On the 20^th of September, 2023, Dr Kulveen Trehan conducted a webinar on the topic of ‘Creative Executions in Advertising in the Digital Era’ for the MA Multimedia and Communication students of MAHE’s Bengaluru campus.

Dr Trehan is a Senior Assistant Professor from GGS Indraprastha University. The event was conducted in an online mode through Microsoft Teams, with Dr Trehan’s screen projected to the class. Dr Shilpa Kalyan, HoD of DLHS, arranged and supervised the lecture.

Dr Trehan spoke at length about various ways to include creative elements in modern advertising campaigns to create brand differentiation, a vital element in today’s competitive market. Throughout the presentation, she showed several examples of good advertisements that were not just creative but also socially aware and relevant. Several of these advertisements used certain creative elements to capture the audience’s attention

Some of the creative elements that Dr Trehan discussed during the session were:

• Absence, or exclusion of distinct elements to inspire curiosity (such as a statue with just a head and limbs and no body)
• Moment marketing, or socially mediatised advertisements that are relevant and trendy (such as a fast food outlet posting about Chandrayaan-3 on Instagram)
• Clever wordplay that localises global topics with puns (such as a tea shop named ChaiGPT)
• Replacement, or using relevant words in place of usual ones (such as Red Label’s advertisement about tea being India’s biggest social network using online jargon)
• Demarketing, or actively discouraging the brand’s cause (such as Zomato encouraging home-made food)
• News features, which are longer ads that discuss several ideas (such as Apple’s self-aware advertisement acknowledging their carbon footprint and deciding on sustainable and measurable goals)
• New constructions of reality with technology (such as the use of AR/VR and 3D-animated billboards)
• Digital brand activism or brand advocacy, in which brands actively promote a cause (such as Dove breaking beauty norms)

Dr Trehan also spoke about the importance of unique human ideas due to rapidly growing AI tools, the necessity of advertisements to keep evolving and stay up-to-date, and the importance of strengthening brand image to survive.