#PlaySmartPlayEpic
Anyone who grew up on Marvel could pick these three out of a crowd. Iron Man's red and gold, Black Panther's black with a flash of purple, the star on Captain America's shield. When TVS dressed the NTORQ 125 in all three for its SuperSquad Edition, the scooter came with an audience that already knew the source material better than any brief could. That audience can tell within seconds whether a brand loves the thing or has only licensed it, so the launch had to earn its place with them.
The idea we worked out with the TVS team was that fans don't want to stand next to a hero. They want to be one. So the scooter became the suit, the thing that turns a ride to college into your own entrance scene, and TVS's line, Play Smart. Play Epic., set the pace for everything else. Even the connected app got into costume. My part was shaping the concept alongside the team and then writing it: the scripts and the campaign copy, making each edition sound like it belonged to its hero rather than to a colour card.
Writing for fandom is its own kind of fun, because the audience is the expert in the room and knows the films scene by scene. The films worked best when the creator was a fan before he was a rider. I wrote Varun Sood as exactly that, a man who says "if you tell me to have a Marvel Marathon today, I'd happily do it!" and whose favourite has always been Black Panther. So when he rides the Stealth Black, it plays as "Wakanda Forever" on two wheels, part of his fandom rather than a break from it. His film crossed 73,000 views and 18,000 likes.
#PlaySmartPlayEpic
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