TVC: Fortune Oil – Ghar ka Khana
By Malay Desai From: Ogilvy & Mather, India A nurse catering to a bed-ridden man in a hospital ward is approached by an old woman insisting she feed him her dal. Calling her ‘dadi’, the nurse cites the policy of ‘outside’ food not being allowed. The dadi is relentless, returning every day and trying politeness, cajoling and anger with the nurse, but to no avail. One morning, she gives the nurse a lunch-box to celebrate the man’s birthday. The next morning, the nurse gives in to her request of feeding the man ‘two spoons’ of dal. The over four-and-a-half minute film winds up with ‘dadi’ her grandson dal and him weakly tugging at the container. “Ghar ka khana, ghar ka khana hota hai”, the tagline reads. Do we like ? Prepare your goosebumps for some action, for there’s yet another ad playing upon us desis’ allegiance to home food. The characters aren’t your usual jalebi boy or a plump cholesterol-ridden husband with a caring wife; they’re two ladies – a beautifully cast grandmother and a no-nonsense nurse. The central character, who doesn’t say a line, wins dollops of our sympathy votes. The setting is unusual for an oil commercial and the elements tugging at our heart are many – home food, near-vegetative patient, a gritty dadi with a warm face and an empty hospital ward. And if this wasn’t all too easy, the commercial is a good 280+ seconds long. All three actors have performed endearingly well, we also thought the jingle at the climax helped much in Project Goosebumps, yet are not willing to watch this again. Not because it’s too emotional, but just because of the length. Perhaps the makers tried too hard to weigh in the emotional punch – the spot would be as impactful at one-third this length. With this short film of an effort, the brand has unveiled a new communication approach – not really talking of a particular oil variant but showing its larger evolution from an oil brand to a cooking ingredient brand. That said, the emotive language is the same as we have seen in Fortune’s earlier spots where a middle-aged couple misses a train and how Saina Nehwal is relieved to have a healthy oil brand. Piyush Pandey, whom we like to call the Raju Hirani of advertising for his ability to pick and portray strong Indian emotions, recently said that ‘It’s not about how many spots the client gives, but whether the ad hits the right spot,’ talking about his latest film. While we have had the good fortune of witnessing another of his gems, we hope the client, Adani Wilmar prunes this film before giving spots. Meanwhile, this writer is heading home to give his dadi a hug. To watch this film, feed this easy link –‘bit.ly/June23Ad’ SOCIAL NEWSFEED Brace yourself for GIFs on Twitter Our fave-est social network last week announced an annoying new feature – that of GIF images, or animated images that go on a continuous loop until they irk the duck out of your mind. If you thought images in tweets were a bit too much, GIFs will now appear in your timeline with a play button, just as video content does. You might know that you cannot share playable videos on Twitter unless they are ‘Vines’, but now this function gives us the first video-like content. We only fear this might be used to clutter our timelines by advertisers or worse, by your young nephews and teen friends. Hoping Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck (one we use and like most) do not support this GIF business. Most 19-year-olds like this Digital Campaign of Note – Oreo’s Besties It’s long since we reported an outstanding social media campaign so here’s one we thought was cleverly crafted. You might recall Ranbir Kapoor’s TVC where he Skypes with his niece and chides her about a cookie. Staying true to its cute, uncluttered route, one ‘Interface Communications’ recently unveiled a digital campaign which spoke of the ‘friendship’ bond between Oreo cookie and orange crème. Calling this #OreoBesties, it let out posts which asked users to send selfies with their besties, then asked them to talk about what made their bond unique. After what the brand did with ‘Daily Dunks’ last IPL, this takes the buzz further, especially in the face of Parle’s ‘Happy Happy’, a formidable new launch from Oreo’s desi rival. Ranbir Kapoor likes this How Game of Thrones ruled social media too If you have been using social media with reasonable regularity in the past year or so, you might know about the American fantasy drama TV series based on a bunch of novels, Game of Thrones. Now we do not have anything against this global TV phenomenon, but all the chatter around it sounded to us like what non-football fans are probably going through right now – ‘blah blah blah.’ Nevertheless, it must be said that the show’s social media footprint has been humungous to say the least. While we are waiting for this year’s season ending numbers, the season four premiere witnessed 4,93, 500 tweets. In case you haven’t noticed, it has already spurned off many memes in the interwebs, such as ‘Winter is coming’ and #BringDownTheKing. Last week, even a Mumbai tabloid did a dipstick on ‘Which Game of Thrones Character are You?’ If you’re not in the kingdom, head now or ask this writer for earplugs. Peter Dinklage likes this
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