1.4’s heart does indeed lie with very cool creative film making but every now and again we get blown away by a press campaign that clicks with us.

This series was created by Leo Burnett India under the national creative directorship of Kv “Pops” Sridhar and creative director Vikram Pandey in response to a brief to create outdoor visuals that would highlight the ill-effects of not installing a ventilation fan.

Were there any other good ideas discarded?

We initially came up with a lot of good ideas that illustrated how effective and powerful Bajaj Exhaust Fans were. But since Bajaj is already a market leader, we didn’t see any point in establishing our superiority once again. Instead we decided to tell people how one small smelly object could spoil their entire room.

It’s a blindingly simple idea which we know are of course the best but it looks as though it was a ridiculously complicated production. Was it? And what was the thinking behind deciding to actually create the set rather than use CGI?

Right from when we came up with the idea we knew this project was not going to be simple. We were sure that we didn’t want to use CGI for this one as no matter how good the job is, it’s never as good as the real thing. A scale model would also not have got us the results we were aiming for.

We started by identifying four different smells that could ruin a room. Cigarette smoke in the toilet, stink of fish in the kitchen, eggs in the dining room and smelly socks in the bedroom.

We then experimented by creating single objects out of these items – a tap made out of cigarettes, a water jug made out of fish, a dinning table made out of egg and a lamp shade made out of socks. This gave us an idea of how the entire room would look once it was made out of these items. We had also tried other odious objects like onions, cigar and soiled clothes.

Then with the help of skilled artists we created four different rooms. Each object – from a sports poster made out of socks to a toilet made out of cigarettes – was then designed and placed on the set. (See video for making of.)

How long did it take to create?

Our art director Brijesh Parmar and the photographer Amol Jadhav worked for a 12 days and nights to bring the campaign alive.