TVC: Turkish Airlines – Kobe vs Messi
By Malay Desai By: USA, by Crispin Porter + Bogusky The latest film by the airline company shows football star Lionel Messi and basketball player Kobe Bryant in a ‘selfie war’. Messi begins it by sending a picture of himself at the MoscowRed Square to Kobe’s phone, to which Kobe responds by posing at the Great Wall of China. This continues with both stars being shown at the world’s popular destinations, intertwined with flapping of the Turkish Airlines flight schedule. Towards the end, as Messi takes his selfie at Istanbul, he finds Kobe in the same frame. ‘Flying to more countries than any other airline’, the copy appears, followed by the logo and tagline. Why we like? This first week of 2014, even as you are under duress of unwarranted optimism from your client/boss/agency, allow us to kick things off with a truly enjoyable campaign. The marketer is Turkish Airlines, currently in its 80th year of operations and truly offering most destinations (243 at last count) across the world. The possibilities to flaunt this are endless, especially when they have one of the world’s greatest sporting icons (Messi) and a globally recognised sports star (Kobe). This time in 2012, its ‘Legends on Board’ film pitted the two faces against each other within the swish confines of its plane, and the result was phenomenal. For this effort, another one-minuter, the legends are back at going one-up against each other. The core idea is when you have sporting names this huge, they must exude pure energyi n whatever storyboard they’re made to fit in. We liked this narrative better than the first one though, for it’s based on something we’ve all done (or seen our friends doing) – click a picture of one’s self from a phone. ‘Selfie’ was quite the buzzword last year and this film peaked at the time when Obama’s selfies were making the headlines. Two stars competing to beat each other is an advertising cliché, but this packaging doesn’t make the film cumbersome to watch. In fact, it’s a good ride through the world in 60 seconds, interjected cleverly by Turkish Airlines logos, shots of its airport lounge and even its business class service. Give it multiple viewings and you’d realise the GFX aren’t really tacky and even you think if they are, there’s little time to spot them as Kobe and Messi take up all screen space. Now the larger picture. The company’s tagline ‘Widen your World’ is a multimedia campaign too. Just in November, they got Tiger Woods to make a golf shot from Asia to Europe from a famous bridge, making it a successful PR stunt. To get uber-famous sportspersons to plug a classy global airline is a bold thought, imagine it being pitched at first. (To watch this film, feed this link into your browser: Youtube.com/TurkishAirlines and to know what social media users think of it, search with the hashtag #KobeVsMessi) SOCIAL NEWSFEED Firstly, good news on Twitter’s ingenious use Continuing our happy beat (we’ve watched the Coke anthem way too many times this week perhaps), here’s an inventive use of Twitter coming from the Western Australia coastline. A scientific initiative has fitted transmitters on more than 300 sharks of various species, which radio signals to underwater receivers whenever they come within a kilometre of the shore. These tweet notes automatically update themselves on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia account, thus making followers aware of the area being safe to swim. After the ‘wow’ reaction, we did realise this technology isn’t quite new; such kind of transmitters are regularly used by wildlife authorities mostly for endangered species and even for census purposes. It’s just the added tweet advantage which makes this story interesting. So today you learnt that sharks in Australia tweet. Keep your phone with you... what if they tweet after you go swimming? 1411 tigers like this Netas to follow this #GeneralElections2014 It’s also a good time to remind you that we are only months away from the world’s largest democratic exercise and much as some poll gurus would want us to believe otherwise, social media will play a tiny role in shaping perceptions. So while @ArvindKejriwal is going to be a definite newsmaker, we suggest you also follow @ArunJaitley for his letters to various folks and @KapilSibal for his banter. There is also the unintentional entertainers, @digvijaya_28, @Swamy39 and the wellread @MilindDeora. If you didn’t know, @thesharadyadav is on Twitter too and so is @AjayMaken. This list assumes that you’re already following the newsmakers Modi, Omar Abdullah and the PM’s official account for the real action! @AamAadmiParty likes this Why Alok Nath and Danny Denzongpa trended In case you have been living under a rock this week, we must tell you of crucial social media updates that will make no difference to your life at all. We don’t know who started it, but Twitter was abuzz with mentions about how Alok Nath is the most cultured Indian alive (thanks to his stereotypical ‘good father’ roles). The trend went from the hilarious (Alok Nath smokes agarbattis) to the even more hilarious (Alok Nath went to Vaishnodevi for his bachelor party). Later, Bollywood’s villian from Gangtok too found his shine – Danny Denzongpa was the perfect antithesis for Alok Nath’s jokes, prodded by the release of Sholay 3D, a film he’d rejected. As the flow goes, tweets turn into Facebook posts, then memes and Whatsapp forwards. First Twitter learning of 2014: there is a special place on the trending list for yesteryear actors. Reema Lagoo likes this
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