#SamosaTalks: India has an extremely strong creative foundation: Ross Jauncey, Google

In an exclusive tete-a-tete with Social Samosa, Head of 'Create With Google', Ross Jauncey shares his favourite campaigns from India and why India is a great creative force.

In October 2018, Google launched 'Create With Google' designed to support the creative community with programs, education, and tools. According to Campaign Brief, the platform is launched to show the creative makers how to get the most out of digital ads, showing what’s possible by showcasing the best work from around the world and inspiring, practical materials to get the creative juices flowing. 

Ross Jauncey, Head of 'Create With Google' shared that the initiative is seeing strong traffic from India and the response has been overwhelming. "I think India has an extremely strong creative foundation and I think they are masters in creativity already. We are going to be providing a lot of values to the industry that’s quite healthy and next time around if I am here again, I expect to see a lot of Indian work celebrating some great ideas leveraging Google’s technology and platforms, " he added.

When quizzed about his two favorite campaigns from the Indian creative shore, Jauncey recalled Ariel's Share the Load and Ola's April Fools Day campaigns. "Ariel’s Share the Load – I can still remember seeing the ad for the first time and how it impacted me. It is one of those campaigns that leveraged YouTube to tell a long format story and it took time to get that emotion out. So, I think YouTube played an important role in this."

Also Read: #SamosaTalks: I am not a big believer of causevertising or storytelling: Barry Wacksman, R/GA

"And the same can be said for Ola’s recent campaign on April Fools Day ‘Ola Restrooms’. They did push it to market it as an ad but it got them a lot of organic growth on the platform.  So they kind of seeded the idea and lot of viewers enjoyed it. But in terms of brand values, they also used that moment to drive awareness to the issue that India is facing of hygienic toilets. They immediately directed that attention to a crowd sourcing campaign and invested loads of money to put toilets out to the public. The results were phenomenal," he exclaimed.

While sharing his views on whether storytelling is the only way forward for advertising in the future, Jauncey quipped that when it comes to storytelling you either have to do a good job at a performance or a great job at storytelling. But there is no way we are looking at the future without great storytelling. It's important to give the creative industry their space to develop great ideas. The power if a very strong idea is that it has a leapfrog impact for that brand and help people remember it through the story.

Watch the full interview here: