Amazon Puts The ‘Great’ Back In The Great Khali
Amazon has launched a Great Indian Festival film in which The Great Khali stops feeling great. WLDD built the campaign on the gap between a wrestling name and a house full of things that no longer work.
- Brand: Amazon India, for the Great Indian Festival, which starts on 8 October
- Agency: WLDD, which describes itself as a culture-led, social-first media tech company
- Star: The Great Khali
- The premise: Khali is surrounded by ageing belongings, objects that keep breaking, and a home that no longer lives up to the name
- The turn: Great Indian Festival deals let the worn-out things be replaced, and the greatness comes back
- Film title: Bann Gaya "THE GREAT" KHALI on Amazon Great Indian Festival, Starts 8th Oct
- About the agency: founded in 2018 by Arihant Jain, Jaidev Kesti and Vivekanand Kilari, with nearly 400 people, headquartered in Bengaluru and with offices in Mumbai and Delhi
Why The Great Khali Is The Casting And The Script At Once
Because the ring name is an adjective. Most celebrity signings have to build a reason for the famous person to be in the film, and here the reason arrived with the name: if the man is called great and the sale is called great, the only question left is what happens when he is not.
It also solves the scale problem visually. A very large man looking small in his own living room is a sight gag that needs no line of dialogue, which is what makes it survive a muted feed.
What The Brief Actually Is Underneath
Replacement, not acquisition. A festive sale film usually sells the new thing; this one sells the state of the old thing, which is a harder and more useful argument because it works on a household that was not planning to buy anything.
That framing also makes the category list invisible. Nothing in the film has to name a product, because the premise is everything in the house at once, and that is the only honest way to advertise a sale that spans a whole catalogue.
What Was Said
Arihant Jain, chief executive of WLDD, said the company takes being silly quite seriously, and that during a busy sale season brands have to earn attention, where a simple idea and a good laugh sometimes do the job brilliantly. Shiv Nair, senior creative director at WLDD, said the campaign started from the image of an enormous man looking sad in an empty house, and that the fighting name gave them the story.