Upwardly Mobile Male

Over the years I have had great fun working with broadcasters in India.

It’s always super challenging for a creative team when you’re working across territories where the baseline of design is so intrinsically different.  And in any branding job there’s always the dance between audience, artist and auditor.  But the audience brief on a recent project I was involved with through my agency Perfect Tribe, really stuck with me.

The brand was a new television channel launching in the movie entertainment genre. Remember, this is the home of Bollywood after all. But the team on the client side had done amazingly diligent research into exactly who their target market is:

Upwardly mobile 25-30 year old males who are enjoying all the trappings a booming economy and growing middleclass society bring, but who still have a very strong connection and pull to the tradition their parents and upbringing gave them.

I’ve spent some, not a lot, of time in Mumbai and I’ll be honest, on my first trip I couldn’t get out of there quick enough. I'd flown directly from New York City, so besides the fact that I’d lost about a day of my life, everything was too much – sounds, smells, heat, colours. Everything was just ON. But that’s exactly what I loved on my next visit, and I got to see and feel the warmth, texture and flow of the city. It fascinated me.

This brief did the same. It painted a very visceral image of young men looking to build their lives and futures. Looking to find their own way whilst constantly faced with the obligation of honouring their parents and their past. They're desperately wanting to grab the life they see exploding around them – through their friends, but probably more poignantly through their globally connected digital devices.

In a country that is so layered with tradition and castes and status and immobility, at first for me it seemed like an impossible dream for any young man. I could place them, see them, on the streets of Mumbai and I began to empathise with their challenge. And then I thought about my own brother, my cousins, my nephews. And whilst I hope that by the time my nephews are 30 we’ve built a way more tolerant world, I imagine their struggle to balance their past and their future will not have been too hugely different.

*You can see some of the branding frames for Zee Cinemalu done by tribal designer Matteo Del Nero here.