Can(nes) ads…

I’m waiting to catch a really good ad on the American television. I have seen some interesting ads related to public health, drug awareness and anti-smoking. Kaiser Permanente has a good ad too (‘We are anti-addiction, pro anti-oxidants’) but apart from these, most ads are so vapid. Firstly, there is this huge obsession with autos and automobiles and I guess there isn’t much creativity can do to make an auto ad interesting. Bajaj seemed to have done that pretty well with their famous Hamaara Bajaj campaign, though. The interesting point is how Indian advertising uses the diversity factor to make a real strong point. Amul (The Taste of India), Bajaj (Bulund Bharat ki bulund tasveer, hamaara Bajaj), Cadbury’s (Kuch khaas hain zindagi mein) are a few of the ad campaigns which have really exploited the ‘unity-in-diversity’ idea and come up with some brilliant campaigns.

I caught a McDonald’s ad a few days back which was refreshingly different. It featured a couple of Japanese girls who grow up sharing everything. Clothes, toys, rides, cabs.. but when one of them tries to sample her pal’s french fries, she receives a neat rap on her knuckles. That was a good ad, I thought. One of the better ones that I’d seen in a long while. One of the appealing factors was the Japanese factor, I felt. It gave such a universal appeal to the big Mac.

Some years back, I saw this brilliant ad on MTV-India. The ad goes this way: A SE Asian city. Maybe Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Shanghai. Busy roads. Early morning traffic. Lots of people going to work, driving automobiles, crossing roads, traffic jams. All in black-n-white. A woman walks into the screen. She is dressed in a low-cut, close fitting, strappy dress. Naturally she attracts a lot of attention from all the men around her. Guys turn around to check her out. She enters a lift and everyone stares blatantly. The lift doors close with the sign-off line, ‘If only women paid as much attention to their breasts as men did’. It was a campaign for breast cancer awareness. An amazing ad.

AMUL has always provided insightful social commentary by way of their phenomenal billboards. Some 25 odd years after Gerson Da Cunha took over the AMUL campaign, they still come up with fantastic tag-lines. It is lovely how they use spoofs of some other provocative ad campaigns, MTR coffee for eg. to sell AMUL products. The Nescafe ad was another brilliant concept. The campaign took coffee from the old filter-South-Indian-traditional idea to a hip, youthful concept and it really worked!

Talking of universal appeal, Durex had released an ad on MTV-India some years ago. Shot in black-n-white, featuring couples belonging to different races, in the act of making love… Classy, understated, brilliant visuals, powerful music… the ad was an instant winner.