Storyboard18 | Builder.ai-Air India row: This is by no means a mistake in our eyes, says Sachin Dev Duggal

Around Valentine's Day, Builder.ai, a London-headquartered software development platform, gave a “gift” to Air India. It created a prototype of an app and then released ads in a national daily to express its “adoration” with this gift. But AI shot down Builder.ai’s public display of adoration, publicly.

In response to Builder.ai’s “gift”, the airline issued a public notice on social media stating that it has nothing to do with the ad, the app, the company and the free tickets promised. And that it shall not be held responsible for any misuse of data collected through the advertised QR code and app.

In the statement, the Tata Group-owned Air India also mentioned that it is “contemplating suitable action against the issuer of the advertisement.”

Builder responded by saying that the initiative “was solely to offer a gift to the national carrier, and an iconic brand, in the form of a prototype of an app” and “a humble effort to celebrate and contribute towards the brand’s new and exciting journey.”

It added that “In no instance or manner whatsoever has Builder.ai ever claimed” via its ads, “that the prototype ‘gift’ is Air India’s official app nor that Builder.ai was awarded any contract to create one.”

Why did Builder.ai go down this route? Why did it pick Air India? How is it addressing the controversy? What’s the company going to do next?

Storyboard18 caught up with Builder.ai’s co-founder and CEO, Sachin Dev Duggal, to find out.

Edited for length. 

What was the genesis of the campaign? 

As we thought about 2022, what the pandemic had done, and what was our collective mission, we very quickly came to the resolution that we needed a way to inspire businesses that felt they were vulnerable, entrepreneurs that felt like the old ways that they knew how to do business were changing. And we needed them to be able to make this sort of digital leap of faith.

We believed that our platform had the potential to inspire and impact so many around us. But really, if they were going to make that jump, they needed inspiration.

And so as we were sort of racking our minds around how we could demonstrate what was possible and the power of the platform, many of our teams just started to talk about the brands that they love. And you know, when we think about our company, we’re sort of geographically split with some teams in the US, UK, Middle East and a very big nexus in India.

What I started to hear a lot was about this very deep-rooted affection for Air India and with a very big base in India, we started then focusing on well, if it was this brand, what could we do that is thoughtful and heartfelt for one of them?

How long was the campaign in the making? Was it always supposed to be timed around Valentine's Day? 

We wanted to make sure our approach was heartfelt. We wanted to make sure that whatever we did, was going to be helpful and authentic. These three things actually tie very closely into our company's core values.

We wanted to stay true to our tone of voice. We are definitely not designed genetically to be a humdrum enterprise SaaS company. It definitely goes to the core of our belief of pushing the boundaries of conventional thinking and really pushing creativity to the end.

The campaign itself happened over many months… We wanted to make sure that whatever we showed, was as close to the best in class as we could get.

So we had a brand we loved, but we needed to get this (prototype) in the hands of the brand, whilst making sure that at all times we did this with a really clean heart, a ton of love and a lot of affection.

(During a team meeting) the question popped up: what if we actually use this day of love to show adoration to the brand?

The first few stages would be this announcement of adoration. The latter would be the present, which would be a combination of all the work we've done, the prototype, the understanding of features, the research, and getting people's feedback.

The counsel that I gave the team was that staging allowed us to engage with the brand before the unveil so that we could be as copacetic and fair as one could be.

Let's talk about general reactions to the campaign and Air India's response. You must have thought of all possible scenarios when you were building this campaign? 

When you think about the response, you have a lot of these cliché statements - all news is good news, everything has a positive impact. I've spent the last couple of days with the team, reading every single tweet and every single post.

We really have been positively overwhelmed. It's been pretty incredible. If you went back a week, most people didn't know we existed.

And I think many more people know we exist. But I think more than exist, to me what was really inspiring was that tens of thousands of people came to see a prototype and voted.

And so when you think about our mission, which is we want to be able to demonstrate that it is achievable for every small business and entrepreneur, that there is a way to move from the traditional economy to the digital and actually they are one and the same. I feel like we achieved our result.

With respect to the brand statement, we respect it. Ultimately, they had to make their clarity.

If I was sort of sitting on the fences, I would say it definitely had a widening sort of Streisand effect.

But out of respect for the brand, you know, we shortened the competition window. Ultimately, as an engineer, I believe we've reached statistical significance in the feedback we got for the prototype itself.

We're moving forward with the next stages of our campaign which were designed to pan out to the core vision and mission of the company - connecting the dots between every small business, every entrepreneur and their vision, and not really focusing on a particular brand as such.

Is there a legal issue? 

To my understanding, there's no legal issue. And as I mentioned, you know, we did this in a couple of stages, without throwing anyone under the bus. The point of that was so that we would have engagement with the brand.

If you look at the ads, it's clearly from us. A gift is never endorsed by someone. You typically don't go and ask someone ‘can I gift you something?’ But you have conversations with them.

The other is, we never said, for example, that Air India is going to be paying for airline tickets. I think in our terms and conditions and everywhere else, it's very clear we're paying for the airline tickets.

But again, I think the brand did exactly what it should have done and I fully respect their statement. Our clarification was simply to say, we agree you never endorsed us to do it. We never said you did.

And as far as any of the promises being made to the winners, which will be announced shortly, those are our promises to honour and we will absolutely honour them, whether they're flying to a city in India or they're flying internationally.

But in complex campaigns like this, where you are addressing an iconic company and brand, was there any conversation that happened during the conceptualization phase or even during the run up to the campaign, with Air India or its representatives?

It's a little bit more complicated. The reason we staged the campaign into two bits - the announcement of the adoration and then the gift that we gave time in between, was so that we could have conversation with the brand. And we had conversation with the brand.

I wasn't in the conversation so I apologise if I'm including that person, but I think it was something to the extent of, you know, ‘we don't want to ruin your surprise’.

(Responding to Moneycontrol’s queries, Builder.ai further clarified: Air India official communicated with Builder.ai multiple times since the launch of the campaign and mentioned while briefly understanding our campaign and gift (app prototype - consumer-facing app that was mentioned by us); that they didn't want to ruin our surprise but asked we keep them up to date as we get closer to the unveil; this included giving them a heads up on the gift before it went live and answering any clarifications for them)

What are your learnings from this entire episode and how will that shape what you're going to do? 

We actually did this with deep-rooted affection. We could have chosen any brand and spent the money we did, front page ads and done the homework and the prototype. But we did it for the one that we had the most respect for and for the one we consider iconic and a part of pop culture and with just a very rich vision ahead.

As a company,  what's very important is that we've always got to be authentic and genuine, but at the same time, we always want to push the boundaries.

We're big believers of pushing what's conventionally done. How many times have you seen a brand trying and make a heartfelt proposal to another brand in this way, without trying to chastise them? We were trying to be as loving as possible.

What is our learning from this? Well, a bunch of the pieces played out as we thought they would. People would engage and we would get people to see the prototype and they would love the work.

But I don't think our entire marketing campaign for the time to come is going to be centered around, you know, finding a brand to fall in love with again. You don't fall in love that often.

But in terms of our approach to marketing, without spilling what's cooking, I think you can fairly assume that a part of why we do things quite internally is there is an inextricable link between product and marketing and how we think about how we want to position the brand. And this is a good example of the kind of boldness that we want the brand to stand for.

Again, just to be really clear, this is by no means a mistake in our eyes.