TVC: Dabur Vatika–#BraveAndBeautiful
BY Malay Desai From: Linen Lintas, Delhi The hair brand’s new film opens with a bald woman looking at an old picture of her when she had hair. She then goes about shutting the morning alarm, waking her husband and childand sending her to school. The morning routine also involves her family moment at breakfast and her trying out outfits and headgear, looking pensive. After donning a saree and getting a bindiput on her by her husband, she proceeds to work, seemingly after a long illness. Her nervousness is eased up later as her colleagues welcome her warmly, three of them marking her head with tiny spots, a Hindu ritual to ward off evil eye. ‘Some people don't need hair to look beautiful’, the copy at the end reads. Do we Like? In a market dominated by coconut oils, Dabur launched the premium Vatikaoil, positioning it as having herbs. After a slow start, its first few brand ambassadors were women achievers a la Sudha Chandran and Mandira Bedi. A decade later, its variants were being marketed by A-listers such as Priety Zinta and Priyanka Chopra. Cut to 20 years later, its latest brand endorser is an anonymous bald model. While nothing’s really changed about the herbs in the scented oil, the brand and its promoters have matured in the two decades since, for the men running Indian advertising have salt-pepper hair too. This isn’t just another CSR-led campaign trying to make you feel good about 5 per cent of your money going to a street child, this is something much bolder, especially for the hair care market. The film is the exact opposite of the message that all hair products have been giving –that strong, shiny hair equals a beautiful you. The film is slow, takes its time to settle in and depict the emotional upheaval in the cancer survivoron the day she returns to her workplace. She’s beautiful to her family, but fears stepping out to normalcy. Her long gazes, her time in front of the mirror and body language are signs of nerves, but she’s far from being a wreck. Even the soundtrack sings so. A heartening welcome and ‘teekas’ on her bald head by three colleagues(why does no man feature among them we wonder) later, the film says it out – beauty isn’t just in the hair, before giving out a call to share more stories of cancer survivors. Vatika just added a few greys to its brand image overnight, and like they do on Clooney and Nafisa Ali, they look sexy. Will the curtailed 60-seconder on TV be as impactful? Is the brand simply trying to evoke sympathy by putting up the big C? Wait, they’re not even donating anything to the cause. There will be questions for the rather picky oil customer, but the other elements of the campaign should have some answers. For now, Vatika, can you also give us a break from bald men in newspaper ads? (To watch this film, feed this link into your browser:‘bit.ly/ViewTubeJan12’) Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe Qyuki Rahman turns 48 This writer’s only reason to doubt atheism, Sir AR Rahman celebrated his birthday in his hometown last week and knowing of the man’s introverted, low-key ways, it was a surprise to see a post on his Facebook about a live chat with composer Salim Merchant. Turns out the event was an initiative by Qyuki, a Bandra basedsocial platform focused on video content, of which ARR is one of the faces, besides film maker Shekhar Kapur. While the network wants to be the ‘Wikipedia of video’ with no ads and only cool content, this stage surely made their plans stronger. The chat was lapped up by fans, and the network got its time in the sun as they needed to tweet to its handle with #HBDARR, which ended up trending. While Rahman is back to his studio, we are going to now track the platform’s progress. Smriti Irani likes this #CharlieHebdo and the Mumbai Police angle While we are reeling with rage toward the fundamentalists’ attack on the French magazine Charlie Hebdo’s Paris office last week, we are also rolling our eyes at the Mumbai Police’s reaction – increase surveillance in the cyber space and block 650 posts on ‘a popular social networking site’ that could spell trouble. This of course comes after a douchebag BSP leader in UP announcing a reward for the gunmen and inviting the local police to arrest him, but dear Mumbai cops, please, let the satire and cartoons be. Most of them are poignant, striking and give a voice to our angst after all. If there is indeed action needed to avoid trouble, look up the idiots who mindlessly forwarded a message about ‘riots’ in Lalbag-Parel, leading to unnecessary confusion. Nobody likes this IRCTC now wows with smooth Android app When the Indian railways launched its lighter, much more efficient site, a satire site had done a story on a man booking hundreds of tickets without any intention of travelling. Now I know exactly what he must have felt, for IRCTC’s Android app, launched in October and a year after launching its Windows app is smooth enough for one to feel surreal. The UI is sharp, the colours are vibrant and the convenience is unmatched. Moreover, now the world’s most visited site (arguably, after Google of course) has ads on its app too, besides those of its own travel packages. Now if only they could do the impossible –have an active, responsive CRM team for queries and complaints on social media. For inspiration, look at @mummetro on Twitter. Laloo Prasad Yadav likes this
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