The last week of the year is always one reserved for a fond look back at the months gone by, to take stock, relive and remember. Here’s a close look at the ads of 2015 – both hits and misses – and our pick of the 10 best campaigns of the year
By SAMARPITA BANERJEE
From sending across heart-warming messages to breaking social taboos to telling really great stories - we have seen them all in the advertising campaigns of 2015. Some great ads have forced us to sit up and take notice every time they played on screens, while other ads made us cringe, reach out and change the screen in a hurry.
One over-arching theme that we could see throughout the year was ads telling us engrossing stories, stories that people want to hear – be it the Ambuja Cement ad about the travails of a man who is too strong for his own good or the story of Geeta Phogat, an Indian female wrestler who had to break the shackles of patriarchy to follow her dreams.
What also caught our attention this year were the several path-breaking ads such as Whisper’s ‘Touch the Pickle’ or Myntra’s ‘Anouk’ that tackle uncomfortable issues, in an attempt to break myths around menstruation, same-sex relationships or challenges faced by single mothers. These ads brought a whiff of fresh air with them, and hope that the next year will bring more breakthrough campaigns.
We also saw quite a few brands treating us to emotional ads revolving around family ties, roping in prominent Bollywood stars to act alongside their family members. The Deepika Padukone-Prakash Padukone starrer Asian Paints Royale ad, the Karwa Chauth ad featuring celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor and his wife and the Garnier Fructis oil-in-cream ad with Alia Bhatt and her still-gorgeous mother Soni Razdan are cases in point.
Meanwhile, as the nation was shaken by the lead-in-Maggi controversy, and the noodles went off the shelves in less than two minutes, no one expected a comeback campaign so soon. But Maggi has come back and how. The brand launched various campaigns to try and woo back the millions of customers it had almost lost with the #wemissyoutoo campaign invoking nostalgia around Maggi.
The year also saw some ads that made us groan in despair. During the festive season frenzy, many brands just made noise with campaigns bordering on mediocrity. And while the entire country could not stop talking about the Airtel 4G girl Sasha Chettri, the ads started getting on most people’s nerves for being repetitive, with hundreds of memes doing the rounds of social media. The Vogue Empower ad featuring Deepika Padukone also received a lot of flak across the country.
Thank you for helping us pick the Best of 2015:
Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network & Chairman Posterscope & psLIVE - Asia Pacific, Sandeep Sharma, President, R K Swamy Media Group, Debraj Tripathy, Managing Director, MediaCom India, Sandipan Bhattacharya, Chief Creative Officer, Grey Group India, Anand Halve, Co-founder, Chlorophyll Brand & Communications, Bobby Pawar, Director and CCO, South Asia, Publicis India, Ashish Chakravarty, National Creative Director, Contract Advertising, Avinash Pandey, Chief Revenue Officer – ANN and COO – ABP News, Bhaskar Das, Group CEO, Zee Media Corporation Limited, Shavon Barua, Managing Partner, PHD, Anita Nayyar, CEO - India & South Asia, Havas Media Group, Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India and Rahul Johri, EVP & GM – South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific.
