by Ad-Crazy HP » Wed Dec 07, 2005 6:15 pm
I absolutely loved the new ToI ad..the one about a hockey player. Awesome ad. I'd say the best ad to have been aired in recent times. And here's why I think so.
The product - A daily.
The brand image - Largest read english daily in the world, published from different places in India, been around since a long time.
The storyboard - A group of youngsters run out of the sea shore. They have a copy of the newspaper in hand and they run towards a chawl cheering. They show the paper to a man. The man shows it to his wife. Everyone looks elated on having seen the paper. The message is finally passed on to an old man sitting in the chawl compound. He walks over to the woman, takes the paper from her, reads it and goes into a dark room. He lights a lamp, takes out an old worn out newspaper from the trunk and looks at one of the headlines in the sports page that says "Mirajkar dropped from Indian team for Olympics:. The camera and the old man's gaze then turn to the day's paper which has this on the front page headlines, "Prakash Mirajkar in Indian Hockey Team". The old man lets out a shout of joy and on comes the tagline - A day in the life of India.
The strengths - The brand image sought by the advertiser is perfectly synchronised with the ad. The ad whips up strong positive sentiments like sweet nostalgia, national pride etc.. And its very different from other ads being aired. First of all, the entire storyboard is shown without any other distractions (captions, voice-over etc.). Infact, the ad doesn't have a voice over at all, the only audio being a light semi-classical background music which passes on completely unnoticed. Secondly, the ad ends with the hard-hitting (in terms of brand recognition) climax and an easy to remember tagline.
All in all, this one is a sure bet for a Cannes nomination.
In un foro nella terra, viva un hobbit