Wieden & Kennedy

Wieden & Kennedy was an incredible advertising agency we visited in Delhi. I vividly remember driving along a side street to the agency and there on the side of the road was a small fire next to a large mound of trash. Beyond the small fire was a stream that ran along the length of the road and I could see someone shaving as we passed them in our cozy bus. I couldn't believe that such an incredible agency was nestled here along this street where inside the walls of the agency such brilliant minds collaborate to create such brilliant work. This image of driving along this street and then walking into a completely different world than the one we left outside, is something that truly defines India. The rich and poor aren't segregated in where they live, they are mixed everywhere. In the book titled, "We are like that only," Bijapurkar describes this low income that I keep seeing, "At the botton of the pyramid there are 600 million people who earn less than what the World Bank defines as poverty levels. However, collectively, they account for a market opportunity of US $367 billion (in 2008), which is approximately double that of Singapore..." When we walked into W&K's office and they began there incredible presentation, I knew that they knew this concept so incredibly well; I could feel it in there work.

One of my favorite marketing campaigns that W&K created was for a Nokia cell phone that provided solar energy to recharge the phone, a flash light connected to the top of the phone, and had a no slip screen in case you sweated while on the phone. All of these features were specifically targeted towards the lower income class. When looking at many of the advertisements that W&K created for India, they went even further by using local artists and musicians for their ads. This agency knew its consumers in India so well and successfully markets products to them. This agency respects its employees and the creative environment space that they work in. Inside their agency W&K hosts an art gallery where different local artists are featured throughout the year. You could feel the energy and the hard work that comes from this agency. Those couple hours visiting that agency continue to this day to inspire me in my lifelong career goal to create meaningful messages that impact others lives and in turn somehow change the world. Thanks Wieden & Kennedy for bringing that dream back to life.