VIRGIN MOBILE - INDIAN PANGA LEAGUE

What generally happens between you and your friends during an IPL season? You pull each other's legs by mocking the team that the other person supports. You mock everything, from that team's players, owners and city to its uniform, and defend yours. Virgin mobile simply used these regular conversations loaded with insults and abuses to promote itself, and how! 

I have always been a big fan of all Virgin's ad campaigns, not just Virgin India, but all over, as nobody I believe relates to its target audience better than Virgin does. Since its launch in India, all of Virgin's campaigns have been whacky, funny and out-of-the-box, but with the Indian Panga League campaign, Virgin has taken this trend to another level. 

The Indian Panga League is one of India's biggest online campaigns. With the IPL over, this campaign now has almost lived its life, and I'm too late to review it. But I was too late to come across it too, and when I did, I just wanted to have it on ad-vert.

Bates 141 and Curious films are the creative geniuses behind these campaigns. The Indian Panga League is a series of over 100 commercials of 15 seconds each, made solely for the digital space, and not TV. Each commercial shows banters between two friends from different cities supporting their respective teams. The cost of shooting each of these ads, they say, was less than that of radio spots, as the ads were shot using Canon DSLR cameras. The website, www.indianpangaleague.in, is a platform where people can view these commercials, and also take part in the war of words against other teams. Virgin is also giving away Samsung Corby's on the website as prizes.

Within a week of its launch, the company witnessed 39,480 YouTube views, 1,643 Facebook fans, and 50,000 mentions on Twitter. The Indian Panga League website also saw over 1 lac hits within the first week itself.

(The YouTube name of this video said 'banned commericals', but that is not the case. This campaign was solely designed for the internet.)

LOOK: The look of the ad is absolute Virgin, i.e., smart, funny and it immediately relates to its target, the youth.

CONTENT: The content of these ads is hilarious. The brief is simply to showcase two friends in two different cities chaffing each other's teams over the phone. The ads effectively promote Virgin's value proposition of 20p/min STD tariff. Hats off to the creative team in Bates 141 for coming up with such hilarious insults.

CASTING: Curious Films auditioned over 400 people to shortlist 8 candidates from the 8 IPL Team cities. Casting is brilliantly done, with each guy aptly showcasing the attitude and behavior of the guy coming from that city. For example, the Punjab guy is highly abusive, and the Chennai guy keeps saying 'Macha'.

CONNECT: This ad will connect with its target much more than any other ad out there. The youth of each city will easily relate to the guy shown in the ad.

OVERALL RATING: 9.5 / 10

I know, I myself wondered if I'm over-rating this ad. But I'm pretty sure that had Virgin brought this campaign on the TVC medium, it would have been an out-n-out ZooZoo Killer!!

TITAN ZOOP

Robert Brault once said, "In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids." And this very fact has been applied creatively in the latest commercial of the Zoop range of watches from the Titan stable. (Now don't ask me who was Brault. I took his quote because it complimented the ad and gave a nice start to my post)

Titan had its presence in the kids watch market in the late 90s and early 00s under the brand name 'Dash'. I'm sure we all would faintly remember either snobbishly flashing our new Dash watches or crying in a more irritating manner than Anandi of Balika Vadhu to make our Ma-sa's and Bapu-sa's buy us a Dash. 'Be a star!' was the tagline of Dash. But Dash was discontinued by Titan due to various reasons, some of them being fading colors and inability to withstand rough handling.

Before 2008, Titan had its presence in all consumer segments except for children. But with the vision to address the requirements of all consumer segments, Titan revamped its 'Dash' brand and launched 'Zoop' watches, targeted at children in the age group of 6 to 14 years.

Zoop was launched in 2008 in 8 cities, and was promoted through various Below-The-Line activities. However, Titan has recently come up with the first ever TVC of Zoop, and they are planning a 360 degree marketing approach for the brand.

LOOK : The ad looks smart and funny. Children will love to watch it again and again.

CONTENT : Children today are the biggest wannabes ever. At the age of 12, they try to imitate the trends and styles of the youth and young adults. And this commercial brilliantly displays their attention seeking over - smartness. The kid, who's dressing up like a teenager with hair gel and glares and all, notices that all he lacks is a funky watch. He then efficiently outsmarts his elder brother to get his watch.

CASTING : The people in the ad world, I believe, are more flawless in their casting than those in the movie world. In this commercial too, the little kid will very much remind you of a younger brother.

CONNECT : As I mentioned earlier, the ad will strike a chord with all the children, and they would love to watch it repeatedly. The communication of the Brand Proposition of 'Be a Star' has been done in an excellent manner. 

OVERALL RATING: 3.75 / 5

Although this ad is pretty simple, and does not have any factor in it which makes it oustanding, I believe it will be one of those highly effective ads that will stir the kids' curiosity and hence demand, leading to a good turnover for Zoop.

INTERNATIONAL PRINT ADS

Ok first and foremost, my sincere apologies to those handful readers of this blog (who read it because I make them) for having a long gap between my last post and this post. Another one of my MBA trimesters is coming to an end, due to which work loads have increased a lot.

In this post I'm sharing with you people all the kick-ass print ads that I have ever come across. These print ads are so brilliant that excellent itself would be an understatement. Check them out:

This first ad is from Leo Burnett New Delhi's think tank. A cute - cum - creepy image of Baby Ronald has been shown to symbolize a newly opened McDonald's outlet at Kimaya Kothrud. This ad was not that well received by the audience, as the baby looks more scary than cute.

This ad epitomizes the beauty in simplicity. A vanilla plain print ad by Western Union Money Transfer, which effectively shows how swiftly they transfer money from 'HERE' to 'THERE'.

When it comes to out-of-the-box advertising genius, you can blindly place your money on Fevicol. This brand, with the help of O&M India, has revolutionized creativity in Indian advertising. We all have grown up watching brilliant fevicol ads on TV. There were many Fevicol print ads, but this one with the horseshoe magnet, and the below one are my all time favorite. This ad below was not even released. And many people at first sight mistaken the magnet ad above to be that of Sun Microsystems. Check out this other ad:

Simply Brilliant. Isn't it?

This one is an ad for Aquafresh Toothpaste. No comments!

This one here is for a sugar free lolly-pop. Again, No Comments!!!

And now, two of my most favorite print ads ever. I have not yet come across any print or hoarding ad better than these two. When I first saw them, I could not help but applaud, and continue staring at them while showering praises for the creative genius behind them in my head.

This first one is for Nescafe. Nothing Wakes You Up Like Nescafe.

And this next one is for an Anti-Deforestation campaign. The copy reads, 'Save Trees. Trees Save.'

Hope you guys enjoyed these awesome print ads. I promise to bring you more as and when I come across them.

RIN WASHING POWDER

I know that I am too late to comment on this issue, and that the whole issue is being debated heavily already in the blogging world, but it is something that I cannot resist myself from blogging about. And for those of you who still have no idea what is going on, Rin Washing Powder has openly waged a war against its rival Tide by showing the Tide pack and demeaning it in its latest commercial.

Comparative advertising is when a particular player tries to promote its goods or services by comparing them with the goods or services of the competitors or the market leaders and concluding how their product is better. For those of you interested in law, following is a brief on the Indian laws on Comparative Advertising and Intellectual Property Rights:

http://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l182-Comparative-Advertising-laws.html

Not very long ago, a cover page story in the Economic Times showed how HUL, who is losing ground in many of its markets, including India, to other majors and local competitors, is aggressively trying to get back its market share. The article stated how Mr. Paul Polman, global CEO of Unilever, has diverted all his attention on the Indian Market. This tension in the HUL managers’ cabins is justified, as the market share of the giant in fabric wash is down from 38.3% last year to 36.2%, in toothpaste it is down from 30% to 28% and from 52.7% to 46.3% in personal wash.

A similar case of an openly waged war happened a few months back between Horlicks and Complan, the two energy drink brands. In that case, both the warriors had drawn their swords and were fiercely combating. However, in case of Rin vs. Tide, so far Procter & Gamble (the company that manufactures Tide) has kept its blade in its sheath, and is using the legal shield to ward of the strike made by the freshly aggressive HUL. As per Economic Times, P&G has already filed a court case against HUL, which obviously HUL would have already been prepared for.

Interestingly, 22 seconds out of the 30 seconds in this advert are dedicated to Tide alone. The ad even mentions the USP of Tide, viz. fragrance and whitening property. Thus, approximately 75% of HUL’s ad-spend for this TVC was for promoting Tide.

According to experts, HUL strategically aired the ad during the long weekend, so that it would grab as many eyeballs as possible, before being pulled off air by the court or ASCII directives. But what I fail to understand is why HUL’s desperation manifested into something like this. There are myriad other ways through which HUL could have crushed P&G, like strategically using its deep rooted distribution network, or pushing the product through retailers. Such a short-term impulsive action to protect the existing and regain the lost market share by HUL is baffling. HUL, since I can remember, has been the top most on the list of the companies that I aspire to work for, and I have always held that company in high esteem. As a result, such an incident has disappointed me to some extent, and I hope the top brains at HUL have planned something justifiable. Otherwise there was no need for HUL to do such Rakhi-Sawant-ness and try to grab attention by way of controversies.

Apart from HUL’s defense, one more thing that I am intently looking forward to is P&G’s reply. P&G (apart from the legal action) will possibly either hit back at Rin, or take on HUL’s Surf Washing Powder in an Ariel advertisement, or maybe even just sit back and continue unfazed. I’m sure everyone out there is waiting for a counter strike from the supposedly provoked P&G. Let’s see whether this TVC acts as the sound of a trumpet blown before a war, or whether this battle dies an uninteresting death inside the walls of the courtroom.
( I have not reviewed and/or rated this ad as I normally do, because the issue related to this ad is of much greater concern than the look, content, casting and connect of the ad)

GODREJ

            It had been a long time since I had come across an ad campaign that was aimed at creating awareness about the product, rather than hard selling it by highlighting its USP. So it was interesting to see a Times of India cover page ad for the launch of Godrej Protekt hand sanitizers. Although the product was launched a couple of months ago by model/actress Mugdha Ghodse, the promotion of Protekt is being implemented now.

            Hand Sanitizers, in spite of existing on store shelves since a few years, are the new thing in the minds of Indian consumers. Before the launch of Protekt, Himalaya Healthcare was the only organized player in this category with its brand Pure Hands. With the launch of Godrej Protekt, the FMCG giant Godrej has added the element of Personal Care and Hygiene to the width of its product mix.

The hand sanitizer market in India, currently estimated to be worth around 10 crore INR (around 10% of the total HandWash category), has the potential to become a sizeable category in the near future, especially after the outbreak of epidemics like Swine Flu. Even Himalaya Healthcare, that has been selling hand sanitizers in the Indian market since 2004, saw its sales leapfrog during the H1N1 panic, due to which it started retailing the 500 ml pump packs, which were erstwhile only meant for hospitals and clinics. Godrej, however, denies that the launch of Protekt is an opportunistic move, as hand sanitizers under the Godrej brands Cinthol and Cuticura are already available in the UK and the Middle-East.

“Whatever stock we sold in the last five years or so ever since the launch is the exact stock we sold in the last three to four months”, says Saket Gore, Business Head – Consumer Products of the Himalaya Drug Company.

The strategy, however, that Himalaya was using all the while was to push their product to the consumers through beauty advisors around the country and through doctors. Advertising, so far, for Pure Hands has been nil.

Even Wipro, that launched Hand Sanitizers under its ayurvedic brand Chandrika in August 2009, claimed 15 – 20 lakhs sales within a week of its launch, thanks to the chemists, and the radio and outdoor campaigns.

Godrej had not too long ago repositioned itself, with new colors in its logo, for the next generation. With the launch of Protekt, it has targeted the same audience for whom it had revamped its identity, viz. the youth, the young adults, and the urban crowd.

Following is the front and back of the cover page ad, made by R. K. Swamy BBDO Pvt. Ltd., in the Times of India issue dated February 24, 2010:

LOOK: The look of the ad is decent enough on the front, but the back of the half-page ad gives the impression of an ad for a medical product and not a daily use FMCG product at first sight. This, however, can be overlooked since the front is what every reader will see first.

The visual shows a carefree girl (careless in case of this ad) enjoying pani-puri from a roadside vendor, whereas her hygiene conscious friend is carrying a wash basin.

CONTENT: The copy of the ad is again pretty decent, nothing that I can go gung-ho about. The ad claims to kill 99.99% germs in 15 seconds. The front and the back together display the directions for using the product, and the features of the product like killing germs, fragrance, etc. In the end, it also additionally promotes the Hand Wash and Hand Wipes under the same brand.

The visual used in the ad, that of two girls eating at the roadside, seemed an average idea to me. They could have rather shown a girl playing with a street dog, or even the clichéd bus handles and train doors would have looked better. And moreover, if a girl is hygiene conscious like the one in this ad, then she won’t have any roadside item in the first place, leave aside bothering about cleaning her hands after eating.

CASTING: Again in the casting, the model chosen as carefree and the one chosen to be the hygiene freak wash basin carrier should have been interchanged. I say this because the carefree girl looks fresher, and the hygienic girl’s skin in the ad looks somewhat oily, which is normally not the case in such girls as they keep wiping it off regularly. (My apologies to that model in case she’s reading this!)

CONNECT: One thing I really liked in the ad is the fact that it tried to strike a chord with girls and not boys. This shows that the company and the agency understand their target market, as girls are generally seen to be more finicky about such stuff than guys.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5/5

Changing the consumer mindset and imbibing the habit of hand sanitizer will be the major challenge, not only for Godrej, but for all the players in this category. From Chandrika of Wipro to Handys of Aditya Birla, and now Protekt of Godrej, everyone is trying to place itself on the top shelf inside the new rack of hand sanitizers created in the consumers mind. How many bruises will Protekt give to the other brands in the war for market share is something we will have to sit back and watch.

(P. S.: I am unaware of the term used to refer to such ads that are placed on an additional half cover of the newspaper like a prompter. I request anyone who is aware of this terminology to kindly let me know what it is called in the comments. Thank you.)

HDFC

Since HSBC Bank introduced the concept of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) in India, the machine has come a long way into becoming an indispensable part of our lives. But even today, India still remains a heavily unripe market when it comes to the penetration of ATMs. According to RBI, India had 44,857 ATMs as on 31st May 2009. Although the number sounds disheartening, the fact that the jump from FY 08 to FY 09 in the number of ATMs in India has been a staggering 30% is somewhat reassuring.

Till before April 2009, luring customers to open an account in your bank by demonstrating the quality and quantity of your ATM service used to be one of the major strategies for Banking Institutions. However, this trend ceased when the RBI guidelines in April 2009 made ATM transactions across all Banks free of charge. Even SBI, whose campaigns used to mainly circle around the boastful number of their ATMs across the country, seems to be finding a tough time to come up with another out-of-the-box idea to promote itself.

Amidst this backdrop, HDFC recently came up with an ATM related service as an attempt to lure account holders into its ATM. The newly conceptualized 'My Favorite' option in HDFC ATMs lets you store a specific amount that you regularly withdraw from the ATM in your account records. Thus, each time you use the 'My Favorite' option in an HDFC ATM, it will automatically give you the amount of cash stored in your account. This feature of theirs, they claim, makes ATM transactions 40% faster.

To create awareness about this very feature of its ATMs, HDFC Bank has come up with an Integrated Marketing Campaign, whereby they are promoting this feature by claiming that it will make ATM withdrawals 40% faster. The campaign, conceptualized by Euro RSCG India, covers television, print and outdoor media.

               

LOOK: This TVC shows a man in a towing truck who spots an unsuspecting car owner entering an HDFC ATM, leaving his car unmanned. But as soon as the towing guy attaches the hook to the front of the car, he’s startled by the horn. The car owner is already done with his ATM transaction and is back in his car. Apart from this TVC, various hoardings and print-ads showing super-fast trains have been come up with, which all aim at highlighting that HDFC ATMs work 40% faster than other ATMs because of the ‘My Favorite’ option.

CONTENT: All the ads promoting this feature in various media are somewhat dissimilar in their content. The TVC shows the advantages of saving time by using an HDFC ATM, whereas the hoardings and print ads simply use a super-fast train to relate to the speed of HDFC ATMs. Apart from this, I had come across a very interesting magazine ad under the same campaign that I found brilliant. A prompter, popping out of the side of the magazine read ‘Go to the cover story 40% faster’ on the top, and ‘Just like our HDFC Bank ATMs’ on the bottom when you look under it. And that prompter lead to the cover story of that magazine, along with a print ad of HDFC, which had a join-the-dots game. Once joined, the reader would form a picture of a jet plane, which was nothing but another instrument used in relation to the speed factor.

CASTING: There isn’t much to debate on the casting front of these commercials as the TVC uses familiar models and/or actors, and no Brand Ambassador or mascot has been put to use as such. The makers could have shown a more convincing look of the towing-guy, because it is confusing initially as to whether he’s towing the car or trying to steal it. A Hawaldar character sitting beside him in the van would have also served the purpose.

CONNECT: The ad tries to strike a connect with frequent users of ATM, which in today’s time forms a considerable chunk of the population. The time saving factor used to promote the feature is good, but there could have been a better execution of the same idea. The print copy too is decent.

OVERALL RATING: 2.5/5

                The reason why I gave 50% rating to this campaign is because my reaction towards it was pretty neutral. I neither found it bad, nor that great. I would have rated it higher had I myself wanted to use the HDFC ATM at least once after watching the ad, but even that failed to happen. In spite of having an HDFC debit card, even now I walk into any ATM in sight and withdraw money. 

GOOGLE

The other day, my B-school professor of Business Policy taught us about Defensive Marketing Strategies, a type of marketing warfare strategy designed to protect a company's market share, profitability, product positioning, or mind-share. He mentioned that when companies get to defensive marketing, they start doing things to promote their products which they would have never done in normal circumstances. An example of this would be when the prestigious FMCG giant HUL bought out a whole day's ad slot on all the channels of Star Network, and later repeated the same on Zee Network. HUL had reportedly spent a sum of around 10 crore INR for a single day to buy the 1800 minutes of ad space across all the channels of Star Network. As a result, for that whole day, all Star channels displayed ads of only HUL products like Lifebuoy, Dove, Ponds, etc.

Within a couple of days of that lecture, I came across another example of the same. But this time, it left me flabbergasted. Google, a company that has always believed in product superiority over advertising, entered the domain of broadcast media. The search giant came up with its first ever television commercial during the third quarter of American Super Bowl, the most watched program in US television history.

When I came to know that Google had eventually succumbed to advertising on television, a medium that it had ignored for years, there was a negligible decline in the respect I had for this company. But then I realized I had judged too soon. Although I still disapprove of Google breaking out of its traditional stubbornness for not advertising on television for its search engine, I cannot deny the fact that I applauded loud for the simple genius of this ad. I have to admit, whatever Google does, it does it in style. Following is the ad titled ‘Parisian Love’, created by Google Creative Lab advertising agency and production firm 1^st Ave Machine:

LOOK: The look of this ad comprises of something that I’m sure every single internet user across the world would instantly recognize and connect to, the Google homepage. The whole ad is made on Google itself, and hence would instantly strike a chord with everyone.

CONTENT: This advert features all the various search functions of Google in the simplest and the most effective way possible. The ad shows all the functions that the search giant performs, including maps, flight tracking, spelling correction, dictionary definitions, and its newest development, translation, intertwined into a simple yet sweet love story of an American finding love in Paris.

CASTING: Nil

CONNECT: This ad epitomizes the saying that Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The ad is not only a tutorial to those Google users who were either unaware or unacquainted with certain features of Google, but also an interesting synopsis of almost all of Google’s features. I in fact find the ad so efficient and effective that it can easily make Yahoo and Bing devotees give Google a try.

OVERALL RATING: 4.5/5

                In spite of being a brilliant ad in every way possible, I still feel Google could have come up with a better slogan than ‘Search on’, which is the reason why I cut the 0.5 marks even after ranting so much in praise of the ad.

                Google’s entry in TV advertising domain is somewhat suggestive of the heat that Google has started feeling from its rivals Yahoo and Bing. However, considering that fact that Google still holds a humongous 90.5% share in the search engine market as opposed to the 7.8% share of Yahoo and Bing combined, it is too soon for this mammoth to go defensive.

SPOOFS: Be it a movie, a music video, or an ad, spoofs and parodies are always great fun to watch. And if you have already seen Google’s Parisian Love commercial above, you will understand how easy it is to spoof that ad. Here I’m sharing with you people two of the best spoofs of the ad I came across. Don’t miss them, they’re hilarious.

INDIAN CINEMA - RAJNEETI

A movie is as much of a product as a soap or a pair of shoes or a ketchup bottle. Just as Lux is a product by Hindustan Unilever, 3 Idiots was a product by Vidhu Vinod Chopra's production house, where the former was manufactured to give the consumer a good bath resulting in glowing skin, the latter was produced to provide entertainment to the consumer for three hours. Ipso facto, the trailer of an upcoming movie is nothing different than an advertisement of Coca Cola. Hence, I would also be reviewing movie trailers on this blog.

Six times National Award winning director Prakash Jha's next flick is titled 'Rajneeti'. The movie, scheduled for a 28th May 2010 release, is based on Indian politics. Going by his previous two movies 'Gangajal' and 'Apaharan', Prakash Jha seems to have a good command over Indian politics, and he has stuck to his forte in his next film too. The movie, produced under the UTV banner of Ronnie Screwwala, consists of an ensemble cast of some of the most impact-full actors in the Indian cinema today. The movie is said to be a modern recreation of the Indian epic mythology 'Mahabharata' set in the socio-political scenario.

LOOK: The Indian population as a movie-going audience is yet to mature in many ways, which is the reason why movies like Om Shanti Om are blockbuster hits, whereas movies like Rann, which by the way was a sheer directorial genius, come and go unnoticed. As a result, the kind of look that the trailer of this movie has, viz. thought provoking, intelligent, realistic, is a major turn-off for a huge portion of the Indian population, which is the reason why I doubt the promos of this movie will generate the desired curiosity among the masses. It seems that this maybe the reason why Prakash Jha has taken Ranbir and Katrina for such roles, going by what the current audience demands.

CONTENT: The clippings of the movie shown in the promo are those of riots, election speeches, victories and such related stuff. The vast cast of the movie has been shown in the promo, with a brief yet interesting introduction of their characters. The trailer has been crafted well, and will definitely make a section of the audience await the movie.

CASTING: There is not much to say about the casting of the movie, as the promos make it evident. The movie has been stuffed with apt proportions of powerful performers and glamorous stars. Whether the chosen actors do justice to their characters could be said only after watching the movie.

CONNECT: The film will strike a chord with the movie connoisseurs of urban India, and to some extent with the local population of the states in which the story of the movie seems to be based.

OVERALL RATING: 4/5

Rajneeti, just like Prakash Jha's previous movies, seems to be the kind of work that will attract the classes, gain accolades from critics, and garner the National awards and the popular ones to a certain extent. But, I believe, the movie will fare above-average and won't be such a huge success at the box-office as it would deserve to be.

VIRGIN MOBILE - GSM CAMPAIGN

Being known as the only telecom service provider in the country that is absolutely youth based, it was obvious that Virgin Mobiles would pick up the youngest heart-throbs of the nation to present their brand to their target. And that is precisely what they have done, by roping in Ranbir Kapoor and Genelia Dsouza to popularize their entry into the GSM market.

This latest brand campaign of Virgin Mobile, titled ‘I is powered by We’, makes use of the catchy ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ philosophy to promote the main idea of the power of networking with friends among youngsters.

The campaign, created by Bates 141 agency and Brown Skins production house, features a series of TVCs featuring Ranbir and/or Genelia with their group of friends. The first commercial shows Ranbir’s friends setting up three girls to make his nagging girlfriend leave him. The second ad shows Genelia guiding a friend of hers to woo a girl on a STD call. The third commercial features both Ranbir and Genelia together (a potentially good twosome, but the cold chemistry needs to be worked upon), with a merged group of their friends, helping Ranbir impress and finally ask out a girl in the lift. Following are three of the commercials of the campaign:

LOOK: The overall look of the ad is typical Virgin-ish. One can easily make out that it is a Virgin Mobile commercial, even before the ad climaxes. The ad is young, fresh and colorful, and will definitely make you wait and watch if you come across it while surfing channels.

CONTENT: All the three ads portray a whacky incident and witty-humor, akin to all of Virgin’s commercials since its launch. The communication of the message of the power of networking and connecting with your friends has been shown in a well-crafted manner. But then again, I feel Virgin’s previous ads were funnier and a better watch.

CASTING: The ad mostly contains either fresh or recent faces, who the people have not yet had enough of. Roping in Ranbir and Genelia as Brand Ambassadors was a great idea for Virgin, as they not only are the flavors of the season, but also are an apt fit for the brand. Especially Ranbir, who, after Aamir and Shahrukh, is the third highest paid celebrity endorser in India. And the strength of brand Ranbir is evident from the fact that both Pepsi and Panasonic have renewed their two year contracts with him, and that Pepsi, who had initially signed him for Rs. 2 crores, has offered him a whooping 14 crores this time. Also, Ranbir has been roped in by John Players, where he would be replacing Hrithik Roshan! Albeit Virgin Mobiles as a brand had established itself well in the Indian market by targeting the youth, it was nowhere in the top 5 mobile service providers of the country. I’m pretty sure that this campaign of Virgin will help provide enhanced visibility to the brand, as well as boost its subscriber base.

CONNECT: The ‘Think Milke, Think Hatke’ campaign of Virgin will easily strike a chord with the viewers due to its youth-centric approach, and the fact that it has Ranbir and Genelia.

OVERALL RATING: 3.5 / 5

When it comes to Brand Ambassadors, Virgin seems to have struck the hot iron in the right place and with the apt tool. But I believe the copy could have still been made more whacky. Also, audience will be seeing Ranbir and Genelia on screen for the first time. So the interaction between the two in the commercial could have been portrayed in a better way.

EPURON

Considering the two facts that this is the first post to my blog and that this blog is all about ads, I have to start it with the multi-award winning commercial-cum-short film by the German ad-agency Nordpol Hamburg. This advert, made by the production company Paranoid Projects and directed by Les Viking, was crafted for a Germany based multinational, Epuron. Epuron, one of the leading companies for project development and structured financing, has been active in the renewable energy market since 1998.

I first came to know about this commercial while watching an interview of Piyush Pandey, the executive chairman and creative director of the O&M (Ogilvy & Mather) agency, where he mentioned it to be one of his all time favorite ads. When I saw that ad, it instantly topped my list too.

Normally henceforth I would be briefing the ad I'm talking about in the post, but not in this case. Because the best part about this ad is its element of surprise in the end. When I was watching the ad for the first time, I kind-of got an idea what was going on within the first couple of shots itself, but that was because I had read the name of the commercial, and hence my mind had a link to figure the whole stuff out. This is the very reason why I'm not even mentioning the name of this ad in this post, because I want you all to experience the awesomeness of the moment when you realize what the ad is about. I, in spite of already having figured it out, couldn't stop myself applauding for the ad, sitting in front of my PC alone in my room.

Again, normally henceforth I would be talking about the ads on the basis of their look, content, communication, casting, and connect with the audience. But in case of this ad, it scores ten-on-ten in every department. Even though you might find the overall look a bit bland and insipid, akin to a Hollywood Classic, I'm pretty sure the way it starts itself is enough to keep you hooked on for the complete 2 minutes and 3 seconds. So enjoy the ad people.