By Malay Desai
By: Lowe Lintas
A new film by jewellery retailer Tanishq begins with a bride readying herself for a wedding by wearing a gold necklace with two ladies admiring in tow. This is followed by her daughter playfully chatting with her before she proceeds to the mandap. The daughter, now with her grandparents, while watching the couple do pheras, wishes to join them in doing ‘round round’, to which the mother hesitates but her husband is prompt to call her and carry her through the ceremony. The film ends with the girl asking the husband the question, “Aaj se daddy bulaun?”
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Don’t look now, we are changing. This year, the husbands of Indian advertising are taking up their wives’ surnames (Havells), senior citizens are YouTubeing swimming lessons (Vodafone) and now we have a couple taking the haloed marriage pheras with a kid in arms. Incidentally, the agency behind this film is the same one who’d shown us a Punjabi Santa Claus and a Muslim Diwali reveler last Diwali, Lowe Lintas.
This 90-seconder, promoting one of the pioneers of branded jewellery, TATA’s Tanishq, hit the headlines and social timelines last week for reasons its makers perhaps expected. a) The idea is about celebrating remarriage, not exactly a subject of celebration in our society, and b) it features an evidently wheatish (the snobs may term it ‘caramelised’) female model, also not exactly a subject of desire in our advertising.
The film has been shot by Gauri Shinde, who gave us Sridevi in a lovable, progressive light to us last year with English Vinglish and with this spot, she breaks new ground again. The remarriage concept would’ve taken umpteen to and fros, anxious meetings among other things between client and agency but it’s worth. The ‘bold’ (by desi standards) take created flutter from day one and earned reams of free, good PR – huge check mark in campaign success list. Most of the attention is deserved, and this being a TATA brand attempting to change mindsets will go a long way as far as ad landmarks go.
As for the dark model, we frankly didn’t spot her skin tone the first time we saw this film; it was only the Twitter hoopla that pointed it out. Surely it was a calculated move but we hope it doesn’t create this much applause every time it’s attempted by an advertiser. Wheat won’t become mainstream, partly because of Fair and Lovely ads (incidentally by the same agency!) but that doesn’t mean we don’t try, right?
There was more hoopla about Tanishq launching a Karwa Chauth ‘app’ around this time and being hypocritical; and although we haven’t seen it yet, it does sound part of the ‘progressive’ package. Wait till someone comes up with a ‘Karwa chauth for men’ ad, soon. Hawa badlegi.
To watch this film, feed this easy link into your browser: bit.ly/Tanishqad~
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