By Malay Desai
By: Saatchi and Saatchi, Cape Town, South Africa
A pharma company’s campaign for its erectile dysfunction pill shows a middle-aged man called Phil with ladies in various outdoor situations. Called ‘A day in the life of Phil’, the film begins with him pointing out to a sunbathing woman that her boyfriend is on the other side, implying not to look at him. Then at a dvd parlour when another woman gets close to pick a disc, he reacts as if she’s touching him inappropriately. When the cashier asks for ‘number’, he shakes his head and says ‘relentless.’ the film winds up with him running with two ladies in tow and the bold words ‘get your confidence back’ followed by ‘and then some’ before the company logo.
Why we like ?
A 2003 commercial by the then RMG David from New Delhi showed a middle-aged rural man riding a bicycle with his wife sitting sideways in the front. After an idyll minute or so, they get off the cycle and the viewer realises it didn’t have the front bar at all. ‘One Plus Gold’, the product name appears. This spot for the erectile dysfunction pill bagged many awards and further popularised one Mr Josy Paul.
That advertisers love sexual connotations is the industry’s oldest truth, and much creative juices are spent over deodorant, condom and well, any product that could show skin to sell. But to effectively talk to middle aged men with erectile dysfunction, statistically a huge number in every modern culture thanks to urban stresses, it takes this.
Picking up the core selling point of the category, confidence, this brand spins a hilarious tale around a character. The hilarity lies in this ambassador, Phil, being unafraid to look stupid, ugly and inadvertently funny. Let’s face it, 40s in real life aren’t really sexy, much as the Clooneys, SRKs and Mantastic Milind Somans (featured here last week) would want us to believe. With this Mr Phil being unabashed about his looks — he almost pampers his paunch right in the first sequence — his message should open minds while the laughter ensues.
The laughter of course emanates from the awkward situations scripted in the screenplay. None of the ladies of the film are expecting Phil to say stuff he does — such as ‘I’m sorry I’m married’ to an unsuspecting one asking for directions. Phil is relentless himself, and eventually does point out that confidence is a state of mind (and an other important organ). The campaign website is even funnier, made with tacky animations but is effective for the cause.
Judging by the number of letters the ‘Sexpert’ in Mumbai Mirror receives (they’re all genuine, our credible source verifies) every day, there is a huge market for ED combating pills. If only the bigger advertisers could do bolder ads, it could get their confidence back.
To watch this film and others, visit www.philthelegend.com
SOCIAL NEWSFEED
Here’s my BBM pin – A43.. *slap!*
Apologies for this headline if you’re a Blackberry fan but things are just getting out of hand now after BB launched an Android version of its BBM Messenger. ‘BB pins’ meant to add a person to the messenger network are flowing aplenty on social channels, throwing us back to Yahoo! Messenger’s ‘a/s/l please?’ days. While it is making it stuffy for classic BB users, the company isn’t complaining. In a blog post a little after the big release , Blackberry reports that the app had a croreplus downloads within the first 24 hours . This is huge, given that the game Angry Birds Space managed that figure in three days last year. If BB maintains this user base , the Whatsapp-dominated mobile app scene would just get hotter.
Orkutiyas like this
Seene – the 3D app you must know of
Just because we skim through blogs and trends looking for cool social apps so you don’t have to, we must tell you of anything worthy that comes by. Get your hands on Seene, which captures objects in 3D. It plots points on your subject, then determines its location when you move your phone around, thus estimating the depth of the object. Basically, it’s a cool new way to show off that new dish or your boyfriend’s new dog. It’s only an iPhone app now , and we suspect it would have its negative reviews (we don’t think it would work in dimly lit situations) but would eventually grow to be popular. Well, with God Google having mapped the our world in 3D, this stuff was bound to come on your phone.
Compulsive Instagrammers like this
Ryan Air boss crash lands on Twitter
And in our stories under the ‘social media initiatives by brands gone wrong’ category, we have a spectacular entry. Europe’s biggest budget airline recently raised prices and made the brave move to put its CEO in the Twitter cockpit to have a one-on-one interaction with disgruntled folks. A hashtag #GrillMol was created and complaints were invited – great strategy, until something untoward happened. Turns out our man wasn’t aware of this network’s controls, and was quick to pass a comment on a lady’s pic , which ended up being re-tweeted all over. The discourse took a bad turn with others calling him a sexist pig among other things , but we did spot many witty responses from the boss. And hence, despite the boo boo and other mud-slinging, we thought it’s a move worthy to be emulated. Jet and Spice, are you up for this?
Air India Maharaja likes this
