addendum. Addendum

Addendum is a fortnightly 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.

Ready for life

A good advertising communication is one that evokes some strong emotion. That makes for memorability. So when regular reader Pratibha Pai messaged to find out whether I had seen the new Surf Excel advertisement I was intrigued. I’ve always wondered where Surf would go after, well, it’s decided to see what makes kids “ready for life”. And so you have this well-made film (for digital, so it has the luxury of time) that traces the story of a little boy who is crazy about football. He comes and announces that he is finally in the team and so needs boots. Then you have him coming home after “practice”, clothes duly dirty and so on. Finally mom decides to go incognito and see how well the little cherub plays and finds him sitting (without shoes) and cheering his team on. It turns out this poor little boy who was selected for the team couldn’t afford boots so our little hero gives him the shoes each time, and then smears some mud on his own clothes to set up the drama of having played himself. And so the proud mother decides that her son is now “ready for life”. The theme is that Surf feels that sharing is good to prepare kids to be ready for life. We couldn’t agree more! Good production values, great casting (watch out for that kid, he will go places) and a powerful do-gooder message all contribute to make this a film worth watching with the family. And a clearly extendable campaign idea. Watch it. Tissues recommended. So is there anything in the film I didn’t like? Yes. Do we still need to use skin colour as a differentiator of socio-economic status? Come on, guys, you can do better than that!

Little bit in every mom

It really helps when you have a brand called Little’s selling a whole range of baby products. And so Piramal Enterprises Baby Care and McCann have their work cut out for them. They have come up with these two commercials that are basically feel-good films with lots of adorable little babies and young moms and a range of Little’s baby care products thrown in as the nice little ditty peppered appropriately with the brand name plays out in the background. This is what I call a competent film. There’s nothing wrong one can point out. Well, if you insist I’ll say it … there’s nothing great you can point out either. That’s why I said ‘competent”.

Feeling good

There’s this very well made film for Jockey by Law & Kenneth Saatchi & Saatchi (they have to think of abbreviating their name, this is a mouthful). It looks like it’s shot somewhere in the US and is a well-choreographed film (we normally use the word “directed”). There’s this hauntingly good song I’m feeling good playing in the background and you have a number of nice-looking young dancers in their Jockey innerwear moving gracefully, showing off their dancing skills and their Jockeys. Well they did say Jockey, or nothing …

Super film

Vodafone has been hogging the IPL airwaves with their campaign touting what is positioned as their Super Net. Basically a great 4G network. So they had a wonderfully made film titled Super Son. The simplicity of the idea and the amazing casting of the mom carried the film all the way to where good films go. It has an elderly South Indian mom (just the right look and accent) being talked through an airport by her son who is on the phone with her. Finally he asks her to give the phone to the young lady at the check-in counter so he could complete the process for her. The final scene where the lady coyly says she could actually do all of that herself, but her son … is so typical it was enjoyable. So the Super Net will follow you and help you even where the little pug cannot. We like it. And hope it works better than the 3G network which tends to act like an errant pug, losing you frequently.

Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Mail your comments to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in