Sajan Raj Kurup’s most Creative Ads on TV

 Advertisers have always found new ways and mediums to reach their intended audience. It is important to find the right method in which your message is conveyed to your audience. Whether it be billboards for your movies or small pamphlets for your local restaurants, how you reach your audience impacts your overall reach. Especially with the digital era we live in today, brands are constantly finding new and innovative methods of content delivery. Although we are making strides towards new platforms, Television has always been and is the world’s favorite video platform. Television has been remarkably resilient to the changing nature of content consumption. Despite the emergence of online video platforms such as YouTube and Netflix, TV remains steadfast around the globe. TV continues to be at the top as it remains the most trusted form of advertising, viewers are more likely to trust the advertisements they see on TV as compared to the ones they see on online platforms. 

Brands have always tried to capitalize on the effectiveness of TV advertisements and give their audience entertaining and compelling ads. TV has limited time to spare on advertising, so brands need to come up with quick ways to introduce their products and entice the viewers to buy the products. Because of the limited time, TV ads usually end up being about 30 to 40 seconds. This restriction of time forces advertisers to become innovative with their storytelling and find creative ways to sell their products. 

One such company that pushed the TV advertisement space forward is Creativeland Asia (CLA). Founded in 2007, CLA is an Indian Advertising agency headed by Founder and Creative Chairman, Sajan Raj Kurup. Kurup is a firm believer in creativity and aims to bring out the best version of his client’s products to the screen. Ever since its inception in 2007, Kurup and CLA represented several multinational brands and designed many creatively compelling ads. These ads range from funny to downright iconic. 

Ad campaigns like the Audi A8 series campaign showed innovative use of CGI to depict the comforts of a sedan. The A8 series is a luxury sedan aimed at customers who want a comfortable ride, and to showcase this Kurup and the team used CGI to visualize the experience. They created a 40-second ad in which we can see an entire corner office smoothly gliding down a road as the man inside sits in comfort at his desk, the camera quickly pans across the office and watches him step out of a door, revealing that indeed he was sitting in a car. This clever visualization used CGI to great effect and illustrated that the Audi A8 is a luxury experience. 

Another ad campaign that showed great use of CGI was the ‘MTS Internet Baby’ campaign. The internet baby ad is a 60-second spot that shows a mother giving birth in the hospital, the ad starts off frantic but quickly comes to a halt as a completely animated baby crawls out of the doctor’s hands and starts using a mobile phone. This funny little ad manages to create a strong impression on the viewer’s mind. Seeing a baby immediately starts to walk out of the womb and go viral on the internet will surely make you remember the MTS brand.  

Ads like the HomeShop 18 spot also used CGI to great effect. This ad campaign showed two completely animated cats as father and son. Both the cats sit at their desk and talk to the camera explaining the process of ordering something from HomeShop 18. 

CLA also had great success with visualizing beverage brands such as LMN (or lemon), a lemonade brand. The whole conceptualization, packaging, and branding of LMN were handled by Kurup and his team. They crafted several stories of ads revolving around thirsty people looking for a drink. One of the iconic ones was ‘Dehydrated man’. It showed a 12-inch tall man stranded at the beach looking for a drink in the scorching sun. The man tumbles through groups of people, trying not to be crushed by these giant humans, finally finds a vendor selling LMN, drinks the beverage, and turns back into a fully grown man. The ad is exciting, chaotic, and overall very comic. It grabs your attention and sells the product while keeping you entertained. 

Another beverage brand that CLA worked extensively on was Frooti. For Parle agro, one of their marquee clients, CLA rebranded Frooti as an exciting and fresh drink. Their ‘Crazy Mango Fun’ comprised of two videos, one was a mango-themed outdoor game show and another was a string of pranks done on pedestrians. The prank videos comprised of huge mangoes showing up in unexpected places like falling from a tree, rolling down a street, or in people’s baggage claim at the airport. The objective of these ads was to enforce to the community that Frooti is made with fresh and natural mangoes. 

Over the past 14 years, Sajan Raj Kurup with CLA has worked with over 30 clients and made hundreds of TV advertisements. Their talents and creativity have boosted sales for their clients and promoted artistic content on the Television platform.