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New Delhi: Remember Samay Raina roasting Wok Tok on his show India’s Got Latent? Or the Britania ‘Croissant’ pronunciation challenge that had netizens giggling? Both these projects were executed by Youngun, an advertising agency that specialises in “tailoring campaigns that become a conversation point for the internet.”
Four years ago, the mechanical routine of influencer marketing steered Saksham Jadon to launch Youngun, a creative agency that makes memes, not ads.
In the marketers’ manifesto, meme marketing is rarely mentioned as an important pillar, but Youngun proudly wears the badge of humour. So, we asked Saksham Jadon, Founder and CEO of Youngun, why he focuses on humour when Cadbury’s emotional ads still make people cry.
“The reason why we use humour is because if you look at the consumption pattern of people on Instagram today, you will find that 70% of things they relate to and giggle about include humour. Earlier, people were not accustomed to consuming so much humour every day, and if you look at emotional ads, not all of them have a wide appeal, but humour does.
I would want my creatives to have a broader appeal, so we decided to bank on humour. Previously, with emotional ads, brands would ‘spray and pray,’ and now humour is being used to do the same. The point is to think of one thing that’s really funny and hope that everyone finds it funny instead of designing different creatives for different audiences because logistically that’s a very heavy task.”
Reputation
From humorous campaigns, let’s move on to India’s Got Latent, the YouTube show launched by Samay Raina that’s attracting brands with a unique proposition, which is to get roasted. Yes, Samay is roasting brands, and yet they are queueing up to sponsor the show. What an irony, right?
Youngun took WokTok to India’s Got Latent, and Samay, as usual, roasted the brand. So, we asked Jadon how he convinced the brand manager to publicly roast his brand.
Jadon replied by saying, “In today's time, consumers are seeking authenticity. This is why you see Anupam Mittal making reels, which had never happened before, because he wants to establish authenticity. A brand can never be humanised to the extent that its founders can be. ”
Coming on to how he convinced the brand about being roasted, he said, “Whoever comes to us, they come with a certain expectation because they have already seen our work in their circles. They may have seen my LinkedIn, so they know what type of stuff I do. Now, the catch here is that we have a reputation for quirky stuff and memes. However, if an older agency tries doing what we do and does not have a solid, authentic reason to say that thing, the brand will ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’"
Working with brand managers
We asked Jadon if working with older brand managers is difficult as they don’t always “get the idea” and if there are a lot of to-and-fros when it comes to post-production and designing the creatives.
Answering the question, Jadon said, “We expect brand managers to be flexible and take risks. However, there are brand managers, especially in corporates, who want to play defensively and spread indecisiveness knowingly because they are afraid to take action and accountability.
You never know who you will bump into, so we follow a two-creative-attempt system. If any brief comes, and it is not converted in two creative attempts, then we don't entertain the client. This is our fixed rule: no matter how big the brand is, if it is not happening in two creative attempts, then we pass it and move on to the next one."
A Swiss knife
Since Jadon mentioned that “the majority of their work includes projects and a few retainers,” the question that sprung up was, because Youngun sticks to the quirky stuff, is it difficult for them to grab annual contracts?
“I feel this is not the time to be a Swiss knife anymore. I am very clear on this. Even if we cater to 1,000 clients instead of 100, the reason for our existence is very clear: we want to make quirky stuff that gets people hooked, not be a Swiss knife that does everything but nothing better than a proper knife.
Even if we sign annual contracts, the tone will be the same. The agency math is that a retainer pays the salaries, and project work is your profit. I already have that sorted, and I also have a few retainers in place for Tinder and Ajio,” he said, reasoning his stance.
Business transitions
Revealing some of the major changes in Youngun’s functioning, Jadon said, “What we did in 2024 is that we focused heavily on video-related projects, which we hadn't done much of in the past three years. Now, we are transitioning to a model where if a brand wants to do something on social media, we handle everything for them on social. We are moving away from just pitching meme marketing.
We see that 'this is the narrative of your brand; these are six properties on social where you can do all these interesting things.' We aim to first create a video, then take it to out-of-home (OOH) advertising, essentially providing 360-degree social management while retaining our unique style. This approach focuses more on conversations and current trends rather than ads.”
In today’s world, social media is a fragmented landscape. Two people cannot have a similar Instagram feed, resulting in fragmentation of the content consumed.
To address the issue of fragmentation in social media, Jadon plans to develop a tool: “A mass-level user consumption engine that we could use to study the consumption patterns of several Instagram users. The rationale here is that brands should not feel restricted to what their agency sees on their mobile feed. There are millions of things happening in the world, but only 100 things appear on your mobile feed. That is not the reality. Jadon believes that all these issues will be solved through data,” he resolved.
The model and the challenges
A close examination of Youngun’s work tells us that it is not “dependent on trends but rather on where user attention is focused in the moment.” The format forms the “second layer” of it. For example, Youngun is more interested in knowing what people will engage with: “It can be a husband-and-wife fight, or it can be an attack on singles, not necessarily a trend,” said Jadon, explaining the core framework behind his team’s work.
While the work model is interesting and unique in itself, everything looks great when viewed from afar, but there are challenges, too.
Opening up about the challenges, Jadon said, “When I started the agency, I didn't understand the importance of client servicing people. I thought that if one person was thinking creatively and the other just said yes, everything would get sorted on the fly. That was a wrong decision. Eventually, I realised that if the bandwidth of creative people is going into operations in any form, then that is a loss on their side.
For the first three years, I didn't even know that there were people who specifically did client servicing. Once we started achieving scale, I realised that it was a huge problem because creative people don't know how to tackle clients. I own that mistake. Even if the idea is good, and the client is waiting for eight hours, then do your creatives actually matter?”
Ending the conversation, Jadon had a small piece of advice for marketers who cry about shorter attention spans, and he said, “Blaming attention span is the ultimate cop-out. It's the laziest excuse in the book. If you don't get the idea, you just say there's an attention span problem.
But your job is to keep up with social media users, regardless of whether their attention span is short or long, where they are, what they're thinking, and what they're doing. Highlighting the problem is pointless; people already know it. Everyone's screen time used to be 4-5 hours, and guess what? It's still 4-5 hours. Nothing has changed!"