Why did Britannia NutriChoice Protein pick Reels over a TVC for its maiden campaign?

The older you get, the harder it is to change. Many aged Indian brands can attest to this saying because they still prioritise a celebrity-led TV commercial over the vast benefits of digital and its myriad roots.

There are exceptions to this adage, of course. Take the 130-year-old Britannia Industries, for instance. For its NutriChoice Protein Cookie, it shed its regular order of a TVC and chose an Instagram Reel with creator Danish Sait and creative agency Talented.

This Reels-first campaign, as per Prashant Gopalakrishnan, is “aimed at a largely digital audience who are health conscious and understand the importance of the right protein intake… these are people who can be sharply targeted via digital, people who will invariably be on Instagram.”

He is the founding partner and business strategy lead of Talented. The Reel, three weeks since its release, has gained over 20,500 likes.

Sait, for Gopalkrishnan, was a natural fit for two reasons. One, his 1.30 million strong Instagram fan base and second, “we thought it's a great opportunity to leverage somebody who looks like a fit person.” Sait, in the video, plays LKB, one of his many character sketches, who is a fitness freak.

It was in April 2022, when Britannia brought Talented on board and revealed its plans to make some of its brands, which were traditionally active on television, have an active digital presence. NutriChoice was one such brand.

“Britannia wanted people who think digital-first and that's why we were brought on board,” reveals Gopalakrishnan. The Bangalore-based creative shop is the agency on record for Britannia’s NutriChoice brand.

The BTS

To see Britannia, a legacy brand, indulge in reels first over a TVC for a new campaign is noteworthy. What is more striking is the triumvirate of brand, agency, and creator making an appearance than the everyday brand’s direct collaboration with a creator.

“I tell brand guys it is a collaboration and that you and I are working together to bring your product out there… Agencies bridge that communication between us,” says Sait.

The entire video took Sait and the agency seven to eight working days including the briefing to pull off. “For me, it's a one day process,” reveals the creator about the shooting bit of the video, and says the brand had come back with one audio change “which we made and then sent the video back in 25 minutes.”

The script was cracked over a call, states Gopalkrishnan, and Sait says, “when we get on a call with the client, we start throwing ideas till it sticks and the client says this is fun and what we want to do."

Lost in translation and over-experimentation

While a successful campaign is a result everyone works towards, creators in this quest can find themselves straying from their core identity which connects them to their fans. It is a challenging act to balance.

The biggest challenge, for Sait, is not creative blocks but the dreaded lost-in-translation scenario where someone fails to understand a joke he cracks due to a lack of context or language barriers.

As more and more brands delve deeper into digital, is there a risk of over-experimentation? A brand needs to be on every platform.

Says Gopalkrishnan, “If the audience is there, why not? As people who are an extension of the brand team, we need to be open about things, and that is the one thing being an agency helps.”

Clients are becoming braver, he feels and keeping the creator economy in mind, he says, “brands need to trust these guys and trust comes from the fact that they have an agency partner who trusts them.”