How Daftar Creative Room broke perfume ad clichés in Bellavita’s new ad with Raghav Juyal

For a long time, perfume ads have consistently utilised slow-motion walks, hyper-chiselled masculinity, and fragrance to captivate viewers.

Bellavita’s latest film starring Raghav Juyal, which is part of the Own the Vibe campaign, breaks that rhythm not by being louder, sexier or more meme-ready but by choosing something far riskier in today’s attention economy: a long-term brand perspective.

Behind the campaign is Sidhant Mago, creative head of Daftar Creative Room, who doesn’t speak like someone chasing trends or timelines. He speaks like someone trying to build something that lasts longer than a viral spike and isn’t shy about calling out what he thinks is broken in advertising today.

“I usually don’t ask for briefs,” Mago says. “I ask for problem statements.”

Mago has been working closely with Bellavita founders for over a year, but this time the mandate was clear and unusually honest.

“They told me very clearly: we want to build a brand. We want to build brand love,” he explains. “When you build brand love, your performance budgets go down. That’s the real business impact.”

In fact, Mago claims the work extends far beyond the Raghav Juyal film. “I’ve already given them scripts and monthly positioning for the next two years. The next film will be bigger. The third will be even bigger.”

Why did Raghav Juyal feel like the right choice?

Casting Raghav Juyal may feel obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t a knee-jerk pop-culture decision.

“There were other options,” Mago admits. “But the moment I named Raghav, it was unanimous.” The reasoning wasn’t fame; it was alignment.

Bellavita, he argues, is an underdog brand. “It came from literally zero and became a marketing leader in perfumes, competing with legacy players.” Raghav’s journey mirrored that arc.

“He came from a regular household and became a name in the industry. That parallel mattered.”

Once the script was narrated, the decision moved fast. “They were like, ‘Let’s just sign him in two days.’”

What sealed it further was Raghav’s reaction. “When we narrated the larger vision to him, he got genuinely excited. He’s supremely talented, supremely dedicated, and we wanted a partnership that would go really long.”

Music and dance, too, were deliberate choices. “We wanted to position the brand with music and movement. That naturally suited Raghav.”

Moving away from perfume and masculinity

For years, perfume brands in India have relied on sharply defined shortcuts to meaning. Denver built itself around ambition and success. Axe leaned into exaggerated sexual confidence, often suggesting that a spray of fragrance could make women lose control. 

“I didn’t want to write a typical perfume commercial,” he says. “I didn’t want to do what other perfume brands do, using perfume as an attraction device.

Instead, the film leans less towards seduction and more towards self-belief. The campaign's core idea, "Own the Vibe", eventually emerged from this thinking.

“The manifesto is very clear,” Mago explains. “If you’ve got the vibe, you’ll go far.”

Vibe, in his definition, isn’t aesthetic or attitude; it's ability. “Your vibe could be dance, humour, storytelling, or just enjoying your job. If you’ve got the vibe, even the saddest song can turn into a dance number.”

That philosophy drives the film’s tone and distances it from the category’s obsession with surface-level masculinity.

“We didn’t care about what other perfume brands were doing. We just stuck to our positioning.”

Viral moments vs brand memory

The timing of Bellavita’s campaign inevitably drew comparisons with Spotify Wrapped’s Raghav Juyal–Emraan Hashmi film, which leaned heavily into pop-culture spoofing.

View this post on Instagram

Mago doesn’t dismiss that approach, but he draws a firm line between virality and brand-building.

“That was contextual. It was a great viral piece,” he says. “But will Spotify do the same thing again next year? Or will they move to whatever is viral then?”

Bellavita’s task, he insists, was different. “This is about building a positioning that lasts for two, three, or four years. Once you see four or five films with the same idea, you’ll understand the journey.”

His larger critique is about brands borrowing culture versus building their own.

“It’s okay to use pop culture,” he says. “But bring it into your world. Don’t run to pop culture; make it come to you.”

He cites Netflix and Amul as brands that do this well. “They take what’s happening and absorb it into their language.”

Brand side vs agency side

Mago’s perspective is shaped by his time on the brand side, including his stint at Zomato. That experience, he says, fundamentally changed how he writes.

“When you work inside a company, you understand P&L. You understand risk. You understand what mistakes actually cost.” He believes every creative should experience the business side at least once.

“On the brand side, you realise everyone is working towards revenue, not awards.”

“90% of the time, the real problem statement never reaches agencies,” he says. “There’s massive miscommunication.”

Which is why he now works only with founders and CMOs. “I want to understand the actual problem, not a filtered version.”

The uncomfortable truth about markups

Toward the end of the conversation, Mago becomes visibly more expressive and intense.

“The biggest problem in advertising right now is lack of transparency,” he says. “And it’s killing creativity.”

He calls out the practice of agency markups and kickbacks, where money meant for execution is syphoned off instead of being invested in craft.

“Ads are made for crores. Instead of putting that money into creativity, people keep markups. The quality drops, and no one cares.”

For Bellavita’s campaign, he says, the opposite happened. “The DP was flown in from London. The director was perfect. Everyone wanted to make this film better.”

His belief is simple: “Transparency leads to good creativity. Period.”

“Eighty percent of the work is execution,” he says. “An idea is just twenty percent.”

With Own the Vibe, Bellavita isn’t just launching a film; it’s laying the groundwork for a brand voice that wants to be remembered, not just replayed.