Junior B's new Idea TV ad gets political colour

NEW DELHI: In India, where vote bank politics banks heavily on caste and religion, the ad world has a new Idea. The new Idea Cellular 60-second TV ad and half-page print ads featuring Abhishek Bachchan as a sarpanch boldly takes on the politics of caste and religion to arrive at mobile number replacements for people’s names.

Perhaps another ad that raises the ethnographic advertising bogey, though not so tellingly, is the Coca-Cola ad featuring Aamir Khan, with the Sabka Thanda Ek (Everyone’s cold drink is the same) punchline. But the Idea ad seems to have laid down a whole new paradigm with straight digs at some of the most worrisome nettles in Indian society. ET zooms in.

To start with, it took three to four sessions of brainstorming between ad agency Lowe India’s managers and the Idea Cellular brass to execute the idea. All the brains were trying to streamline one thought – Idea CEO Sanjeev Agha’s brief to the agency, which clearly wanted to project Idea as the champion brand in the mobility space. “A champion brand needs champion thinking,” says R Balakrishnan (Balki), Lowe’s national creative director.

In an environment where most telco operators were seen to be providing pretty much the same offering, it was hard to differentiate. “The question was how to position the brand as a better idea than anyone else and then it struck me that if everybody had a number and not a name, it should put to rest a lot of our problems,” points out Mr Balki. “Another critical point was to elevate the brand from transactional issues like price and value,” says Tarun Chauhan, business head at Lowe.

Before starting on the multimedia campaign, the quandary before Pradeep Shrivastav, head of marketing at Idea Cellular, was the need for a rural connect. “While there continues to be explosive growth in mobile telephony in urban India, Idea is now reaching out to locations that don’t even have FMCG distribution. We’re reaching out to a growing number of semi-urban and rural consumers,” contends Mr Shrivastav.

Well, there’s been umpteen ads to connect with the rural masses. “But this ad is bringing out social issues which is interesting. The society too seems ripe for it as long as the subject is tackled sensitively,” highlights Madhukar Sabnavis, country head of discovery and planning at O&M. Others, like Santosh Desai, CEO of Future Brands, feel that the ad demonstrates the maturing of advertising and the brand discourse. “Marketing and branding are becoming real. In a consumer society, brands have a legitimate space. So brands need to thread their argument with a good measure of reality.”

Even the choice of character, Abhishek Bachchan, to render the sarpanch’s role is somewhat whacky. In most ads endorsed by Mr Bachchan, he comes across as overtly glorified with the product/service fading into the greenroom. But with the Aviator-sporting AB in the Idea ads, the story gains credence. “He’s just a character to deliver the story, not the star that he’s usually made out to be,” claims Mr Chauhan.

Remember Gail Omvedt, the American-born Indian scholar who posited that caste discrimination was akin to racism in regarding discriminated groups as “biologically inferior and socially dangerous”. Mr Chauhan calls the ad furthering the cause of “social harmony”. Now, while that’s the overriding intent, the mechanism or the means to deliver the content seems a bit bold.

For acclaimed sociologist, Ishwar Modi, “India is simply not prepared for this kind of advertising and there should be some regulatory mechanism to curb such ads since they can lead to caste wars and add fuel to fire.” Well, critics will be critics, but Mr Chauhan remains firm in defence. “It’s all about how an idea cuts across caste, religion and other differences,” he says, giving a glimpse of how the campaign may be extended. Watch this space.