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In India, when you think of advertising, most of the time you think of a man and his mustache: Piyush Pandey. Pandey, the Ogilvy boss, has been the face of Indian advertising to an entire generation of marketers and audiences. Having spread his magic on some of the most iconic advertisements of our time, be it Cadbury, Fevicol or Asian Paints, Pandey’s career is a legacy that new recruits can learn from not only at Ogilvy but also in the printing industry. advertising and marketing. A well-known cricket fan and a masterful cricketer, he has had one of the most incredible, if not the most incredible, innings in Indian advertising.
But just like in the game of cricket, captains change over time and generations.
Now there is another face without a mustache in space. A favorite of marketers, it is often said to have the Midas touch. Every campaign he and his agency work on is considered absolute gold. Hit after hit, viral after viral, the sweet donut glaze, Tanmay Bhat.
Bhat and his agency Moonshot have created a name for themselves in a fairly short period of time. While Tanmay Bhat has been a popular figure among India’s youth for some time, she rose to fame in Indian advertising for his work for fintech brand CRED. Yes, we all remember those CRED ads that became so popular for their vagueness and Rahul Dravid’s gundagiri. More on that later.
Bhat is a popular Indian comedian. He is one of the most important names in Indian stand-up culture. He, along with three of his close friends, also comedians, founded AIB (All India Bakchod) in his day. He then entered his influencer era. He started with gaming, moved on to vlogs and reaction videos. He is one of the biggest content creators and influencers in India today.
Coming back to CRED, a campaign written by Bhat and Devaiah Bopanna, among others, which features a series of ads that started with Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid. The campaign continued to feature multiple personalities in never-before-seen avatars, including legendary cricketers from India’s 1983 World Cup-winning team, Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra and singers Shaan and Sonu Nigam, among others.
Bhat and his team worked on other ad campaigns for popular brands that followed, which went just as viral, if not more so. From IPL campaigns for Disney+ Hotstar and Smallcase with SRK and MS Dhoni, to Lenskart ads with Karan Johar, to watching chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand sweat his glands for Subway and the latest parody of Indian soap operas for BoldCare , with Ranveer Singh.
Advertising purists may scoff at Bhat’s focus on brand building, but there is no denying his immense popularity and growing influence in advertising circles, as marketing chiefs clamor for Bhat to work on their brands.
But why? Why are CMOs and brand managers so eager to give Bhat their marketing dollars and brands to play with?
For now, one word is enough: virality. The new holy grail of content. From what traditional ad agency leaders tell us, all brand managers want “viral kuch” these days. They are looking for instant successes as marketing periods shorten and quarterly performance takes priority over the long term.
“Our job is to persuade what persuasion is to magic. Magic alone will not work,” said Bobby Pawar, former president and CCO of Havas India.
“Brands come to Tanmay because they realize that this type offers success. He was a comedian first and he is a very good comedian. So he, obviously, he understands humor better than anyone in advertising. Anyone who is a comedian is very intelligent and very emotionally intelligent,” Pawar added.
“At a time when agencies are moving away from creativity, there’s one guy who’s just winning everything because of his creativity,” he said.
“Tanmay Bhat is the poster child for pop culture. You dig into the data and have your ear to the ground. The company he maintains is mainly made up of creators or CEOs. That’s why ideas and idea buyers surround him. Humor reaches all audiences and, as this is its miracle solution, it is killing all the demons of traditional advertising,” said Roshan Abbas, founder of Kommune India.
In this digital age, it is essential to achieve an impact on the audience in a short space of time. And Bhat fulfills it perfectly. His experience as a content creator gives him the knowledge he needs to understand what his audience likes and doesn’t like. What will work and what won’t. Apparently almost every brand manager wants someone like that.
“First we are content creators. We have been writing and creating for the Internet for almost a decade (AIB, etc.). So I think we understand the audience, their triggers and the attention economy because we’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Devaiah Bopanna, co-founder of Moonshot.
“Tanmay remains one of the biggest and most popular YouTubers in the country. He creates content from all genres: gaming, technology, memes, and pop culture. Therefore, he has first-hand knowledge and access to understand how young people think. He is one of the few YouTubers/content creators who has stayed on top for a decade. He understands reinvention and constantly evolving writing styles like no one else,” Bopanna added.
Could Bhat be the next big name in Indian advertising? Could he potentially play an innings that comes close to that of advertising legend Piyush Pandey? There are many factors and variables to consider here. But one thing is for sure. Based on Bhat’s current track record and string of successes, he will surely leave a legacy of his own in new age marketing for new age marketers to learn from and follow.
Tanmay Bhat, upon hearing about the comparison people in the industry were making between him and Pandey, said: “A comparison between me, an absolute newcomer and a legend like Piyush, is absolutely unfair. I studied advertising in college and people like Piyush Pandey and Prasoon Joshi were stalwarts who inspired me to be a part of advertising in the first place. I think my career in advertising is just beginning and I am very lucky on two fronts: I get to work with some very brave founders and brands. And secondly, I have an extremely talented team: Puneet Chadha, Deep Joshi and Vishal Dayama have been working with me and Devaiah Bopanna for almost a decade and, honestly, they do most of the heavy lifting. But since my name gets the clicks, I guess they often give me credit for their work :)”