Delivering a keynote address at the e4m TV First conference, Josy Paul, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer, BBDO India, spoke about how ‘The Best TV Ads always have a Digital Gene’ Creating TV advertisements in the digital age is not an easy job because it's not just about insights anymore but it's how you incite viewers, says Josy Paul, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, BBDO. Paul, known for his award-winning campaigns like ‘Share The Load’ for Ariel, was delivering a keynote session on how ‘The Best TV Ads always have a Digital Gene’ at e4m TV First on Thursday. The virtual conference explored the works that go behind and into TV, and what lies ahead for the medium.   Sharing key insights and deftly elaborating them with examples in his distinct style, Paul said: “Content is King, but context is King Kong. This is what we experienced after the release of the 30-second TV campaign ‘Share The Load’ for Ariel in 2015. The thought-provoking conversation that highlighted how laundry was not just a woman’s job created sentiments across the country. Those sentiments created desirability. Millions of men pledged to share the load on matrimonial sites. Ariel sales were up by 60 per cent.”   “We asked a simple question - is laundry only a woman’s job? The response was overwhelming. Our work reaffirmed our belief that Content is King, Context is King Kong. And that conversation creates sentiment and sentiment creates desirability.” Paul went on to explain how as a creative agency they had just launched a TVC and then people, activists and women became part of it to make the idea bigger. This explains how creativity and communication have evolved through TV in India, he said. “Not just big data, but ad-makers need emotional data to strike a chord with consumers,” Paul emphasised. “One of our women executives found a study that said women spent 4.5 hours doing household chores and men spent only 15 minutes. She was upset about it and shared her feelings with us. It was this incident that led to the creation of the ‘Share The Load’ campaign.” Paul took the audience down memory lanes to highlight the significance of TV advertising. “It was December 2005 when news channel CNN-IBN was launched in India. They launched it with a very powerful weapon – two-way television. This meant viewers could interact with the news channel; we called it citizen journalism. As the Agency on Record, I was part of the creative team that launched this news channel. It broke the backbone of leading news channels in India. It was disruption at its best. That was the time I saw TV commercials in a very new light.” On the creation of BBDO India and its journey, Paul had some more insights. “Soon after this (the CNN-IBN experience), we launched BBDO India and one of our main objectives was how to make TV commercials interactive. Our focus was on how to make a TVC that can be digital – meaning interactive and inclusive – because times were changing. That was the time when Young India was telling us something important: ‘Don't just tell me, involve me’. This was the mantra that we heard from youngsters and we decided to work on this.” Paul also showcased the ‘Touch the Pickle’ campaign for sanitary napkin brand Whisper that was created by BBDO and was based on the myths around menstruation in our society. “People wanted to be part of this campaign that sought to break the taboo associated with menstruation. The TVC became the talking point of TV shows, stand-up comedy and other discussions, and led to a huge success for the brand,” Paul noted. He also spoke about other successful TVCs in the last two decades like Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re’ and Nike’s ‘Just Do It’. “The Tata Tea commercial in 2008 provoked Indians to use their franchise and participate in the democratic electoral process. I learnt a lot from that wonderful TVC. It incited action, created mass engagement and showed tremendous brand building.” He further noted, “The Nike advertisement with differently-abled people highlighted that the ‘point of view matters more than the point of differentiation’. The kind of people used in that ad to convey the message was amazing.” The other learning from the ad was that people must be part of the theatre experience where the brand story is played out, Paul said. “We all can see through TVCs how TV has become so powerful,” he concluded.