TVC: Coca-Cola
By Malay Desai By: McCann Delhi Starring Deepika Padukone, Farhan Akhtar and their character’s ‘friend’ each, the new ‘Open Happiness’ series spot is placed in rural India. After a pretty girl and her friend fail to catch their bus to the examination centre, she fears that she’ll now have to be at home peeling pea-pods all her life thanks to her father. This is when a nearby cycle-rickshaw wala downs a Coke and springs into action, promising to overtake the bus. Handing over the bottle to her at the back, he whirls away and eventually screeches to a halt, right in front of the bus at the exam hall. ‘I’ll never let you peel peapods’, he announces, as the girls smile away, followed by the signature product window. Do we like ‘Dhur burbag, chauthi phail,’ ‘Ee phinger kitna hai?’ ‘Baap kitne hai tohre?’ – lines mouthed by Aamir Khan from a 2003 campaign don’t need YouTube-ing, they are entrenched in the minds of all who watched the telly that World Cup year. The films with their Anglo-Bihari laced with Hindi, redefined the ‘price promo’ concept… and 11 summers later, the same agency produces this. Chhota Coke is now double the price, Deepika Padukone is the hottest property but a non-Aamir ad requires a Farhan Akhtar too, who’s riding high with recent awards and a film release. This isn’t a price promo though, it’s the latest milestone in a happy-shiny route adopted globally by Coke, and the two new faces are presumably the beginning of a series of films. Let’s call the concept hinterland funk – to create cool-ish characters coming from the rural belt and win over the chunk of the cola market as also give the metro slickers something exotic to chuckle about. It’s a trend that keeps hitting Bollywood and subsequently ad films, and if you’ve loved the simpleton boy Dhanush from Raanjhanaa who also rides a cycle-rickshaw, you’ll see where this spot is coming from. Akhtar does well in his gaon-thi expressions, so does Padukone in her desi ‘thenk-yoo’. That said, we were waiting for a twist, a conflict or at least a punch line in this one, but the spot got over too fast. There was none of the above in the 45-seconder, making us go ‘Okay, so?’ in the end. Fine, Deepika’s pretty to look at but it’s not a Katrina ad, you know what we mean? We hope there’s a longer version of this, or more in the series before ‘Pepsi IPL’ takes over public consciousness. The memorable spots of last decade were directed by Ashutosh Gowariker, and his touch was evident with casting of Lagaan characters. This film is the handiwork of Anurag Kashyap, who too happens to be on the right side of his success curve but that doesn’t show in this spot at all. In fact, we also spotted a line which doesn’t sync with Akhtar’s lips. ‘Abbe dantmanjan, kaa badmaasi hai, hain?’ (To watch Coke’s film, go to bit.ly/March3 ad ) SOCIAL NEWSFEED Easy Cabs wins over actress on Twitter Here’s a little lesson in public relations on social media. When Easy Cabs, a fleet taxi operator messed up a ride, it was duly tweeted about by the disgruntled NimratKaur, actress last seen in the acclaimed film Lunchbox. But nearly a week later, it seems someone at Easy Cabs has received a pat on the back for turning this incident on its head. The actress received a custom gift (goodies in a lunchbox) along with a hand-written letter (as per the theme of her movie) which bowled her over and she tweeted about that too, with a picture. Now some allege that this might be preorche strated on the part of the cab operator to seek some online brownie points, but we think it’s too much of a risk to take to ditch a customer. Meanwhile, a comment under her tweet reads ‘If I get this everytime Meru Plus leaves me stranded, I’ll open a candy shop!’ Ouch! Irrfan Khan likes this Just what is it with Candy Crush? It started with Farmville, then came half a dozen annoying Facebook and mobile games sending us notifications and now, as you may know, one Candy Crush has been ruling the gaming circles. We hear that the puzzle video game has surpassed Farmville 2 as the most popular game on Facebook, with a whopping 46 million average monthly users. If you have played it, you’d know that the sheer ease of play , number of lives it offers and its connection with your Facebook friends (pretty much a must for all mobile games nowadays) make Candy Crush a massive hit. It has used the Facebook platform well to seed, develop the game and most importantly, keep its players involved and hooked. Because we all know what happened to Flappy Bird, right? Jobless Jack likes this Top Climate Tools you must know of Users of Android devices and Google devotees would know that simply searching for a place followed by typing ‘weather’ will give you real-time information and forecast, but the smarter geeks who want to be aware of the world’s ways must dig more. We’ve discovered some handy sites and tools for you to study and converse with respect to climate trends. First up, check Climate Central, a non-profit firm that studies maps with sea surges and tells of the plight of coastal communities too. There’s also the Climate Time Machine, NASA’s own online lab that’s free to use, plus the Climate Reanalyser from the Univ of Maine that simplifies big climatic data for you to know and use. If you have a third-grader at home , make him/her read this, we say! Your Geography teacher likes this
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