By Malay Desai
From: Lowe Lintas
Garuda Food, before the first ever campaign for its chocolate stick brand ‘Gone Mad’, visited a cross-section of children across Bangalore and asked them to doodle whatever made them happy. The agency sought these works to design the packaging and made them part of print and inshop communication too. In the TVC, Murali, a school is shown narrating a story about himself and his friend, with sketch animation dominating the 30-second visuals. ‘This Mad Choco Sticks story is written by Murali,’ the voiceover says toward the end.
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How we love deviating from the highway (we’re never on it, to be modest) where only swanky automobiles and glossy celebs ride. While sifting and yawning through those last week, we stumbled upon this little gem, a debut campaign for a brand owned by an Indonesian-Bangalorean firm. Product’s called ‘Gone Mad’ and it’s one of those wafery-chocolatey sticks the market is cluttered with.
For a late entrant in a category that has a dozen competitors vying for the urban child’s miniscule attention span, ‘Gone Mad’ has done well. To begin with, the agency apparently went to 200 kids across all sections and asked them to do what they do best – doodle. We guess the kids didn’t go through R&D queries behind their habits or spendzones, but were simply given the chance to see their masterpieces on a product package (or maybe a busshelter).
Ask anyone who’s worked in a kids’ magazine or a newspaper, this craze to see one’s drawing published is immense, and herein lies the ace. The TVC takes the animated route, which has often proven to be expensively flat for this category. But not many of them have spoken with their TA in the manner this spot has. By crediting the voiceover and ‘screenplay’ to a school child Murali, we have here a chatterbox of an ad in a language third graders would speak. The tiny story about Murali and his friend fighting and making up and dancing and doing other gibberish need not even make sense to you, but the ‘mad’ animation is bound to grab your child’s attention in Chhota Bheem commercial breaks.
Our only grouse is that there is no clear branding of the product here. The ‘Gone Mad Choco Sticks’ phrase is repeated but kids need visual validation; and the spot chooses to show the company logo toward the end. Yet, if this is backed up by effective ‘Gone Mad’ outdoor branding, the name will register soon.
With the product available only in two southern states and Hyderabad, we assume this project is small but its bold idea may have already reached where it has to. After crowd sourcing, here comes kid-sourcing!
To watch the spot, log on to Goo.gl/M0A2P
