Cobra promises (much-needed) cutting edge beer advertising from new agency Karmarama

Karmarama has won the ad account for Molson Coors’ premium Indian beer brand Cobra following a four-way pitch. The win puts Karmarama on the Molson Coors roster for the first time.

The brief was to create a new integrated campaign for Cobra that would help the multi-award-winning beer evolve and establish itself as a world beer for any occasion, not just a curry.

The agency will work with the Cobra Beer Partnership to create an integrated campaign to run across TV, print, outdoor, digital and social to break in spring 2014.

Lord Bilimoria, founder and chairman of the Cobra Beer Partnership (left), says: “We are set to build on Cobra’s recent success and rate of growth with a creative celebrating our beer’s impossible smoothness and award-winning quality. To take the brand to the very top in the UK it is vital that we have an exciting and cutting edge advertising campaign to keep Cobra at the forefront in the mind of our consumers.”

Karmarama CEO Ben Bilboul says: “Cobra’s awards and rich, vibrant heritage have seen it quickly become one of the best lagers in the world. We’re lucky to have had an excellent brief and an ambitious client willing to push the boundaries to create stand-out lager advertising.”

Well let’s hope they do. Beer advertising (Carling, Carlsberg and Fosters come to mind) is in a slough of despond in the UK at the moment with a series of campaigns struggling unavailingly to be funny, sometimes even watchable.

Which is a shame as, back in the day, it produced some of the very best ads to come out of the UK. Heineken from CDP and then Lowe, John Smith’s from BMP and Carling from WCRS come to mind.

So there’s your challenge Karmarama.