#BlastFromThePast is Storyboard18’s weekly column where we ask young creative professionals to pick old ads that they replay time and again, spots that give them writing inspiration, and commercials that never get old. Sagar Mehta, co-founder and creative chief, What Are You Saying (W.A.Y.S) wrote on ads that make him nostalgic. According to Mehta, these commercials also taught him advertising lessons when he got into the business.
Britannia Khao World Cup Jao
To show middle-class India the dream of visiting England to witness the Cricket World Cup live by simply consuming the same products that they had begun to love already was a genius move.
I can’t possibly forget the trips to the local kirana store to buy a packet of Good Day or bread. I’d eventually even begun to cheat on the OG Parle-G for the Tiger biscuit just to be able to collect 100 runs & get a new scratch booklet & keep alive the hope of making it to the World Cup. The campaign had me, like a lot of other Indians fully involved, interacting with the brand, boosting sales, and building tonnes of brand equity.
When I look at it in hindsight, the sheer impact this single campaign had on the brand’s market share and consequent dominance, especially in the biscuit category is truly astounding. Also, a quick shoutout to the logistics and distribution effort behind the campaign to be able to cater to the marketing-generated demand frenzy.
Nothing Official About It
The brand of advertising I enjoy the most – ballsy and badass and yet highly effective. The cola wars were flaming up in a newly liberated Indian economy and the World Cup presented an excellent opportunity to reach out to audiences across the Indian demographic.
While Coca-Cola picked up the official partner tag, Pepsi picked up the bragging rights. Probably the first instance of a well distributed, large scale ambush marketing campaign in India, it resonated brilliantly with the pulse of the young India then – fed up with ‘official’ things and wanting to break the status quo.
This came out when I was six years old and while the marketing context only dawned on me much later when we studied this as a marketing case study; the visuals of cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Courtney Walsh, Mohd. Azharuddin, Vinod Kambli and even umpire Dickie Bird doing non-characteristic things remain etched in my head. Pepsi not only delivered a fantastic campaign themselves but also deflated the expensive and official marketing efforts of its biggest rival – Coca Cola. Two birds, one stone, that sorta thing.
A.R. Rahman’s Airtel Ad
There is a very strong reason why I call this A.R. Rahman’s Airtel ad and not Airtel’s A.R. Rahman ad and the reason is the sheer mastery of music on display by the genius that is A.R. Rahman.
I’m sure as most of you read this, the tune is already playing in the background for you. The iconic Airtel tune. It was everybody’s ringtone. You could see people listening to it like it was a Bollywood song and thus it became the brand’s most recognised asset after probably its logo.
Probably one of the earliest examples for me of ads not necessarily following the ‘feature=benefit’ format. There is no mention of benefits of using Airtel or no call to action to buy a new sim card and yet this is one of the best campaigns by the brand despite delivering icons like ‘Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai’, ‘Jo Mera Hai Woh Tera Hai’ and so on. In a fast and fleeting world of shortened attention spans, to create a brand asset that the world remembers for more than 2 decades is truly astounding.