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 phone rings and a young lady, obviously in an office, answers it. An older lady enquires where she is. The young lady replies that at 3 pm on a working day, where else would she be? The banter seems very normal talk till the older lady enquires about who sent the Zigy packet home. The young lady replies that it was indeed she who had ordered the full month’s supplies of medicines for her from Zigy. Then you see the older lady looking at the Zigy packet and wondering aloud why the young lady was doing this, even after all that had happened. And the young lady replies “I divorced your son, not you.” So what has all this got to do with Zigy? Well, the film ended with a tag line that read, “We understand responsibility” (my translation of a Hindi line). So the message of the erstwhile daughter-in-law fulfilling her “responsibility” to the mother-in-law she cared for, was one nice aspect of the film. More interesting was the willingness of the client, agency and film maker to explore delicate relationships. Ever more creditable was the use of something completely offbeat to market a company like Zigy. The emotional part of the film had me hooked. I was intrigued enough to google Zigy, go to its site and find out more. This is a wonderful way to plant Zigy in the mind space of people. Of course, they need to “deliver”. But that’s not an advertising story.
I have often wondered why traditional lingerie shops always had male sales assistants. That was many years ago, and I guess that trend has changed with more female staff readily available. Yet Clovia inner wear seems to believe that trend is alive and uses a comedienne to focus attention on the problems that women face when they step out to buy inner wear. While I like the idea of using the comedy route to talk about things you might feel awkward to discuss openly, the English script and its delivery was too “Punjabi” for me. An online store has no geographical boundaries, or at least should not, in these days. Then why make me feel this message is aimed only at a “Delhi” audience? Also, it’s been released too soon after FabAlley and Radhika Vaz bared all to ask women to “unfollow”. The comparisons are bound to be there. All in all, while the approach is sound, maybe the timing does it in. And please, don’t presume we all live in Delhi!
Needs more colour
Finally, Color-Plus has gone in for some TVCs. I’ve always admired the brand. The fact that it is an Indian brand was the cherry on the cake for me. So I was naturally excited that this brand was spreading its wings and advertising on television. I managed to get through two of the commercials. One was for colour and the other for comfort. The first was so “me-too” it could be included in the case study where you show TVCs and change the brand names at the end of each one to show how completely similar they are to one another. The second? Well, thank God for the lovely collie. It was the saving grace. Even though I briefly thought the ad was for the dog itself. I’m a great admirer of Alok Nanda and love the work he’s done for the Lodha Group. He’s given it a distinctive image. And that’s what I would have expected him to do for Color-Plus as well. In this case he didn’t even have to build an image, like he did for Lodha. Just consolidate one. Did I say I managed to get through two? Well if there’s one more, I’m not interested.
Vox Pop: Reader Chandra says “The new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 has come up with a great advertisement. Some muted music with loud beats. No song, no words and no brand ambassador. Just the phone and some noise. Excellent recall quotient.” No comment from me.
And finally write in and tell us if you feel that Volkswagen’s image has taken a beating in India with all the bad publicity on how they installed “cheat software” to dodge emission controls. Also tell us what you feel about Nestle’s new campaign aimed at positioning itself as a brand that has been part of the fabric of India for a century.