what was airtel thinking ?

whats up with ad film makers these days ? between a guy riding a bike across polar ice caps to catch the northern lights, and a woman who cooks a four course meal on a weeknight after coming home from work - i dont know which one is more improbable. in case you havent seen it yet, i'll let you have the epic-facepalm-experience without further spoilers. we'll catch up below the video.

yeah. that totally unexpected twist in the climax where the boss is the wife - i bet you did not see that coming. there are so many things that bother me about this that i dont know where to begin.

• here is an indian couple where both obviously have well paying jobs, who have a driver but no cook at home.
• ok, she decides to make it up to the husband for the extra work he is doing. the only way to do it is through food - because, you know, the usual heart-through-the-stomach thing. it never gets old. not even if you could afford to try sexy lingerie or expensive booze. all that is, ofcourse, against our 'kulchar'. 
• so food it is. but it doesnt occur to her on a weeknight to get take-out on the way home. or order pizza. seriously, who made her the boss ?
• goes home. doesnt pick something from the freezer and heat it up. not even a packet of MTR instant-something. nope. peeling, cutting, chopping, stirring, straining, steaming, all from scratch. oh, the lengths to which she goes for her man. on a weeknight. hence proving that she has lived up to the description her parents gave in her matrimonial ad, of being professionally qualified and domestically accomplished.
• she video calls the poor fellow slogging away at work and asks him to come soon, when she knows very well that she was the one who insisted on getting things done just a short while ago. this woman seriously has some issues. or she takes the word 'bossy wife' very seriously.  
• lastly, i hope the other guys working for her also have wives who are equally good cooks, since she has no plans of ordering the rest of her team food, despite having asked them to stay late. ( i dont know who'll do the work if all the guys in the team leave early, enticed by home-cooked food. i am bothered that that doesnt bother her as a boss.)

i fail to see the moral of the story here. what exactly were they trying to convey ? that if you have a smartphone, you can be/should be slipping effortlessly from devil-wears-prada to domestic-goddess mode ?

old indian ad for Lux soap - starring Hema,the dream girl !

sometime back a conversation with a friend happened to ramble into the popular brands we had seen, growing up in india in the 80s...
who doesnt love a trip down memory lane ?

 i was so pleased, when i stumbled upon, in the course of my usual aimless googling, this old ad copy of lux soap...

every major bollywood actress would have been associated with the lux brand at some point in her career... this one features the charming, beautiful hemamalini - the dream girl  :)

i love old ads, i wish i could create a repository of them scanned from old magazines... maybe someday make some big prints out of them too... that would make cool retro art... :)  (remember the vintage french poster prints in monica's apartment from 'friends' ? )

(image source - from here )

gaga over zoozoo !

i'm almost always late in catching up with things....and more so if it has the faintest connection with cricket - which maybe the reason why i was ignorant till a few days back about the existence of zoozoos - those creepy yet cute characters which seem to have taken the indian ad world by storm....

i had missed seeing the vodafone ads as i prefer not be in the vicinity of a cricket match, even though every IPL match was running on our TV screen (thanks to K ,who, like most other indian guys, is a walking Wisden when it comes to cricket ! ).

coming back to zoozoos, i found out and saw these ads on youtube (when you miss something on tv, where else to catch it but on youtube ! ) after my cousin enlightened me....

one can't help admiring the innovative concept behind these characters....within 25 seconds, and without any dialogues or eye catching locations, the ads convey the message with such an impact that its impossible to forget them for a long time to come.... no wonder they have such a huge following - with thousands of fans in facebook and orkut...

O&M, the agency behind the ads, really deserves appreciation for creating the campaign - the mobile phone industry in india is a huge one with much more potential for growth in the coming years, and the popularity of cricket in the country of course needs no explanation - so what better idea than to launch the campaign during the IPL season... and the ads seem to have caught on much more rapidly than the proverbial house on fire....the concept of the characters, seperate ads for each value added service, the crisp and effective presentation that takes home the message, all deserve to be lauded - and not to forget the fact that the characters are not graphics, but real people in costumes !

well, i guess vodafone always strikes the right chords when it comes to ads - who can forget the endearing Pug puppy and the cute kids in the ads when Vodafone was still Hutch ? (personally, i think i still like them more than the zoozoo series :) )
of course, whether the fan following for the ads are any indicators of increased revenue is something to wait and watch, i guess....

(image source :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zoozoo-vodafone-1.jpg )