CRED’s Kunal Shah reveals inspiration behind company's viral ads. Hint: it has an animal connect

It is not often that you see Bollywood celebrities and cricket stalwarts laughing at themselves. But CRED’s famous advertisements made it happen. How? 
 
“The brief was that our consumers are smart enough to figure out what the product does. Can we create conversations around CRED? And make it a brand that is for smarter people,” the fintech company’s Founder Kunal Shah revealed in an interview with journalist and film critic, Anupama Chopra. 
 
He also stated that the inspiration for CRED ads came from a zoo in Singapore. Shah said that outside the cage of an orangutan, it is written that these animals are very intellectual and to keep them busy and entertained, the zookeepers have to constantly supply them with new games and puzzles. Otherwise they get very bored. 
 
This got Shah and his team thinking and they wanted to devise their ad strategies around something that “creates an insane amount of intrigue” as well as stirs conversations about CRED.
 
“What if we made ads that don’t really tell what CRED does? Makes you wonder why the hell are they doing all this? Who are they? And start conversations (of CRED) on WhatsApp groups,” Shah told Chopra. He said that the result was that the younger generation understood the ads and the older generation got intrigued. 
 
In the podcast, Shah also spoke about his early life as a boy from South Bombay who went on to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs and investors in the country. When Chopra asked him about his thoughts on a biopic on himself, Shah dismissed the idea. He said, “It’s really funny but I would not want any movie to be made on me. And the reason why I believe this is because there are so many untold stories of Indian entrepreneurs that deserve to be told…”
 
He said that Bollywood has made many movies on scamsters and mafias but not enough stories about Indian entrepreneurs.
 
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