Addendum is a weekly column that takes a sometimes hard, sometimes casual, sometimes irreverent yet never malicious look at some of the new or recent advertisements and comments on them.
The ultimate bond
Anyone who’s watched Bollywood movies must know all about the
You love Chinese food, you hate the calories, you love Italian cuisine, you hate the oil and the calories that begin to add up like a cash register, ringing up a huge bill you shudder to settle. And so Marico has launched its Saffola masala oats with two TVCs. They show a young lady (are ladies always so weight-conscious while men are gluttons for flab?) nibbling at some Chinese food (and at a delicious-looking pasta dish in the other film). Enter Chef Kunal Kapoor who enquires why the young ladies ate partaking of such homeopathic portions (my words, not his). And then proceeds to whip up what looks like a tasty, healthy dish with Saffola Masala Oats. You see the chef weave his culinary art around corn, fresh vegetables and other confidence-building visuals and, voila, you have oats and the Saffola brand! I can see good health bursting out of the combination. To think I only had oats for breakfast. Now I can whip up these apparently health and tasty meals any time. Until someone tells me to stop eating these refined packaged foods! Killjoys! Until then, I’m trying a pack.
Greed is good
We’ve grown up being told “Don’t be greedy!” Coca-Cola is now redefining things and positioning greed as good. In its new commercial offering for Maaza, it has the good-looking Varun Dhawan playing twin brothers. More Varun is a good thing. The brothers’ greed for mangoes is highlighted, first when one of them refuses to give the other a slice of his mango, and then again when the other wants to monopolise the Maaza mango drink. The dialogue is interesting with each of the brothers taking turns to say that they were twins, but the greed for mango easily overtook the sibling love between them. Shown in a positive way, greed inspires the consumer to make sure that the seasonal taste of the golden Alphonso mango becomes a perennial delight in the form of the Maaza mango drink. And with Prime Minister Modi requesting the cola majors to invest in healthy juices, Maaza is right on track. Fruit juice may one day become ‘the real thing”.
Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Mail your comments to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in