By Malay Desai
By: JWT India
The commercial for a new housing portal is made to resemble a horror film from the 80s. It begins with a couple driving to a deserted location,complete with the movie title and typical music. They encounter a watchman there, an old keeper who later turns out to be a killer ghost. Their walk in the house is filled with spooky moments, such as spiders, creaky doors and bats. Later as the killer watchman turns into a ghost and casts a spell on the lady, ‘Peter’ the man gets an enlightened ‘key’ over his forehead, before flashing out his smartphone with the Commonfloor app. ‘Bhula do darr, yahan milega ghar,’ the narrator says.
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From the producers of the silliest tagline of the year yet comes this ode to the ugly 80s, Benaam Ghar. It’s the first splash of the company that’s been making its space in the property portals market from six years,over a year after it received a $7.5 million Series C investment. That said, the production costs of this film don’t seem even one per cent of that.
Realty portals today are clamouring for the attention of the 30 somethings with incomes worth some EMIs, and it there’s enough attention coming likewise as well. To make things interesting, even your OLX and Quickr have jumped in the fray, although we don’t quite know how many are buying/renting homes through them as opposed to 99acres or makaan.com.
To sweep the clutter away then, a totally different approach was necessary, especially when the firm was promoting its app, something we’re getting used to seeing on primetime. The Ramsay route, quite literally, is worth spending your minute or so on (the director’s cut is 90 seconds), because the treatment is amusing. Anyone grown up watching the Khooni Dracula genre on local cable channels (Zee Horror Show and Aahat were much classier in comparison) will get the title art, the jarring zoom-ins and tacky/hilarious ‘special FX’ of flying bats and colourful spells. After grabbing all that attention, the film cleverly moves to the brand, the saviour. The smartphoneis the hero here, not ‘Peter’, and it banishesthe evil of Badar Ghat.
The background score adds to the treatmentbut it is the narrator who tells the tale and winds up with a punchline that explains the spooky route. As someone who’s hunted for homes, I agree the experience can be awkward, and leaking walls and pigeonholed bedrooms are scarier than Ramsay’s ghosts.
The film did make me visit the site, and that’s a job well done. I doubt I’ll ever download any property app, mainly because one cannot decide where to live based on pictures on your four-inch phone.
(The Director’s cut of this film is funnier, watch it on bit.ly/ViewTubeAug18)
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