IPL’s band baajaa baaraat

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. Write in with either advertisements you wish reviewed or with your comments.

The IPL will soon begin. And riding on it will be not just the dreams and wishes of millions of cricket-crazy fans, but millions of advertising rupees. And the dreams and wishes of sponsors, ad agencies, the BCCI, the teams and, of course, Set Max, the channel where you will get to see it all. So Max is not taking any chances. It has pulled out all the stops with a JWT and Keroscene set of three TVCs that announce the onset of the cricket-entertainment season with a different kind of flourish. You have Farah Khan, the famous choreographer who has made the likes of Shah Rukh Khan gyrate to her steps, now wielding the baton to make the guy next door, the cricket-crazy fan, the aam admi , you and me get up and dance each time a sixer or a four is hit, or a wicket falls. One TVC shows an apparently bad dancer with his wife and son watching TV like a team of zombies. Enter a rather svelte Farah Khan with her version of a band. She commands them to get up and repeat her trademark crazy steps along with a little ditty specially composed by Vishal and Shekhar. The threesome go through the motions with a gusto that would make a closet-dancer at a Sangeet Nite whistle appreciatively. Watch the “healthy-looking” kid and the way he moves. He has talent. And I love the way Farah ends the TVC with a typical Mumbaiya-Hindi accent saying “ sirf dekhnekha nahin ”. The second film runs the same routine with a staid group of senior-management-types sitting around a board room table. The films capture the IPL spirit in true form. Here it is. Cricket with a brazen commercial thrust. Loud music, wildly dancing cheer leaders, some lusty hitting by our cricketing heroes. Aah! The IPL season. Mind-numbing entertainment. I love it.

Great idea

Mentos has a great creative idea in the form of the memorable “

Dimag ki batti jala de ” platform. I loved the ad with the caveman and the donkey. Perfetti Van Melle India and O&M have now taken the next leap forward and used this well-known and loved line to launch a contest that bears a significant cash prize. They couldn’t have hit on a better extension for this idea. The TVC shows some apparently unconnected clips and then pops the seemingly mystifying question “so who is the murderer”. The person whose dimag ki batti lights up, with or without a Mentos to aid the process, could get upto Rs 25 lakh. This idea is a very meaningful use of a good line. There’s nothing contrived about it. It’s something so natural, you might wonder why no one thought of it before. And that is a hallmark of a good idea. Oh by the way, I like the way Piyush Pandey is doing an Alfred Hitchkok with his presence being seen and felt in some good advertising. I noticed him as a Pandit in the Gujarat Tourism ad and who could mistake his gravelly voice in this TVC?

Mango mania

This one is for fans of Shah Rukh Khan, and maybe mango juice as well. If one had to summarise a major part of the script of Frooti’s new TVC created by Creativeland Asia one would say “the film has the King Khan drinking Frooti”. And wouldn’t really be way off the mark.

The camera caresses SRK as he goes through a bottle of Frooti in one long series of gulps. And you have some tiny tots looking on in almost morbid fascination, drooling at the sight. As the last drop finds its way down his throat, Khan looks down to see some swarthy teenagers staring at him with complete concentration till he snaps them out of what seems to be a spell. Looks like the kids grew up. That’s how long the scene of SRK drinking the Frooti seemed. Fans of mango juice in any form have a tough choice to make. Katrina Kaif and the Aamsutra for Slice where the drop seems to take its time before reaching her luscious lips, or SRK and the endless Frooti. Mango drink lovers have a hot summer coming up and this film will heat things up a little more. The music is intriguingly good and Frooti has come back strongly with this film. After all, why should guys have all the fun?

Intriguing effort

When R. Ramakrishnan joined Polycab, I knew we could expect some interesting communication emerging. Its first TVC is on air now. And the Taproot creation is, well, interesting, to say the least. A simple family scene is interjected with a series of gross baddies making for utter chaos even while the family goes about its normal routine. The Polycab message of ‘ save karo, safe raho ’ is brought home rather abruptly towards the end of the film. Eye-catching …yes. Easy to understand, well, I’ll leave that to the views and the audience to comment upon.

Vox Pop: Reader Madhulika Rawal writes in to say she saw the latest Godrej HIT cockroach repellent advertisement with great interest. She feels that the product definitely has a novelty value and hopes the 45-day promise made by HIT really holds good. She also likes the Mahindra XUV 500 TVC. Thanks, Madhulika.

Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. >addendum.brandline@gmail.com