Crayons Advertising touts its creative independence and mocks the lack of it in network agencies

Brands — thorough agency written copy — mocking each other is passé. The eyebrow-raising moment is when the advertising agencies themselves start taking jabs at one another.

Crayons Advertising, which is planning to go public, through an outdoor campaign in Delhi, has touted its creative independence credentials while at the same time is dissing the networked agencies over their supposed lack of creative freedom.

“We’ll never become CrayonsDDBBBDOVLMYorR,” writes Crayons Advertising on the billboard and the social media post says “… we firmly refuse to append them to our name. Which is probably why we haven’t sold our souls to a holding company and chosen to remain independent.”

A line at the bottom of the billboard reads ‘Creatively independent since 1986.’

“All major agencies founded by creative people such as Ogilvy and Bernbach are gone now. Networks came in, bought them, and stripped them of their individuality,” says Manoj Jacob, executive creative director, Crayons Advertising.

“Imagine you come up with a great campaign idea, then it goes through all the NCD, APAC head, London/New York…” says Jacob illustrating the long approval process at networked agencies which leads to a clamp down on creativity.

He states Crayons Advertising will never be part of a network and will therefore never have the long list of initials behind it. When asked about any tit-for-tat response, Jacob was clear, “We are a challenger brand. If there is tit for tat, then it's bonus mileage for us”

Samir Datar, the agency’s chief strategy officer reveals there are 16 more outdoor and digital ads in the pipeline. Why Delhi? Says Datar, “It is the one place where the agency clout does not work.”

And staying on track of being creatively independent, he points out that the reason “why the agency could do it in Delhi was it being part of an integrated group, we also have outdoor. Making your own ad and putting it up on your own billboard, that's true independence.”

“At one level, we are having fun, and at another level, in the last two years, the kind of transformation we've been through, it was important to announce that this is a different Crayons,” he says.

The difference, he points out, is in the quality of hires as well as the work it has been putting out “be it the Air India campaign, winning the Croma account in a nine-agency pitch, or nabbing the Tata Sons social media account.”

“That is the intent and what best way to show the intent than to say the whole thing about advertising agencies advertising themselves,” exclaims Datar.