Show & Tell 2022: The objective of the print ad was to make a print version of thumbstoppers - Viren Noronha, Swiggy

(From left clockwise: Noel D'Cunha, managing editor, PrintWeek and Raahil Chopra, managing editor, Campaign India, Sanket Audhi, creative and founding member, Talented, Viren Sean Noronha, senior marketing manager-social and content, Swiggy, PG Aditiya, chief creative officer, co-founder, Talented)

PrintWeek hosted the first edition of 'Show & Tell', a forum which discussed print and its future on 2 November 2022. 

The last session for the day was a panel discussion on Swiggy’s 'Why is this a Swiggy ad', conceptualised by Talented. 

The panellists consisted of PG Aditiya, chief creative officer, co-founder, Talented, Sanket Audhi, creative and founding member, Talented, and Viren Sean Noronha, senior marketing manager-social and content, Swiggy, in conversation with Noel D'Cunha, managing editor, PrintWeek and Raahil Chopra, managing editor, Campaign India. 

Aditiya commented that the in the first version of their creative, they saw themselves innovating in print by integrating it with technology through user-generated conversations. He remarked, “The best way to talk about this campaign is not to talk about it but ask about it.” 

After rolling out the print and OOH ad, Noronha shared that the reach of the consumers answering the query of why this was a Swiggy ad was around 3.2 crores on the third day after the campaign was launched. 

Aditiya then went on to show the audience a bunch of tweets that caught their eye and a YouTube video created by a consumer to showcase how the ad helped build curiosity. He shared that over 20,000 unique theories were made across Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

When asked how they got to pull in the Gen Z audience for this ad campaign, Aditiya shared, “The 21-year-old deserves a campaign of this scale. We have often told ourselves that Gen Z’s attention spans are low. The advertising creative process looks at coherence, and that’s what we set out to do. The Gen Z audience doesn’t hate ads they just hate bad ads. With #WITASA, we hopefully have broken the myth that print ads don’t captivate the Gen Z audience. After the rollout of the Swiggy campaign, a gaming live stream was also discussed in advertising, which shows the impact of a powerful ad.”

Harping on this point of captivating the Gen Z cohorts, Noronha stressed that the goal should not be to snatch the consumer's attention but challenge their imagination. “The objective of the print ad was to make a print version of thumbstoppers”, he continued.  

Talking about how the print ad has impacted the brand, Noronha said, “The intent behind the campaign was to cultivate brand love and conversation. That is exactly what it did. There is a lot of conversation about the brand already on social media, and it was about cashing in on this momentum and making a phenomenal campaign.”

Before the Swiggy campaign, Talented also worked on an interactive campaign for Cleartrip (read about this on 8 November in Campaign India). 

When asked if this is a path the agency is carving for itself, Aditiya commented, “If an agency can create internet-worthy advertising that incites conversation on ATL is the new aim for all print media. It should be ATL work that knows the power of the internet and that links readers back to the brand’s landing page.”

After the end of the discussion, Aditiya revealed why the print ad was a Swiggy ad. 

He signed off by saying, “The ad is a Swiggy ad because it created brand conversation. That is what the audience and the panellist have been doing during the session. For #WITASA, We did reward ten winners whose theories we liked. But from a broader perspective, it was what Noronha said - consumers make it an ad in their head, and at a core level, it reminds everyone about the simplicity of what advertising used to be. Which are just creatives that make you think about a brand.”

As the brand received a lot of buzz on social media, the brand rolled out a film showcasing the fan theories of #WITASA on 21 October 2022. View the work here: