TVC: MTS Homespot–Internet baby returns
By Malay Desai From: CreativelandAsia Launched during the recent India-Pakistan game, telecom firm MTS’s new film is for its plug-in WiFi product. Like its first film this month last year, it is set in the maternity during a mother’s delivery. Here, the baby, before appearing, goes back in a virtual setting to ‘God’ and complains that the family he’s being sent to doesn't have adequate internet. God reasons with him saying they don't have laptops or computers, to which he replies they have three smartphones, and as they might not afford data charges, he’d rather be born in a richer family. At this point, God plugs the new product and its advantages and the baby, convinced, goes back to the delivery scene. Do we Like? I’d have blamed the bloomingseason of adorable babies, puppies and rabbits in Indian advertising, but MTS heredoesn't qualify, for it is only presenting a sequel (or technically, a prequel) to its superhit viral of February 2014, ‘internet baby.’It had rather creepily communicated that today’s generation knows everything and showed a babytumbling out of his mom, logging on to social networks and walking out. This one’s better – featuring a real-life baby and a product in focus to start off with. MTS, a subsidiary of the Russian conglomerate Sistemaisn’t exactly stressing out its competitors, Reliance, Vodafone & Co. – in fact Tata’s Docomolaunched this variant way back - but unlikethem, it has had a fresh feel to its ads. The 30 million eyeball worth first film had universal appeal, and its makers have retained the setting for a funnier premise – baby going back to God and complaining about no WiFi in its future home! Does the filming do justice to this intriguing idea? Yes, by keeping it simple (and inexpensive, for the last baby’s animation might have cost a bomb), the makers don't wander into generic territory, have a sharp focus on the product’s advantages and score most brownie points in the baby-God conversation. The script’s hilarious too, evoking the now famous ‘Bambani’ from the Freecharge TVC, and with lines such as ‘smartphone duaaon se chalte hain?’, it brings out the laughs on multiple viewings. The message is vastly different than the brand’s earlier promise of blazing fast internet (another top film in 2012 featuring Fake IPL Player); it’s about WiFi being a necessity now. So does the 5GB data for 499 sounds cool enough to ditch a router? Will its speeds be as good – and if yes, wait, what about net neutrality? If you’re prodded to ponder this, the film’s done its job. I suspect it will, unlike internet baby 2014 which turned out to be a nice forward with little brand recall. In fact, beware MTS, there’s good news and bad news - I’ve already received this film over Whatsapp. (To watch this film,feed this link in your browser - bit.ly/Feb23ViewTube) Social Newsfeed Your regular dose on the shifts in the social media universe Regional lingos take over Twitter And perhaps in my closing argumentof how Twitter India has been rolling up its sleeves and rolling out its features just for us desis, it gives me pleasure to say that we shall now see trends and hashtags in 11 regional languages. Wait, not to sound like a press release, let me explain. The little blue bird announced Hindi support in September 2011, but stuff like hashtags and trends would still be in English. Things changed a bit when during the India-Pak game, #JayHind (in Devnagari) topped the trends and we realised the arrival of desi hashtags. Two days later, a Tamil hashtag was on top of the trends, of course helped by influencers such as Dhanush. I’ve probed and found out that Twitter will unveil support for many more Indian scripts and more importantly, they will be indexed, ranked and hyperlinked by Twitter. Well done, shu vaat chhe! Ram Charan the megastar fans like this And Twitter takes over the World Cup While we’re at the 140 characters cosying up to Indian habits, here’s a no-brainer: Twitter has also unveiled special features for the World Cup – following teams, big conversations and watching videos is made easier. But the folks there are rather enjoying the fruits of the mega event already as the conversations in our part of the world have already hit the roof. The India-Pakistan game signaled a live impressions count of 118.3 million, the total tweets during the game to be over 17 lakh and of course peak periods surrounding big moments involving Afridi and Kohli. Moreover, RelianceComms, the largest telco has announced Twitter to be free (from data charges) during the world cup. Now that’s quite something coming from a brand (like most others) that believes in hiking SMS rates on festival days. ICC likes this SnapChat is getting big. Very, very big. The Los Angeles based application that lets users send videos and pictures aka ‘snaps’ (with the fun catch of them self-destructing from the recipient’s phone) has announced that it is raising a new round of funding that would end up its value at 19 billion dollars, or roughly, a large coal mine in India or half of Mukesh Ambani’s home, Antilia.Snapchat was launched in 2011 by three Stanford Univ alumni and in May last year, it boasted of it being the carrier of 700 million photos and videos per day. There are two interesting things here – one, Facebook had offered to buy it for 3 billion dollars in 2013, and two – it is mind-boggling what the world has come to; all this money for essentially an app that millions of teens use to fool around with selfies and nudes! #godhelpus Bansals like this
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