By Malay Desai
By: Creativeland Asia, Mumbai
The first ever commercial of India’s largest café chain proposes a new ‘ism’ to discuss everything – sitdown-ism. The two minute-plus film showcases young people sitting at various CCD outlets and singing the sit down anthem among doing other things. Many of them are shown within windows of popular social networks. The spot ends with the brand’s signage and a voiceover saying the tagline.
Do we like
For the most visible café chain in the country, reportedly raking in decent business too, advertising so far has been only about leasing its in-store realty to a plethora of brands hungry for its target audience’s attention. Now, Café Coffee Day, 16 years into being and around 1,400 outlets later, decides to plunge first into print advertising and now this.
If we all ask our 17 to 21-year-old selves if we’d have liked the film, the answer would be yes. The ‘sitdownism’ funda is well-worded and by going against the tide of youth-savvy brands exhorting to ‘stand up and fight’, it pushes forward the café’s policy of encouraging guests to while away time; and stands out too.
The biggest takeaway of the film is its catchy tune. It’s hummable, has clever variations and most of all, has the ‘Har ek friend zaroori hota hai’ vibe, in a good way. The people singing this are stylised to appear like hipsters – bandanas, aviators et al but that’s how you sell to them.
The post-prod treatment scores, by getting in elements of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even stuff like Gtalk and Vimeo to convey the song’s energy. These networks have become our intrinsic habits and more so, they make the spot seem like it’s tailor-made for the web audience. The film’s reportedly going to be sliced into 20-second clips for TV, and we fear they won’t be as effective the YouTube way.
CCD isn’t exactly making for a strong case to be the birth place for future revolutions, but weaves in important issues anyway. We like the nods to homosexual and disabled groups and the nays to moral policing. Overall though, they seem like props against the film’s measured laid-back feel.
Now to think loudly as to ‘why now’: the firm may quote their research (that over 50% of the 17-35 age bracket isn’t keen to visit cafes) but we’re attributing this to the Starbucks factor. If you sit down to think, pre-emptive advertising is always a good idea.
Watch the spot on Goo.gl/SYpe8
