A million images gush in when one thinks of rain and Bollywood. Raj Kapoor romancing Nargis under an umbrella, singing ‘Pyaar hua ikraar hua’ as three little children in raincoats walk past. Amitabh Bachchan and Moushumi Chatterjee’s drenched stroll as ‘Rimjhim gire saawan’ plays in the background; Kishore Kumar’s ‘Ek ladki bheegi bhaagi si’ and Bachchan’s rainy romp with Smita Patil to the beat of ‘Aaj rapat jaye toh’. In old Hindi movies, rain also conjured up dark stormy nights where lightning ripped through the skies and marked a turning point in the film.

Now think rain and advertising; do any jingles come to mind? Can you instantly recall a TV commercial (TVC) that showcases the joy and romance of the monsoon shower? Still racking your brains? So too did the ad folks we reached out to when asked to come up with instances of TVCs set against the rains.

Monsoons are a national preoccupation, yet why has the ad industry in India used the rain imagery sparingly? As Prathap Suthan, chief creative partner at boutique agency Bang in the Middle says, “There’s so much to the rain and monsoons. Yet it’s one season that’s not been exploited by ads.” One reason, he thinks, could be the cost of shooting in the rain. He explains, “Shooting in the outdoors calls for different equipment, lighting and camera/lenses. Also, the lack of hygiene tends to get amplified.”

Suthan recalls how it began to rain when his agency was shooting for the e-commerce brand Jabong’s ‘Be You’ campaign. “Rain can mess up everything during a film shoot. However, for this campaign, we used the rain as the backdrop. We showed people having fun in the rains.” Clearly, the rains here became an accidental prop rather than the central star.

But if you switch on Malayalam channels you will have no complaints on that front. The ritzy umbrella brands from Kerala, be it Popy or John’s, have campaigns on air perennially. And jingles like Mazha mazha kuda kuda, mazha vannal Popy kuda (When ever it rains, there’s Popy umbrella) keep playing in your head.

Suthan, who hails from Kerala, says several campaigns from the state revolve around the monsoon. “I was involved in a monsoon campaign for Kerala Tourism. The idea was to promote monsoon as a good time for ayurveda, as the pores on our skin breathe better,” he says. He draws attention to the brilliant way Escotel used the monsoon as a metaphor for its network coverage in Kerala. The catchy ad shows a montage of shots — boats, elephants, Kathakali artistes, young girls taking classical music lessons — set against a rain-lashed Kerala and ends with the tag line: “The monsoon, the only thing that covers Kerala better than we do”.

Kerala is also the setting for Kansai Nerolac Paints’s larger-than-life umbrella ad, one of the most memorable rain-related campaigns of a national brand. The goofy television commercial puts a smile on your face with its exaggeration and absurdity. Sixty-foot-long red and blue umbrellas are carried by large groups of people and placed over a roof to protect the house from rain. The shots are accompanied by a folksy song that phonetically plays on the word ‘umbrella’ and is sung by Pankaj Awasthi in his trademark Sufi style. Though Shah Rukh Khan stars in the ad, he is not the one carrying it on his celebrity shoulders; the scene-stealers are the umbrella and the song. Ashish Khazanchi, who crafted this film for Publicis Ambience, says that the brief was to convey ‘ suraksha ’ or protection in a simple and effective manner. “We were told tonality was important.” After much debate, they decided to go with a mammoth umbrella, which infuses a comic touch and helps the ad cut through the clutter. The song, incidentally, was written much later while Khazanchi was on location in Kerala. “It was drizzling when we took a ride on the boat and the rhythm of the oars gave me the idea,” he says. So well has the TVC done that Nerolac has used it for three consecutive seasons.

Monsoon-related ads with quick recall are mostly for products directly linked to rain, such as rainwear, or those that have an indirect association, such as paints, cold rubs, tyres and so on; even here, veteran ad man Ambi Parameswaran thinks the monsoon has been used meagrely.

Tyre companies like MRF and CEAT have invested in rainy-day campaigns. Ogilvy’s TVC for CEAT’s all-season tyre rides on its better grip. But it was MRF that scored with its out-of-the-box thinking. For several decades, before the monsoons each year, MRF would release an ad with its prediction of when rains would hit Mumbai. The MRF Rain Day campaign has now gone digital and more interactive — the company sends out teams to document the journey of the southwest monsoon from Kerala to Mumbai, and create content that depict different facets of the season. Social media engagements allow people to follow the journey and make predictions about the rains.

For Parameswaran, two classic campaigns that use the rain effectively have been Vicks Vaporub’s ad featuring a kid coming home sneezing, and Taj Hotels’ ‘Goa in the Rains’ campaign. In the Vicks ad, the kid comes home soaking wet and his irate mother scolds him. He pulls out a bunch of flowers that he had been hiding and says, “Happy Birthday, Mummy.” “I think this ad combined the best of advertising, a strong rational benefit sell for Vicks with a huge dollop of emotion,” says Parameswaran.

The Taj campaign created in the ’80s by ad legend Frank Simoes also did wonders for the brand. With hotel occupancy in Goa dropping to single digits during monsoons, Taj decided to romanticise Goa in the rains. “They ran some beautiful films in cinema halls in the more affluent sections of Mumbai and other key cities. Taj saw a dramatic increase in room sales; their effort helped the entire Goa hotel industry,” says Parameswaran.

Though brands have been slow to capitalise on rains, the public service ads have filled the vacuum with evocative campaigns. The Centre for Science and Environment, for instance, had a head-turning campaign on rainwater harvesting that exquisitely captured the moment of joy and wonder on people’s faces when it rained. One man holds his umbrella upside down to capture the rainwater and the whole street follows suit.

Another public service ad shot in the rains is Lead India’s campaign on taking the initiative. The film, simply called ‘The Tree’, shows a fallen tree stalling traffic on a road. While everyone stands around fretting, fuming and honking, a little boy walks towards the tree and tries to move it. Slowly the crowd pitches in and they manage to remove the obstacle.

Surprisingly, even brands that peddle love and romance — chocolate, deodorants — have stayed away from featuring rains in their ads. “Come to think of it, not much advertising that I can remember has used rain,” says Ajay Gahlaut, executive creative director, Ogilvy. However, an ad he does recall vividly is the one created by Ogilvy for Wildstone Aqua starring supermodel Sheetal Mallar. A highly sensuous one, it shows Mallar stepping out to gather clothes from the terrace as the skies turn cloudy and raindrops come pelting down. The beautifully picturised ad shows Mallar getting drenched in the rain even as a man watches her. The soulful song adds to the romance and oomph factor. Says Gahlaut, “Rain was used as a metaphor for the name Aqua and to make the situation sensual; the film ended up looking very different from others.”

Sums up Suthan, “I personally believe that rains invoke poetry and magic. And monsoon is indeed a season tailor-made for romance. Bollywood had overdosed on that aspect, but there is enough and more room for elegant love.”

A rain-loving nation is waiting.

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