Working on brands that one has grown up with

I started my career in advertising with Bru Coffee. I was the junior account executive on this account in at Ogilvy, Mumbai. Needless to say, this was a huge opportunity, the magnitude of which I understoon only a few years later.

For context, I am from a Puducherry - a charming small town in South India. So naturally,  a move from here to Mumbai is a BIIIIG jump.

But that was still smaller compared to my professional leap. I was handling a Unilever account - a client few within the agency get the privilege of working on.

The cherry on this surprise cake? I was working at Ogilvy - the mecca of modern advertising. A culture shaper in the Indian advertising scene.

I had entered this behemoth without prior advertising experience, working on a client many aspired to handle, in a city many struggled to get to.

And all of this was handed to me on a platter - all I had to say was YES.

All of this would have been much harder if not for the account I was working on. Bru Coffee is a South Indian filter coffee brand and the flagship coffee brand in Unilever’s beverage portfolio.

Being a Tamil Brahmin, brought up in a home that consumed filter coffee the way people now drink Pepsi or Coke, working on this brand was a boon. Back home, filter coffee wasn’t just a beverage - it was a morning ritual. I grew up not just as an observer of the brand but as someone who understood its cultural ecosystem. I was part of its rituals, the conversations around it, privy to the ways it was made and consumed. I learnt that how one consumed it said a lot about who they were. It was intrinsic to Tamil culture - and now I was its brand custodian.

This worked immensely in my favour. Here I was, the most junior account management executive in the room, giving senior creative folks within the Ogilvy fraternity tips on how to make the ad more “local” or give it a more “Tamil feel.” I played a dual role - brand custodian and cultural interpreter - drawing from lived experience rather than borrowed insight.

I was, as my boss would often introduce me, the in-house Tamil and local expert for the brand. If I felt the creative was culturally off, he wouldn’t present it to the client. That was unheard of - not at my level, not with the people I was working for, not in the agency I was in.

Over the years, I realized that this intersection - the imaginary Venn diagram of loving a brand as a consumer and shaping it as an account manager - is rare.

It is deeply satisfying, yet equally challenging. Sometimes our own experiences can masquerade as universal truths. A personal insight can feel far more widespread than it actually is.

And yet, it’s rewarding. You see the brand holistically. You’ve already encountered different consumer cohorts. You understand triggers, barriers, and the emotional payoff first-hand. You’ve lived the emotional laddering - not just studied it.

Working on any brand that is part of a culture or sub-culture always hits different, especially when you belong in that culture yourself.

This is reflective in consumer behaviour too. The emotion attached to a product says a lot about the mental state in which people buy it.

That purchase mindset is crucial when creating communication. Too much emotion won’t work if the consumer themselves doesn’t think emotionally about the purchase. Creating tear-jerkers for categories devoid of emotional intensity in the buying moment rarely works.

That’s not to say emotions don’t matter. We must tap into the mindset of the person making that purchase and uncover the real emotional trigger behind it. These insights rarely emerge in group discussions. They surface in long one-on-one conversations, in homes, in comfort, after 45 minutes of listening. When people stop performing and start revealing.

But I digress. 

The larger point is this: it’s rare to work on a product or category you are deeply passionate about. And when you do, it’s exhilarating.

The downside however is decoding things sometimes you wished you never knew. Working on an oil brand and discovering the compromises required to meet price points. Understanding the health trade-offs behind a candy you once loved unquestioningly.

Some things one can live with, but sometimes, just sometimes, one begins to love the same thing with a little less innocence and a little less heart. 

It's a tight rope walk for sure. The passion gives one the access, but the distance adds objectivity.

To love a brand is both one's greatest strength but also, one's greatest vulnerability.