush in your own hands and paint it the way you always wanted to?”
Previously, Liberty Shoes had an agency called The Page, on board. It has been about a year since Prabhakar has been handling the creative and branding function, with the help of an internal team.
Is in-house advertising model on the rise?
Prabhakar feels that in-house advertising agency model is the way forward. Why? "You have better and more focused control over the content, the time factor... your in-house team gets lot of exposure and ultimately the organisation gets an effective team in place. I can vouch to experiment; that’s what I did, and the results seem promising,” he explains.
The Independence Day ad is running across cinemas (PVR, pan-India) and digital platforms. Ask him about his lead medium of communication, and Prabhakar says, "It depends on the type of content and the purpose of creating it." While for the current campaign it is digital, had it been a product commercial, his preferred mediums would have been TV and print.
About the spends involved, Prabhakar reveals that the ad spend is 10 times more than its production value.
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