Idea Dribbling | Deepali Nair at SIMClairvoyance 2011

Ms Deepali Nair, Country Head- Brand & Communications L&T Insurance was the last speaker of the day, ended Clairvoyance on an enlightening insight to creative ideas. She started off by interacting with the students about their expectations from the session and how she could formulate those points and queries into her discussion.

She began by speaking about the three keys to creative insights, namely:

• Deep knowledge of consumer
• Deep knowledge of Brand
• Openness towards innovation/disruption

Next, she discussed the answers to three important questions:

1. What is a creative idea?
2. Where to get a creative idea?
3. How to evaluate a creative idea?

According to Ms Nair, a creative idea is the heart of a good campaign. It is also the creative advertising concept before storyboard. For e.g. - Key message of Rolls Royce – any obsession with quality appreciated by discerning customers. “Creative idea for creativity sake alone has no place in my book.” – Ms Nair says, it builds emotional connection between consumer and the brand. Along with that, she emphasizes that yet a business needs to grow and make money. But the biggest challenge is to keep a campaign alive and sustain it.

Talking about the emergence of creative ideas, she mentioned three important points:

1. Consumer Insights:

a. Cultural/life: e.g. – Tanishq, Jaago re, Fair and Lovely. Difficult to define aggressive vs assertive

b. Category: e.g. – Saint Gobain ads, Maruti 800

c. Brand: e.g. – Oreo

By showing a number of videos for the different brands, it became easier for the students to relate
to the emergence of the creative ideas and concepts.

2. Product Attributes:

There is a shift in the media world. The way we communicate with each other is changing. Far more time is spent on digital space and there is a rapid shift from traditional to digital media. Creative ideas can emerge from a product or its shape, packaging labels, manufacturing process, and where the product cannot be used.
E.g. - Heinz, Volkswagen

3. Disruption/Innovation:

Means breaking convention, a quantum shift is a change in the area of campaign development.

The session with Ms Deepali was very interactive and it made the students think and understand the changing role of communication in advertising much more clearly. She left us with one question to ponder about:

“Can you juggle it all??”

(with inputs from Divya Gupta, MBA 2013)