Web film: HE deodorants–#ShowMenSomeLove
By Malay Desai From: WAT Consult, Mumbai Emami’s men’s deodorant brand ‘HE’ is celebrated International Men’s Day on November 19 with a song featuring young men asking to be loved. Starting with comparisons with what they have to do every Women’s Day, Teachers’ Day and Valentine’s Day, the men go on to sing and enumerate what all is ‘not fair’ for them. This includes rants such as them being the default chosen ones for cleaning fans, fixing flush tanks, warding off lizards and have to make efforts such as remembering important dates. The video with a recurring ‘so not fair’ chant winds up with the all the men getting together and calling to celebrate men’s day as the copy asks everyone to wear blue on the date. Do we Like? With the launch of this ad, I declare the feminist commercial season paused. The ‘strong woman fighting for her rights’ route that had populated mainstream advertising as a reflection of increased reporting of rapes and Indian women’s issues now has a clutter-breaker. FMCG biggie Emami, which rules the mid-tier spending segment with blockbusters such as Navratna cooling oil, Zandu balm and Boroplus launched the obviously named ‘He’ line of deodorants in June. Now every young man in rural and urban India knows how many deo brands are after his attention, many trying to stand out by offering ‘less gas’, more sprays. With Hrithik Roshan as a brand ambassador, Emami didn't need that. This film, a result of increased spending on digital, is timely, has a fresh concept and most importantly, has hit the ‘cool viral’ spot. By launching it a week prior to International Men’s Day, something none of us knew existed, it banked upon an existing phenomenon to fortify its brand. The two and a half minute song has a good amount of cool-th in it, featuring sufficiently young ‘professional’ guys acting all sheepish to create humour. The route is a tad risky, given that it could be perceived as being anti-women, and these aren’t good times to be that, but the lyrics are well on the safe side. The men, a colourful combination of dark, fair, angry and odd-looking, have a pertinent point to make – why is it only us to fix things, scare the rodents away and spend considerable time on occasions we think are useless –Valentine’s, anniversaries etc. It’s not really a real complaint, but a light-hearted poke at women, and a call to brothers to stand up and celebrate being a man. This isn’t the same thing that Old Spice, Nivea for Men and a bunch of undergarment brands are saying, it’s much subtle and hence unique. Emami’s agency has backed the film up with a social campaign as well as complementary videos on its YouTube channel, and the primary one is travelling across networks already, the HE branding in your face. Well done bros, but now we can go back to being obnoxious beings again. To watch this film, look up #ShowMenSomeLove on Twitter Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe ‘Facebook for work’ in the making There’s good news for all of you pressing ‘alt +tab’ to toggle between work and Facebook at office, for rumour has it that that the big F’s lab is currently working on an office-friendly version of the network. ‘Facebook for work’ will reportedly allow users to chat with colleagues, connect with professional contacts, business associates and the like. Now we have a thought bubble over our heads going ‘Wait, isn’t that like, LinkedIn meeting Gmail?’, but we’re sure Zuck has a few ideas up his sleeve here. We read that Facebook employees are still testing this out internally, so it should take a while before there’s a big announcement. The trickier bit is, who decides if a colleague is in the ‘friend’ space or is just a colleague, Facebook? Your Boss likes this ‘Happy Ending’ on Tinder, NaMo on Instagram You know a social network has made neat inroads in our youngsters’ minds when a Bollywood movie taps on it. In a first, the swipe-based dating-and-mating app Tinder is being used by the marketers of Happy Ending, the Saif Ali Khan and Ileana starrer which released last weekend. It’s a good match, we feel, as the film is a rom-com. The lead pair of the film, ‘Yudi’ and ‘Aanchal’ have made profiles on Tinder and started having conversations with those who ‘like’ them. The activity picked up quite well and we’re told that in less than an hour, they had over 100 matches. Now that’s some promotional ideas evolving with time. And while we’re at firsts, our social media savvy PM launched his Instagram account while on his official trip to Australia,his pictures complete with filters and hashtags. Going by his pace, we won’t be surprised if NaMo signs up for Tinder too, some day. I’ll swipe left. Saif Ali Khan likes this Virat Kohli delivers a ‘wrogn’ Twitter campaign Last Wednesday morning, everything was just the usual in Twitter land when one @imvkohli tweeted ‘what have I done?’ It caught the cleverest of minds and ruffled quite a few tweeters, and when Kohli followed this up with obscure lines such as ‘I think I may have done something wrogn today’, there was a slight suspicion of a marketing campaign. By evening, #WhatViratDid was trending, with the idle Indians guessing who or what was behind this (and news portals immediately putting up stories). It was when the stand-in captain of India said ‘I’m gonna share what I’ve done ‘wrogn’ soon’ that most of the social ’verse got a hang of them being had. Of course, it turned out to be a successful teaser campaign for his ‘breakaway youth fashion brand’ by the name ‘Wrogn’. Last checked, the handle @staywrogn had 2066 followers. Little ‘meh’ to me but I’m not in his TA anyway. Anushka Sharma likes this
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