Spectal
Entertainment & Culture
Pan-India
2021
We're the content and strat partners for Spectal - an insanely enthusiastic and prolific youth culture agency
The context
Spectal is a youth culture agency that connects India’s youth, culture, and brands through experiential marketing, brand solutions and live entertainment. They work with India’s biggest brands, India’s hottest cultural festivals, campus festivals spanning the country, artists across genres, and industries ranging from global diplomacy to whatever Pokemon is. They’ve shaped the journey and rise of bands like The Local Train and When Chai Met Toast, and are growing into a mainstay of Indian culture and entertainment.
In 2021, when we started working with them, they were already doing all this. But over the past five years, we’ve been their creative and strategy partners on record working with them on all manner of things - internal and external.
The brief
There was none. Or there were a million. Depends.
We’ve worked on ideating concepts for a brand new IP, copy for branding at campus activations, building strategy for a 50-city-wide festival, captions for reels, and even blue-sky-thinking for what Spectal can do as a brand.
But let’s classify this as working in two different capacities:
1. Creative + strat partners for Spectal’s clients
2. Creative + strat partners for Spectal itself
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Part 1: External: Creative + strat partners for Spectal’s clients
We’ve been pretty deeply embedded in Spectal’s workflow, working on big and small briefs they get. We’ve ended up working on activations and properties of brands like Philips, Hero, Myntra, Nestle, and a whole lot more.
Some of this work has ended up:
On-ground at college campuses across India
At large-scale cultural platforms like Sunburn and Comic Con
On the digital platforms for several client-brands
In a million Google Docs, shaping what eventually gets done
Some things we’ve done
Building and presenting strategic directions for new properties and activations
Writing everything from on-ground copy to digital content
Acting as a sounding board for early-stage ideas before they scale
Part 2: Internal: Creative + strat partners for Spectal itself
Over five years, we’ve done a lot of long-term thinking and work on Spectal’s own brand.
We repositioned them, helping with clarity on services, offerings, and direction of growth.
We created essential brand and founder comms for different platforms, to communicate Spectal’s offerings and USPs, giving clarity to how they pitch and present themselves.
We led a complete branding overhaul with Spectal’s internal design team, in collaboration with an external visual designer.
Design led by Preksha Sipani and Udisha Madan We’ve set a social media strategy and direction for showcasing their work.
We support (and sometimes suggest!) internal initiatives like internship programs, hiring narratives, and a bunch more that are currently WIP.
We act as a sounding board and friendly nag when it comes to getting Spectal’s own work done without deprioritising client work. :)
We’re in the process of getting their own website up and ready - Watch this space for updates / a new case study!
Over the years, we’ve become very comfortable being an extension of the Spectal team, and are vested in their growth and success. We’ve seen the team grow and change and over time, and are pretty well connected with their current (and past) members along their journeys!
The founder is a man of few words
But we bugged him to say something for this case study.
Rough Paper has been a game changer for us. Their approach to solving strategy and communication challenges is both refreshing and effective. They are our brainstorming buddies who are always ready and eager to listen to our ideas and refine them to help bring it to life.
Himanshu Chowdhry, Founder - Spectal
Follow Spectal on Linkedin and Instagram