I love old-school advertising. Long newspaper ads that hook you with their headlines and keep you reading all the way down. To demand and hold attention is a rare and beautiful skill. Alas, such assignments come by rarely these days. So I try my hand at them on my own time, just because.
These are personal creative exercises and have no relation to the brands/organizations mentioned.
In late 2019, Amazon Pay was trying to scale up their UPI customer base, having entered the game quite late. At the time, Google Pay was ruling the roost, itself soon to be deseated by PhonePe. I was a freelance communications consultant for Amazon Pay, commissioned to help the many business units under it bring some consistency to the brand voice and messaging. At the end of a 2-year engagement, we did a series of training sessions and closed with a Write Guide for the team.
But I digress.
Back in 2019, while Amazon Pay was trying to win over customers from Google Pay, I had this idea for a print ad. Never pitched it, knowing that one of the brand’s policies is to not take on the competition directly. But, it still remains one of my favourites.
Disclaimer: This ad was created on spec and was not commissioned/approved by Amazon Pay or published in the Times of India.
Women’s Fund Asia is a feminist donor organization that works to uphold the rights and improve the condition of women and trans people in Asia. They do some stellar work in raising awareness, mobilizing resources, fundraising, building networks, and supporting regional feminist workers.
Every year, WFA brings out a richly illustrated Annual Report that captures the highlights of the year and tells stories about the impact the Fund has created. I worked with the wonderful illustrators at Ladyfingers Co to bring the 2019-20 report to life. This report won a Baby Blue Elephant at the 2021 Kyoorius Creative Awards.
Our starting material was a number of decks, quarterly reports, and meeting/conference notes that the WFA team had put together during the course of their work. I went through this extensively and did my own research to come up with a cohesive flow for the report, identify the most interesting, impactful stories, give layout ideas to the design team, and of course, write the report itself. Here it is.
Urban Ladder wanted to draw attention to one of its categories: beds and mattresses, without investing in a mass media campaign. So we created Drift, a collection of the tiny bedtime stories and sent them out to potential customers. The message was that Urban Ladder’s beds and mattresses are so comfy, their chances of getting through a long bedtime story are next to nil! I was a co-writer of this book.
Within days of the book being shipped, social media influencers and customers started talking about it, prompting others to request copies – proof that when content is really interesting, people will also ask you to advertise to them. Drift was an Inbook and Blue Elephant Winner at Kyoorius Creative Awards 2017 and was featured on Ads Of The World.
Social media response:
With its move into offline retail in 2017, Urban Ladder wanted to create print collateral to reach out to a new set of audiences. As the founding editor, I conceptualized the Urban Ladder magazine, curated content, and wrote quite a bit of the copy.
My vision was to create a magazine that was a visual treat and a pleasure to read, but also fulfilled two purposes:
The magazine was distributed at Urban Ladder’s retail stores, as an add-on with popular magazines such as Femina, and sent to existing customers. It proved immediately effective, delivering 2x the expected revenues within the first quarter.
What was personally flattering was that my work on this magazine got me a job offer from a leading e-tailer. They loved the magazine (which they got when they bought some UL furniture), spotted my name on the editorial, looked me up, and reached out!
Catch glimpses of the magazine below or read it in full here: UL Magazine.
Gowri N Kishore 