By Malay Desai
By: JWT
Matrimony portal Shaadi.com has revamped its identity again, with a campaign with Indian women as the focus. Named ‘my conditions apply’, the film uses the asterisk as a recurring symbol to denote the changing approaches that modern girls have towards marriage and candidates. The young ladies are shown working late, travelling, baking or simply sleeping in, with a voiceover talking of ambitions and a non-compromise attitude. On Facebook, the campaign uses popular Bollywood faces with their quotes and the hashtag #MyConditionsApply.
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Anupam Mittal’s start-up when ‘start-up’ wasn’t even a mainstream phrase has evolved much after its humble beginning in 1997. Like changing attitudes and social norms towards marriage in India, its bouquet of services too has widened, the latest push coming towards its app. We are not affected by Tinder, they say, and I agree, but they won’t be affected too much by this TVC too.
Give me the uncut visuals of this ad and I’ll cut you three separate ad films that ‘celebrate the modern Indian woman’, one each for a sanitary pad brand, a soap and a scooty. The point is, JWT and Perfect 10 Films, you cannot keep riding on the bindaas girl wave, because it’s 2015 now; films and campaigns such as this do not stick.
What stuck was your Facebook game Angry Brides in 2012, which took up a relevant social issue and cleverly raised awareness about it and your matchmaking. What stuck in 2013 was everything you did with Chetan Bhagat, for better or worse, it gave me recall value. This, faceless vague message about ‘going out and achieving your dreams’ will not, because every other brand and their uncle, (even SBI) is telling me that.
Of course, it’s been shot well and the use of the asterisk as a symbol of the Indian girl’s no-nonsense identity is cool too (although the idea’s been around from half a decade now), but with a voiceover that says stuff like ‘chhoona hai aasmaan,’ nope, you’ve got to investigate which intern from your agency wrote it and ask for him/her to be fired.
In a recession free market but with several competitors constantly upgrading their offerings, your game must be on top, and your creative ideas must be clutter-breaking. I found this campaign to be neither, even digitally. I’d have rather loved a take on the Tinder generation or simply a vox-pop film with real faces that talk about modern preconditions for shaadi. Wait, and men too, even if ‘modern Indian woman’ is such a sexy ad idea.
Sorry for the ruthlessness, butit’s picked for what I believe has been one the only greatest start-ups from the Indian e-commerce space.
(To watch this film, feed this link in your browser - bit.ly/ViewTubeSept28)
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