Ads worth talking about

Taking a break from the over complicated, heavy jargoned information on digital marketing, here are a few ads from the past month that are worth a watch

As much as Indians have liked Amul products, they have also loved the ads by Amul. But every good thing sees a dark side, receives flak someday; and so did Amul’s digital ad ‘HarGharAmulGhar’. Unlike other ads of Amul, this one highlighted gender bias while depicting the father-daughter relation.

After the ad went online, it received aggravation from people, who also demanded Amul to take down the so called “sexist ad” from its digital platform. But that is not an option, especially for a seasoned brand like Amul. So, the brand decided to play it smart and come up with a new idea, a new advert to counter the negative publicity it gained through the previous one. Amul came up with a digital film that celebrated women power, hence countering the image of sexist and gender biased reputation.

In its new ad film, you will see women from almost all walks of life bashing their limits, redefining their own boundaries and eventually netting a top position in the things they are good at, making their presence felt. So that was a gist of a minor imbalance Amul went through and how it encountered it in a clever way.

Shakal- Akal:

Speaking of ads that help build a brand’s reputation, most people think that brands only compete with similar products by other brands. Well, not exactly. Some of them have enough guts to create a competition among their own products. A classic example for this in the Indian scenario is the recent commercial by McDonalds.

In its recent ad campaign, McDonalds is pitting its own Indian and Mexican flavours and asking people to vote. The two films conceptualised and designed by Leo Burnett stars Raghu and Rajiv of MTV Roadies fame. In the ad, the brothers are probing for peoples’ directive in their signature ‘argumentative’ style.

4G? What? :

The Airtel girl is busy selling people 4G at bowling alleys, coffee shops and other random places on this planet, as if people go there not to hangout, but to listen to a stranger talking to them about 4G and amusing them with the speed. Aggressive campaigning is good, but bombarding people with stupid and pointless ads is not cool, not a bit. So that was about the internet centric ad in the tech centric world.

So while Airtel was busy boasting about the fastest internet network in India, Hike messenger showed people that they do not even need internet to share files. The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of the new Hike Messenger is that the users can share files, send messages over the Instant Messaging (IM) platform without internet (within a range of 100m). And this feature was cleverly launched to people through the 20 second commercial titled ‘Backbenchers’.

For those who didn’t encounter these ads, sit back and watch them; they are worth it.

By:Tushar Kalawatia