Utterly, butterly ill-judged? Bushra Ismail on Amul, Starbucks and the art of saying no

Amul’s kiss-cam topical, Starbucks Korea’s “Tank Day” and Giva’s rakhi ad all drew backlash, but Bushra Ismail doesn’t put them in the same bucket. The founder of Confiance Communications says the real test is whether a risk is defensible.

In this conversation she explains where she draws the line, how she talks founders out of bad ideas, and why the best crisis is the one nobody ever hears about.

On the name

Paarul Chand: I've always been curious, Bushra. What does the name of your company mean?

Bushra Ismail: Confiance is French. I was studying French when I formalised the business in late 2018, and it means confidence, trust. It came to me very naturally. The name had a ring to it.

Paarul: Have you ever had to explain it to a client?

Bushra: People ask every now and then. They say it sounds very fancy. But very recently I met the High Commissioner of Seychelles at an event and she promptly said, "Your company, it means trust, right?" For a change, someone was telling me what it means.

When should PR say no?

Paarul:. At what point, and under what red flags, should a PR professional say, "This is not a campaign we should do"? From your own experience, what are the red flags?

Bushra: The most important one: anything to do with racism should be a strict no. Any jibe at someone's personal failure or embarrassing moment should also be a straight no.

A campaign that comes to mind from last year is Amul's Coldplay topical, with the line "Hum tum ek camera mein band ho". It was alluding to Andy Byron and Kristin's kiss-cam moment.

I felt that was a low that a brand like Amul should never have resorted to.

I'm sure a full-fledged creative agency was involved. They should have exercised restraint. Making a joke out of someone's personal embarrassment just for the sake of virality is not cool. That was the moment someone should have been the voice of reason. As an Amul fan, it was disappointing. And the campaign got a lot of flak, so I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The red flags that get missed

Paarul: Racism and personal jibes are fairly obvious. What are the red flags that can get missed?

Bushra: A lot of the time, when you're trying to be humorous and grab attention is exactly when you miss the mark.  And it can happen so quickly you don't realise.

Earlier this year Verka released a mango lassi ad on Instagram in which a little girl gives tips on how to kidnap her. It was packaged as cute and humorous, but it backfired. With crime rates already high, ads that trivialise something like abduction need restraint.

Because it wasn't a racism issue or a public scandal, it's easy to lose the plot and think, "This is a child, it's funny." A section of the audience may have laughed, but the larger section found it disturbing, especially parents. I only became a parent last year, so these things touch a nerve like they never did before.

A playbook: obvious and not-so-obvious

Paarul: Can we recap the scenarios as a kind of playbook, obvious and not so obvious?

Bushra: The obvious ones: using someone's public scandal to create virality for yourself, as with Amul. Racism, as with the Swatch ad where an Asian model pulled at the corners of his eyes.

Another really big one was Starbucks Korea earlier this year. They launched a "Tank Day" promotion for a tank tumbler series on 18 May, the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju uprising, when pro-democracy protesters were crushed by troops. It led to a public apology, the agency being fired, a police raid and investigation, a massive boycott and, I believe, the local CEO's firing.

Who was on their team, and how did nobody immediately put a lid on that idea? Cultural awareness is essential.

Defensible risks

Bushra: As creative partners, our job is to take defensible risks. Be cheeky, be bold, be funny. But if flak comes your way, it shouldn't be so downright wrong that even you can't defend it.

Take Giva and the recent Kriti Sanon ad. That's where the brand should not have caved. There was nothing really wrong with the ad. A certain segment of the audience reacting is not the voice of the majority. Her neckline might have been low; she tied a rakhi to her dog. Many of us, including me, call our dogs our children. My daughter will tie a rakhi to our two dogs.

If you believed in an idea strongly enough to spend crores on it and rope in an A-list celebrity, you shouldn't have buckled and apologised. You should have let the storm pass.

Another example: in January, CashKaro, an erstwhile client of ours, ran an AI-generated hoarding with a double-meaning line, "Rohit ka chota hai, Rahul ka bada hai", followed by the cashback comparison. You expect mixed reactions. Some will laugh, some will call it lewd. But it's defensible because it's humour and it isn't hurting sentiments. People talk about it for a day or two and move on.

Are Indian brands more risk-averse?

Paarul: Tanishq has also pulled campaigns in the past. Do you think Indian brands are more risk-averse than global ones? And do startups and established companies differ?

Bushra: I think Indian brands and audiences are becoming extremely bold. Even the examples we've discussed that went wrong were bold decisions. A decade ago, yes, brands were more risk-averse.

With digital reach, including a very high volume of young consumers in rural India, brands recognise that sometimes getting that moment of virality is enough. The aftermath is something they'll deal with if it happens.

Five comments don't make a crisis

Bushra: A good creative partner takes defensible risks with you and has a strategy ready if there's backlash. Every time a client campaign goes live, we already have a potential crisis document in place: if there are five negative comments, what do we do?

Sometimes the best crisis management is to not react. Let it slide. Don't engage. And we also know when something is escalating and needs addressing. Many times I've told clients, "Just sleep on it." It has worked, because it didn't blow up. Had the brand engaged, it would have drawn more eyeballs.

Brands get nervous over ten comments. When you put something out there, it is no longer your own. You've given people the power to comment and opinionate, and you need the courage to accept that.

The best kind of crisis is the one that never happens because you took timely decisions.

Making sure you're consulted

Paarul: How do you ensure you're consulted on these decisions? Is it in the contract? And what client expectations do you have to manage?

Bushra: Most of our clients work with us directly through the founder's or CEO's office. I'm a personal strategic adviser to the founders. Many are startups, though some are heading for IPOs in the next two years. Even if someone asks them to comment on an industry development, they'll bounce it off me first. So we've never needed to contractualise it. It's an organic relationship, even with listed companies and conglomerates.

We have two divisions: one for startups, and one for larger entities in industrials, tourism and lifestyle. We've handled the Türkiye Tourism Board's India mandate for five years, and we work with The Quorum Club. In many cases the founders and I have worked together for years and are good friends. They just pick up the phone.

The campaign that never went live

Bushra: Recently, a client in the interiors business planned a humorous campaign about shades of grey. A patient is bitten by a snake; the doctor asks what colour it was. "Grey." "This grey or that grey?" Then the doctor and assistant mock him for not knowing there are so many greys. No obvious red flags.

We told them it was funny but could come across as trivialising patient negligence, which unfortunately does happen. The client was very sensible and accepted it, and the campaign never went live. The best crisis management is when the crisis never happened and nobody found out.

Paarul: I have to say, I would have missed that. I found it really funny.

Bushra: Believe me, when I saw the video I laughed and texted them, "Love it, it's so funny, but unfortunately we cannot do it."

Managing expectations

Paarul: What are your top tips for managing client expectations, when you have to tell them five comments don't make a crisis?

Bushra: This is personal opinion, not an industry playbook. The work happens in the conversation before anything has happened. Sit down with the client, like a SWOT analysis: here's the strength of the campaign, here's where it could go wrong. You can't think like everybody, so maybe 10% of the audience will take offence. Are you OK with that?

Then if something happens, it isn't coming from a place of shock. Prepare them mentally, map out the scenarios, and have a plan of action for both: if it goes well, great; if it goes awry, here's what we do. And tell them there may be a moment where we have to make a judgement call.

On Confiance

Paarul: Finally, how old is Confiance, and how do you look at growth?

Bushra: Confiance launched officially in January 2019, so it's nearly eight years old. We're a full-capability firm across PR, social, personal branding and events, with separate units for startups (fintech, SaaS, health tech), established and listed companies, and travel, lifestyle and hospitality.

What I'm proudest of: as many as 70% of our clients still come to us through referrals from existing and former clients. In an industry this incestuous, where teams and clients move everywhere, that means we're doing something right. When clients drop out for their own reasons, whether a pivot, funding or an investor pause, they come back six months, a year, two years later, and they refer us generously to friends, peers, fellow entrepreneurs and alumni networks.

Paarul: Thank you for a very interesting interview.