Imitation is not flattery. It's irritating.
The ad above was released by The Hindu for their theatre festival.
The other one was released by our client Vijay Karnataka for their theatre festival. A full 6 years ago.
"It's not copied, it's inspired."
Sure. In which case a photocopier is the world's epitome of creative originality. Drama, cops, errant rider, theatre festival. Even identical twins have differences.
The drill is simple for a creator of advertising. Understand your product, understand your consumer, make one relevant to the other, create the work. But there are other responsibilities too. A preliminary research to verify the originality and freshness of the idea, to acknowledge and accept that it may have been done before and ensure that posts such as these don't get written months down the line.
Our work like most of our work was created with minimal budgets, shot by our own team, features struggling actors, one our own employees. Copying the ad isn't just a disservice to creative professionals, it is unfair to them too.
Sorry <insert The Hindu's agency's name here>. We're not flattered, not in the least bit.
GRABBING A MONKEY BY ITS BOX
We live in an age with so much advertising onslaught in our field of vision, that even exciting brand ideas can get lost in the noise. In the race to be noticed/funded, brands are only ending up trying to be bigger, better, faster, hotter, or any other '-er' word you can think of.
And every once in a while, an organisation comes by, with a fascinating idea and its heart in the right place. And we, at People Design & Communications, are lucky that they came by, in our general direction.
MonkeyBox - a simple, powerful idea:
MonkeyBox was born out of the idea that parents as much as they desire, find it really difficult to make school lunches healthy & exciting for the kids. MonkeyBox is a revolutionary service that plans and prepares delicious, nutritious food for children, and delivers them to kids at school. With a team of nutritionists, 5-star chefs & experts from the restaurant business, MonkeyBox, as a brand was clear about the strengths & the value they had on offer.
The Communications Challenge:
The most enduring, evocative communication campaigns are built on consumer insights. And with a service like MonkeyBox, we had to sit down and observe how the parents & school kids experienced MonkeyBox.
Sidestepping the Startup Cliche:
We had to steer clear of "selling" the brand benefits. Startups usually fall into this trap - of assuming the consumer would want a product/service merely because it didn't exist before. That hardly happens. A brand becomes relevant only when it fits into an existing consumer need.
The Breakthrough:
MonkeyBox had already begun operations in South Bangalore, fine-tuning the process of preparation & delivery. It was ideal, because it gave us an opportunity to talk to parents & kids, and understand how MonkeyBox mattered to them. And we did it over time.
The curiously consistent feedback we heard from almost all parents was that they wished MonkeyBox wouldn't make & deliver food only to school kids, but to adults too. What this meant was:
1) The kids were loving the food they were eating, AND were talking about it at home
2) Parents clearly were curious about the food, even as they had access to the menu, detailed descriptions & nutritional info
3) Kids were enjoying showing-off this service that was off-bounds even for their parents.
4) Parents were more trusting of MonkeyBox, now that the food had passed the litmus test of their kids.
The People Design & Communications Campaign:
MonkeyBox is a specialist in preparing healthy, yummy meals for kids and delivering them to school. Only. So the only way to eat a MonkeyBox is if you were in school, and were....a child.
Therefore:
Poster - Apartment
Poster - Schools
Standee
Brochure
Brochure
Product shots - Social Media
Product Shot - Social Media
Product Shot - Social Media
Online
App Promo - Online
Online
Cinemagraphs
This idea is campaignable and throws open exciting stories across media, including Press, Outdoor, Radio & Film.
Results:
MonkeyBox launched with a radio campaign across 2 stations in Bangalore. Playing off the same campaign thought, the 2 radio spots stood out for their entertainment value & the clear hook - Sorry Dads & Mums, MonkeyBox is only for your kids.
MonkeyBox achieved its target number of app downloads, in just 2 weeks of this concentrated radio campaign.
At the time of hitting publish, MonkeyBox is at the threshold of launching services all across Bangalore, a new radio campaign ready to go live, a rich digital & social-media campaign, and a press and outdoor campaign standing by to explode.
Follow MonkeyBox on
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monkeyboxfoods/
Twitter: @kidsmonkeybox
Instagram: @kidsmonkeybox
Da da ding dong bell's are ringing.
I chanced upon a facebook thread on a friend's (head of a revered ad agency) feed filled with advertising pros, the odd marketing honcho or two, sharing their opinions about the new Nike video (notice I do not call it an ad). Parts of the thread seemed possessed with the simplicity of the ad and in not too flattering a way. Others placed wagers on which gender would be charmed by its infectious energy and which wouldn't. Allow me to re-share my two bits that I posted on that thread. - Rajeev
The best ideas and insights are supposed to be invisible. Their only purpose is to inspire and motivate the right people into thinking a certain way, behaving a certain way. In that sense, purely, this film's hit a home run. As practitioners of advertising, it scares us because of its simplicity or laziness as some might perceive it. There is no 'line', there is no evident idea in a form that we're used to recognising, there have been several other emotionally charged international films this year, so on and so forth. Heck, it's just a music video.
But someone, somewhere decided to put a bevy of stunning, ferocious, superfit Indian sportswomen in front of a camera and make a video that does nothing but showcase their existence and inform ignoramuses like me that the future of woman in Indian sport is headed the right way. Hip-hop dancers? Deepika Padukone? Heck, if more people watch the remaining 95% of the video because of them, so be it. That's an aesthetic call not to be mixed up with the intention behind the video.
When my 9 year old daughter said after I showed her the video, "India has so many sportswomen?", I realised with a tinge of shame, exactly what this video was crafted to do and how brilliantly it has achieved its goal.
WEIRDFUNNUTS
Puppy. Monkey. Baby. The exact three things anyone thinks of when writing a script for an aerated beverage. This spot will either confound you or confront you with so much awesomeness, you won't know what to do.
Naughty, naughty.
What's not to like in this film? Kids singing in chorus, Seal doing a Shah Rukh impression (it could be) and a beautiful truth brought to life with wonderfully simple and effective film making. Touchdown!
Read all about it here
A behemoth goes back the basics
This week, Coca Cola decided it was time to spend all those advertising billimillions on telling people that Coke is all about (wait for it) taste.
It had us gawking about whether this was the most obvious thing since underwear that's worn under outerwear. But it turns out there's a science to it. Open Happiness was the brand's previous big story and a much loved one too. It didn't mean all that love was showered on Coke itself. In the spotlight for being a sugar tank of a drink, with no nutritional or health benefits, we think this is a great, honest way for the brand to reach out to a whole new franchise.
The execution and aesthetics are a throwback to the 80s when the "Coca Cola is it" campaign was pouring out of every media channel you had access to.
And for the most part it works.
Coke is about taste. Suddenly it seems like ignoring this little fact was the obvious mistake the brand had been making all this time.