The use of Artificial Intelligence is increasingly prominent in the advertising landscape. After Airtel, Cadbury India and Tata Tea, Fevikwik is the latest to jump onto the AI bandwagon.
In its new campaign, Fevikwik AI Pack, developed with Ogilvy, the brand reimagines its playful identity through the use of AI.
Fevikwik is known for positioning its brand around quick fixes. But now, they are shifting focus toward fun and creativity.
The campaign introduces the Fevikwik AI Pack powered by ‘KwikGPT’ that merges unrelated objects into unusual innovations like a broom that gets an attached Bluetooth speaker, a hairbrush attached to a stick and even a chopping board with a built-in mirror.
With this new campaign, Fevikwik is focusing less on utility and more on making people laugh. It encourages viewers to play along. This series of short ads of 38 seconds directs viewers to an interactive microsite, where users can enter two random objects and receive AI-generated mashups with hilarious names. The brand has rolled out an interactive element in its campaign through its microsite, where users can enter two random objects and receive AI-generated mashups with hilarious names. According to the brand, the most creative results will be shared on the brand’s social media channels. The weekly winners will get Rs 10,000, while the ultimate Chutki Mein Kalaakari Champion will get a Rs 5 lakh reward.
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‘Desperate grasp at virality’
While embracing the AI craze and plugging their own statement pun in the experience, the brand has ended up creating what can be called a ‘messy fusion’.
It combines Fevikwik’s core value of ‘fixing things’, fun and creativity and an AI tool, but instead of a smooth cocktail, we’re left with an indiscernible aftertaste. The commercials, alone, aren’t really funny, and the only spark of fun shows up on the microsite—KwikGPT.
But that is a huge risk. Most people don’t take the time to look up a website that is attached to an advertisement. And even if they do, the waiting time to ‘generate’ the user’s innovation on Fevikwik’s microsite can put them off. Now, without this engagement, the campaign may not have the right glue.
By trying to appear trendy with AI, Fevikwik has sidelined its own strength, that is, witty simplicity.
However, Nikhil Pahwa, founder of MediaNama, a technology policy firm, said that Fevikwik’s campaign is simply another example of how brands are experimenting with AI tools. And it shouldn’t be seen as something that defines the brand’s legacy.
At the same time, he added, it lacks the timelessness to be remembered 20 years down the line, like Fevikwik’s iconic campaigns ‘Chutki mai chipkaye’.
“An AI-generated campaign just doesn’t carry the same recall value as one created by Adman Piyush Pandey,” he said.
According to Pahwa, the real strength of AI, in the advertising landscape, lies in reducing the skill and scale gap. It has the potential to make the process of creating commercials dramatically leaner.
“What once required a 40–50-member team can now be done by a kid with the right idea. You don’t need a cameraman, animator, or production crew. AI makes the process of creating ads faster, cheaper, and possible with fewer people. All you really need today is imagination,” he said.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)