Lately, a few brands have been exploring episodic-style campaigns instead of the standalone-type ads that we are accustomed to. Such ads are centred on storytelling and follow a narrative sequence. More importantly, they keep the viewers invested in the storyline, building great recall and salience for the brand.
These are 15-20 second ads with 3-5 films in a set, building or continuing a narrative set around the protagonist. It usually flawlessly and delicately combines the brand's messaging such that it appears genuine. Here are a few examples that we liked from the recent times.
PhonePe
ACKO Health Insurance ft. Munna Bhai and Circuit
Swiggy Instamart’s Instapur
We spoke to experts about the nuances of these episodic ads and what is their take on the same. Amit Wadhwa, CEO at Dentsu Creative suggested that brands have been playing with this approach of storytelling now and then. He pointed out Murthy ads by Voltas. “These tricks have been used by brands for long. When brands want to show different features, this approach works.”
According to Azazul Haque, CCO at Media.Monks, it started with IPL. He said, “It gave advertisers a repeated captive audience, cricket lovers coming back again to the medium and it is a one-month-long window for commercials to play. This is where it all began. The premise of this is - you have a singular storyline but after seeing the first ad and coming to the next one, you are engaged and the brand recall is strong because the brand has already established it earlier. You don’t have to set the context, again and again, the comprehension increases because of the nature of it.”
Mithila Saraf, Founding Partner and CEO at Famous Innovations also shared similar thoughts. She said, “People are invested in the protagonist, and with the build of the story throughout, there is a high recall value. Especially with the World Cup and other high-frequency events with captive audiences. We did something similar last year in IPL for the brand Imperial Blue. It is also about how consistently you do it.”
While Rajesh Ramaswamy, Co-Founder of The Script Room, said, “Earlier we used to do one campaign or two campaigns but now brands have realized the quality of captive audiences coming to the platform to witness an event, which is cricket right now. It is more like a mini web series and it gives you an overall residual effect. You can bring in a lot of layers. Also people don’t like repeated ads, so this is a good approach to keep people interested.”
Challenges with this approach
Even though the recall value is strong and people tend to be immersed in the story, there are some obstacles that creative teams must overcome in order to create a dialogue that is authentic yet talks about the brand. And at the same time as grabbing audiences' attention and balancing the plot,
Speaking on the challenges, Manini Contractor, Strategy Director, Excellent Publicity said that as per him, the biggest challenge is duration. He said, “The challenging bit when it comes to creating such mini episodes is that unlike a movie or a series wherein the creators and writers have a long duration to narrate their story; an ad film is maximum of 30 secs and thus the most challenging bit is to incite intrigue in those 30 secs in way that the audiences want to come back for more or are waiting for the next ad.”
“Ad agencies and advertisers need to also make sure that the time is well calculated, meaning, they need to define how much time spacing should be ideal between the episodes, this decision is the foundation of how successful the campaign will be. As mentioned, the perks are better connection with the brand and higher brand recall”, he added.
Pallavi Chakravarti, Founder and CCO at Fundamental, spoke about this approach and what can go wrong. She said, “If the central characters click, the campaign works. If they don’t, it’s as ship-in-the-night as any other average campaign. Brands may sometimes look to create easily recognisable characters for heightened recall and better engagement. Sometimes, if a character makes an impact, they become synonymous with the brands they represent - Airtel Girl, Swiggy Uncle, Voltas Murthy, etc. - but this is different from episodic storytelling.”
“These characters appear throughout different campaigns, to peddle different features, new launches, seasonal offerings and whatnot. If people get invested in a particular character, an episodic campaign ensures higher affinity, awareness and potentially even consideration or preference.”
