Like Royalty

Qatar Airways × RCB · 2025

Returning to a partnership brings a different brief. The audience no longer needs the same introduction, and the film has to give the relationship something further to say.

“Like Royalty” was the second Qatar Airways and RCB engagement, this time centred on the main sponsorship film. That distinction matters: the assignment was no longer simply to announce that the two names belonged together.

A returning relationship

A repeat campaign has familiarity available to it. Familiarity can create continuity, but it can also become a reason to repeat decisions that have already done their work.

The useful creative question is what remains recognisable and what should move forward. A sponsorship needs enough consistency for the audience to understand the relationship, while each individual film needs its own reason to exist.

The film as the main expression

A main sponsorship film has to hold the campaign’s central thought. It should give the partnership a clear identity that smaller pieces can relate to, rather than try to contain every possible message in one sequence.

That is what interests me about returning commercial work. The challenge is less about introducing ingredients and more about choosing the relationship between them. The audience has some context; the director can spend more of the film doing something with it.

Viewed alongside Let’s Go Together, this project shows two stages of the same brand partnership. They belong in the same body of work, but the briefs ask different things of the films. The first establishes the connection. The later campaign has to sustain it.