By Malay Desai
From: Law & Kenneth
This 45-seconder for a hatchback features the Bollywood actor as a high-profile corporate. On arriving at work in this car, he does many ‘young’ antics such as greeting colleagues with ‘wassup’ and giving a fist-bump during a board meeting. It is revealed later at his home that he’s used his son’s car. The film ends with him stepping out the next morning with the son, but once again opting for the Pulse over his chauffer-driven car, followed by renault’s animated signage and the signature vroom sound.
Do we like?
As if to balance out our gushing at the ‘great usage of a celebrity’ mention in last week’s Binani film featuring Amitabh Bachchan, karma has served us this commercial. It comes from the French multinational and Mahindra’s former partner Renault, whose hatchback Pulse has been in the cut-throat market from early 2012.
There are many problems here, so let’s begin with the part where you were probably laughing. Anil Kapoor is 56. He’s only seen in the media these days on Father’s Day with his actor daughter (assuming his hyped roles in Hollywood productions don’t last over three seconds). But even if we give the benefit of doubt to the brand and think that ‘sleek features’ and ‘young at heart’ are aspects of the car just like Kapoor, his treatment here is amateurish.
The ad’s concept is so obvious, it seems they plucked one at random from a media school’s rejected assignment list. The ‘car’ shots are there, but we’re not sure if they’d stay in a potential customer’s mind, because it is preoccupied with Anil Kapoor’s presence and antics. This vanilla idea could’ve been for anything – suits, deos or phones. Reportedly the agency (that’s handled Skoda too) has planned more spots in this series in different situations. There’s a chance that part of the target audience – the 40-50 somethings, might connect with Kapoor but isn’t the younger professional – the EMI guy – a bigger slice? He’s only LOLing at this ad!
Incidentally, another time when we featured an Indian car here was when another Kapoor, Ranbir, danced upon dozens of synchronised dancing Nissan Micras. Looking at the antics here, even that feat sounds palatable. Our small car market, just like Mr Kapoor’s film industry, rejects mediocrity with ruthless regularity. If this won’t be a lesson for Renault, we hope it’ll be one for him at least.
To watch this film, feed this link into your browser Goo.gl/XWLOM
