Fenty Beauty tied up with make-up e-commerce giant Nykaa to launch in India. They needed a 30-second film and stills to announce the arrival of Rihanna's brand, in two weeks, on a tight budget.
Nykaa was bringing Fenty Beauty into India under the campaign line "The New Generation of Beauty".
The ask: a 30 to 40 second launch film, a teaser, six-second adapts and statics.
The film had to read as unmistakably Indian without using India as a prop.
A thin line. A global brand that slips gets labelled an import, and in a price sensitive market an import quickly becomes an unnecessary purchase.
Fenty Beauty was matching India in its diversity, not suggesting it as a concept only they understood.
The concept note came from there, and the styling and makeup moodboards were built on restraint: whites, a plain saree drape, jewellery worn as a statement rather than a costume. Fenty stayed the subject, India the context.
From the briefing call the film was pushed toward an original soundtrack over a stock cue, and supervised through to the final edit.
I set the concept and the visual direction, and argued for and supervised the original soundtrack. The team and I built the shot deck, and later worked on the film and soundtrack edits in parallel. The Creative Director, the stylist, make-up artist and photographer owned the shoot floor, and the final creative calls were made on the day.
The same problem was solved in the sound. The Indian element resolved as a pungi, the snake charmer's reed: globally identifiable and about as close to an Indian stereotype as a sound can get. The melody was inspired by Indian highway truck horns.
Sampled, chopped and flipped, the drop lands against the assumption it sets up. The unexpected collision of sounds is the audio hook.
Right up to launch there was hesitation that the track was too experimental. That was exactly the argument for keeping it.
The reel went live in April 2024 on Fenty Beauty and Nykaa's accounts. 2.9 million views at a 0.44% engagement rate, roughly three times Fenty's FY24 average of 0.17%.
The commissioned soundtrack survived a late push back to stock and made the final cut.
The roll-out was cut short when Fenty Beauty moved their India distribution to Sephora. The brand mandate stayed with Yellow.
