HUEMN is a state of mind. Starkly original and vastly attractive. The decade-old brand has recently collaborated with Absolut for a range that celebrates ‘we the people’, with all our quirks. The images look like installations, each frame speaking to you. Pranav Misra, co-founder and CEO of HUEMN, chatted with t2 on the making of the campaign and more.
The designs look cool and intriguing...
It’s a celebration of two brands coming together, believing in the same ethos and principles. HUEMN has always been very vocal about the diverse fabric of our society and so has Absolut, from their several campaigns. This campaign celebrates what we together collectively represent, to keep reminding our community about how different we are from each other and how beautiful that is.
The imagery is powerful...
The intellectual property we have created is titled ‘8 Billion Flavours’, which is the current population of the world. Each one of us represents a certain kind of flavour that we bring to the table. These are the parallels that we have drawn through our imagery also. We have tried to present this idea using flavours as tools in our imagery to convey that in a playful manner.
There is a certain sense of contrast that we like to play with when the brand makes images. By contrast, I mean even in terms of emotions. Emotions are so diverse in two different human beings. That is also what you’ll see in the entire campaign.
The brand doesn’t take inspiration directly from the fashion industry, which makes the models closer to what real-life people are and emoting those emotions, rather than just looking conventionally good in a garment and standing.
How did you shoot it?
It’s the effort of a lot of people, close to around 45-50 people. There is a recent IP that we have released which is blue. We have recently introduced a blue colour in HUEMN’s collection. Blue also signifies Absolut as a brand. I thought it’d be seamless for both brands to take that as a canvas and create three-dimensional structures within that background... you are actually treating your subjects as by-products and putting your focus on the colour and textures.
We also try to limit the narration of what went behind creating a campaign because from a creative point of view, most of the time it is also an artistic struggle while you are making a creative work, where more than trying to get to someplace, you are actually trying to find answers to the questions you have within you. If I do not tell you what went on in my mind, it’s an image to trigger you to think deeper and maybe you will find a certain sense of intimacy with that image.
HUEMN is a decade old with an original voice. What has this journey been like?
I think we have taken a fair amount of time for us to gradually evolve and also find our own people who connect on a similar mental and spiritual level to finally be called the HUEMN community. It was always a deeper connection.... Obviously, a bootstrap company has to go through its own way of doing things, it takes a while, but I think authenticity played a huge role in bringing us here and is a guiding force towards what the brand is moving forward.
We have never tried to move away from what HUEMN’s founding principles were. Everything revolved around society, which is diversity and the socio-political space has had a huge amount of contribution in terms of our dialogue initiation.
From the consumer point of view when we started the brand, the landscape and behaviour were very different. Pre and post-pandemic has also been a huge sentiment change and your buying patterns have changed. A new age of youngsters has come into the picture and there is also a new wave of accepting and encouraging homegrown art forms, whether it’s music, films or language. So many content creators are using Hindi. So, there are so many dimensions to the ride that we’ve had. The ups and downs are part of your learning which also keeps you grounded, but at the same time, the community has shown over a period of 10 years immense support and love for us to be able to have that distinct voice and platform to say what we want to say.
There is a lot of literature influence on HUEMN’s work and we like to create an environment that is more writer-friendly. All the dialogues are in written format. There is a lot of poetry involved. We liked to play with shapes and forms wherever necessary. Some things have to be drawn. I think the creative process is also very different.
Social media is an empowering tool for any youngster... there are so many more creative people coming into this industry and from Day One they have a platform not just to sell but also talk about. It’s a democratic space and then competition becomes huge. What is your authentic story? How great is your quality? These become even more primary subjects because now so many people have the opportunity to take their material to the market.
