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Recently Micromax mobile brought out an ad starring Akshay Kumar as a chef playing in the kitchen with his Micromax mobile. While doing so, he becomes so involved that he messes up the kitchen real bad. All the time he keeps laughing this “Rahul Mahajan” (btw where is he?) laugh. The ad was terribly irritating. Would give that ad around 1.5 out of 5. Ad link.

But recently they came out with a self-parody of the previous ad. Two cleaners are cleaning the kitchen which was messed up by Akshay Kumar while another cook picks up the phone and starts playing with it. When the cleaner sees this, he gets frustrated at all the work and taunts the cook in the same laughing tone.

This ad is much clever and full credits to the ad agency of Micromax for bringing out this self-parodying ad. Would this one 4 out of 5.  (Can’t find the link of this ad online)

An interesting piece of news: Micromax leads the pack of local mobile manufacturers (who collectively now constitute around 17% of the Indian mobile market share). Micromax’s share of the Indian mobile phone market is 4.8%

If you’ve watched any of the cricket matches during the ongoing IPL3 season, you must have seen the Adidas ads. There are three ads – one from the point of view of a batsman, a fielder and a bowler. Adidas is well-known for its inspiring ads, and this one doesn’t disappoint at all.

“Sometimes I can fly.” Wish I could write copy like that. Here’s the Youtube link for the ads.

IIFL (India Infoline)

With this post I began a long neglected hobby of mine. Criticizing ads. On TV, in newspapers ads are all around us. Some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly. This is my effort in tearing apart the ugly, criticizing the bad and appreciating the good.

The ad industry is very close to me, almost like a dear brother lost in the kumbh-mela of the career rat race (…if you can make any sense of that sentence). I begin this endeavour with a few ads which have been making the rounds these days. One of them is the IIFL ad. This is for India Infoline a financial services company who has always seeemed to be struggling to define its brand identity. In its latest move, to renew its brand it has come out with an ad saying it has shortened its name to IIFL (India InFoLine).

Two things against this change. First, the capitalization makes no sense. Random letter capitalized to make a short form. Secondly they have come out with an ad today (http://epaper.livemint.com/ArticleImageEx.aspx?article=31_03_2010_015_003&type=1&mode=1) saying “Short is Great” and justifying their short name with famous personalities like Sachin, Gandhi, Picasso who were of “short height”. This comparison seems like a huge generalization and irrelevant if you ask me. The good thing about this ad is that it has been smartly executed. Short. Crisp. The way I like it.

AdMeter Rating: 2.5/5

PS. May I suggest IIFL to add Kim Jong Il (at a height multiple of 5′3″) to your portfolio for better diversification.

A tale of two cars

Two ads for two different cars have caught my attention in recent times. One is for the classic Maruti Suzuki and the other is for a new entrant Honda Jazz. These two completely different ads shows how important it is to keep the message to the audience simple.

Here’s the Maruti ad first. The brilliance of this ad lies in its simplicity. Notice that this ad doesn’t show any car at all. Instead the images and emotions used in these ad are more reminiscent of previous ads for chocolates or diapers. It shows a mom putting mehndi on her hands while she asks her relatives to take care of her baby. No matter what the relatives do, the baby keeps on crying. Until the mother takes the child in her own hands. The tagline shown after this is simply amazing. You cannot help but smile at the simplicity yet the power in that message. The message is simple, if you love your car, you’ll take good care of it.

On the other hand, take this ad of Jazz. It shows a man putting a cactus in the backseat of the car and driving around town to pick up his girlfriend. All other cars seem to burst in bubbles around this new car. When the man does pick up her girlfriend, she sees the cactus and gets shocked. Then it shows a hand plucking a flower from somewhere on the cactus. Both of them get into the car and drive off happy. On top of that, the tagline used by the ad, “Why so serious?” a totally unoriginal line. Moreover it doesn’t even fit with the whole ad. Didn’t expect this from the same (car) company that produced this masterpiece of an ad.

P.S. Read this article later on AFaqs. The creative head tries to clarify the ad, but makes it all the more muddled.

Three conflicting messages versus one simple one. That’s the power of a simple ad.