Little actors, big impact: The success of Flipkart’s 'Kidults'

Advertisements are frequently loaded with celebrities promoting product features. Despite their high profiles, however, such campaigns can often feel formulaic and struggle to truly captivate audiences. Ads that resonate and build lasting trust are few and far between. For emerging brands, creating memorable campaigns that break through the clutter becomes an even greater challenge.

One approach that successfully addresses this challenge is the ‘Kidult’ concept, where children play adult roles. Popularised by Flipkart’s campaigns, this approach introduced a playful, fresh angle to advertising. Flipkart first ventured into the ‘kidult’ genre with its 2011 campaign, 'No Kidding. No Worries.', conceptualised by Happy Creative Services (known as Happy mcgarrybowen following its acquisition by Dentsu). This child-adult twist enabled Flipkart to stand out amid celebrity-heavy ad landscapes and engage audiences effectively.

The initial challenges

Kidults came into the picture when Naren Kaushik Mudrakartha, AVP, Creative, Mayhem Studios, joined Happy Creative Services in 2010 as a copywriter. The agency had bagged the creative duties for Myntra and Flipkart during the pitch process. "E-commerce was not really a big thing back then. There were still a lot of concerns about transacting online. COD did not really exist at that point in time. There were multiple challenges about selling stuff online and how purchases would happen." 

In a landscape where online shopping was not only new but also intimidating, what kind of creative ideas could help a brand build trust? Mundrakartha was reminded of an observation from Adman Piyush Pandey. He remarked, “Piyush Pandey had once said that stories featuring animals, old people and children give a lot of entertainment value, watchability and even reliability to a large extent.”

A global study suggests that adults tend to experience enjoyment when viewing cute images or objects. Brain imaging scans showed that when participants looked at pictures of infants, neural activity was triggered within a seventh of a second in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, a region associated with reward responses. In contrast, no such brain activity was observed when participants viewed pictures of adults. It has also been observed that using kids in advertising or for any other type of communication for brand building is likely to positively affect the consumers’ brand preference and purchase intentions.

In a previous conversation with Social Samosa, Chandramouli Nilakantan, CEO, TRA Research said, "Children doing kidult roles attract quick attention of audiences, and often are the reason for a smile in the audiences, and give the unexpected from an ad. For example, financial advice by kids is completely unexpected, and that itself generates interest."

Understanding this consumer psyche has worked well for Flipkart's campaign. 

Conceptualisation

While the concept of a campaign centred around ‘kidults’ has now become highly successful, inspiring numerous brands to adopt similar approaches, convincing stakeholders of its potential was not straightforward. In the initial stages, selling the idea to sceptics was a challenge. Mundrakartha wrote the script in a believer and non-believer format. Reflecting on this, Mundrakartha said, "We presented it to a focus group and it didn't do very well at the research level, because it was a new concept and we didn't have a reference point to show. A lot of people didn't grasp the creative device of the kid-adults campaign."

However, Mundrakartha noted that the messaging crafted through the dialogues and interactions between the believer and non-believer format cut through to a lot of people. 

Despite the lukewarm response to the initial steps, Mundrakartha and the team recognised that audiences still resonated with the campaign’s messaging, even if the concept of ‘kidults’ itself was initially unfamiliar. Taking this leap, driven by confidence in the campaign’s core message, was ultimately a risk that paid off.

Happy proposed working with KM Ayappa, an ad filmmaker from the production house Footcandles. Mundrakarta notes that Ayappa had a lot of inputs which were good for the campaign, right from makeup, to professional coaching and workshops for the kids on acting, cosmetics, set design and more.