Meet the team behind Fevicol’s stickily viral Cristiano Ronaldo post

“Don’t directly jump to the idea… What’s the story and what all different angles can we take…” remarks Puru Agarwal, creative lead of full-service agency Schbang on the brainstorming for its now-viral Fevicol post on the Cristiano Ronaldo and Coca-Cola saga.

The Portuguese football team's captain moved a couple of the beverage's bottles off the desk before he sat down for a press conference. He then went on to hold up a bottle of water and mouthed the word ‘agua’, which is Portuguese for water.

This scene not only went viral within seconds but reportedly caused the beverage giant to lose USD 4billion in value.

It was but natural to see brands battle it out to gain supremacy over this glorious moment marketing opportunity Ronaldo had offered them in which Fevicol emerged the most popular.

‘Na bottle hategi, na valuation ghategi’ read the image copy. The post just like the topic it took on became a trend in a short time. “The timing is very important in a moment marketing piece, we shared 10 options and on the day when we were discussing the moment marketing post, our WhatsApp group had hundreds of messages in a minute,” reveals Agarwal.

Aniket Ajwani, the account lead on Fevicol is credited for bringing the valuation angle amongst the group’s conversation. We unanimously decided to stick to this because it was doing the rounds says Ajwani and went on to say, “That’s where we came up with the “na valuation ghategi” creative copy.”

If you’d read the post, the copy reads “Haye ni mera Coka Coka Coka Coka Coka” which is inspired by a famous Punjabi song. Creative strategist Kartikeya Misra tell us the song was playing in his head at the time of the meeting and “I thought why not pitch it? It’s funny and in our tonality.”

Ajwani went on to add, “It’s a good song and has a subtle connection to what the topic is all about. It fit perfectly.”

While the copy delivered when needed, Aditi Parmar, a graphic visualiser at the agency revealed design had hit a snag because they were stuck on how to show Ronaldo. After all, it was not possible because of copyright. “We decided to show the chair and the mike and blurred the sponsors displayed on the board,” she tells us.

Ajwani says they wanted to keep the design as close to the press conference as possible because people would relate to it.

It turns out Fevicol wanted Schbang to try English copy too and not just restrict itself to Hindi versions but it was Jay Morzaria, the agency’s group creative manager who pushed for the Hindi versions and eventually founder Harshil Karia went with it.

For the uninitiated, Fevicol would seem a traditional risk-averse brand as compared to a young and cool brand such as CRED but looking at Fevicol’s social media activities for a while, we can assure you that it’s not the case.

So, we wondered how Schbang work on its creative process for such a brand and perhaps others too. What kind of checks and balances does it apply to its ideas before approaching its client(s)?

Karia revealed a neat distinction among the team that illustrated how it goes about its work. "On this call, you will find some people who’re speaking freely and some who’re speaking in jargon. Those speaking freely throw the ideas and those speaking in jargon filter the ideas.

My call with the agency had over 12 people.

Amisha Gulati who is Schbang's VP of solutions says the team makes sure to never speak anything controversial and Morzaria summed it up when he said, “One check and balance we have is that if you’ve to explain the post, it’s not worth it.”

Schbang has been handling the Fevicol account for nearly three and a half years. A major change Karia says they’ve witnessed is in the agency’s mindset. When it first won the account, there was a lot of “nervousness, now there’s a lot of confidence.”

Management:

Harshil Karia, Founder

Akshay Gurnani, Co-founder and CEO

Creative Team:

Aditya Mehendale - Group Creative Director

Jay Morzaria - Group Creative Manager

Puru Agarwal - Creative Lead

Madhvendra Singh - Creative Lead

Kartikeya Misra - Creative Strategist

Aditi Parmar - Graphic visualiser

Sanket Gawand - Design Lead

Deep Doshi - Art Director

Solutions Team:

Amisha Gulati - VP, Solutions

Viren Chhabria - Group Solutions Manager

Aniket Ajwani - Account Lead

Shourya Porwal - Integrated Solutions Strategist