By Malay Desai
From: Creativeland Asia; JWT Delhi
Parle Agro’s Frooti has unveiled its biggest brand ambassador yet, actor Shah Rukh Khan, in a spot launched just before rival Slice introduced its new Katrina Kaif commercial. Shot at a football practice setting, Frooti makes SRK gulp down a bottle as a bunch of ‘kids’ stare and ogle. Toward the end, the same oglers turn out to be adults. In the Slice ad, Kaif and another lady are seen in a jungle, blindfolding their male companion and making him sip their chosen mango drinks. The man takes a liking for Katrina’s Slice over the other one. Frooti features an Italian background score while Slice has a jazzy rendition of ‘Haal kaisa hai’.
The mercury’s risen and it’s showtime for cold drink brands; the results of weeks of brainstorming, client servicing and planning now playing at a telly near you. The players here are not your usual colas, but packaged mango drinks, albeit backed by beverage giants Parle (Frooti) and Pepsi (Slice). The two commercials arrived back-to-back last week, after some teasing and social media build-up.
Now despite having known of SRK’s entry into the mango-wars, we were still hopeful of Slice pulling off another Katrina-centred stunner after having delivered Project Tantalise annually since 2010. And maybe it was the weight of that expectation, but we pick SRK’s Frooti to be the clear winner here, for reasons more than just its cute-Sardar-kid factor.
Having begun its repositioning of ‘not just for kids’ years ago, Frooti is still on the same route. But an SRK on board is a huge difference, a new voice of the brand – even though the actor just mouths ONE word in the 90-seconder.
The surprise factor, adults morphing into kids, comes across endearingly here and no client would mind an ad which shows SRK gobbling the product for three-fourths of the ad’s runtime. We like how the concept doesn’t end with explanatory copy, and Frooti sticks to its vintage ‘fresh-n-juicy’ tagline.
At the other end of the ring is Katrina Kaif, whom we’ve relished er, just running, plucking mangoes or sitting and sipping Slice (or doing pottery, for heaven’s sake, in the Titan ad we featured here). But there’s a story here and it’s one we care little about (just as in her films). Partnering a bland Sheetal Menon in a ‘taste challenge’, an obvious dig at Coke’s Maaza, the spot underplays Katrina’s sensuousness. Besides, it took us three viewings to get the point, whereas Frooti’s multiple viewings were simply for pleasure.
The background scores are big deciding factors too. While Frooti breaks clutter with the Italian track, Slice invests in Mikey McCleary’s jazz and Shyamali Kholgade’s vocals to only recreate a classic.
Both the campaigns were trending on Twitter through last week’s launches, and here was a comment that summed it all: ‘one makes us lust for the product and the other, the ambassador.’
Watch the Frooti spot by logging on to - Goo.gl/BKoB7 and to watch the Slice ad
