'Keeping the user before the message - wish this came to me earlier'

Campaign India's countdown to the end of the decade series features leading names from marketing and communications. Here, they ask Swati Bhattacharya, CCO, FCB Ulka about work, past efforts and future skills: 

 

What's one piece of work in the last decade that you wish you had created/worked on. Why?

 

When I look back at the last decade, the piece of work that I really wish I would have done was Dove. The absolutely pure understanding of women and how beauty is something that is imposed upon us, that was amazing! The way it was executed, through sketches or talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does, I think it’s seminal work and I am a big fan of it that way!

 

If hindsight is 20/20, what is the one thing that you could have done differently in the last decade?

 

For a long part of my career I was looking at my target audiences only as product users and that was because my vision of this target audience was something that marketers were telling me. And lately, especially in the last four years, I like to go and tell my clients and marketers real truths about consumers and tailor-make my communication for them! I think this this new awakening of ‘the user before message’ that has come to me fairly recently, I wish it would have come to me earlier.

 

One skill that you would want to pick up in 2020 and why?

 

I would like to sharpen and sharpen my understanding and my insights about my target audiences to understand things that happened deep in their heart and not just go by stereotypical images.  I would emphasise on how diversity and inclusivity can be used as incredible creative tools and not just something like a tick box or tokenism. I believe things like diversity and inclusivity, if put to right use can make your work so shiny, making it reach the hearts of the consumer and I want to do more and more of that, infact I am greedy to do that!

 

The last campaign, Project Streedhan was a case in point. It was just an anaemia campaign but the way it spoke to women, the way women enjoyed the message which in a self-deprecating way told them that ‘you run after gold but its iron that you really need’. And they got it! Because they got it, they enjoyed it. Each one of them became an activist in the cause and that is the most satisfying thing for a creative person.