Doing the Ranveer

It isn’t entirely surprising that condom brand Durex’s latest video campaign titled ‘Do the Rex’ clocked a million YouTube hits within days of its release. After all who wouldn’t want to witness the uber cool Ranveer Singh confidently rapping to some risqué lines that go “ Jab you and me raazi , Toh phir kya shak , Just give it to me baby, I am a fine f**k.” Moreover, Singh is also the first leading star in as long as one can remember to lend his name to a condom brand. A few months ago Abhishek Bachchan had confessed on the Koffee with Karan couch that while condoms needed endorsement, he was too embarrassed to be the one to do it.

Given the prudishness of celebrities on this subject, one can only imagine how thrilled Durex must have been when Singh asked to endorse their brand. “I’ve been tracking the reaction to the ad very closely. My phone hasn’t stopped ringing since it released. It’s not like I was trying to do something path-breaking, but I’ve noticed sociologists, anthropologists, senior journalists and members of the intelligentsia are writing about it. I’m glad that people are finding the ad fun and entertaining and also seeing the value in it,” says Singh over a phone interview, on his way to a night shoot of his next film Kill Dil .

The ad campaign is also Singh’s first in his four-year-long career. He admits to being quite a late-bloomer in the endorsement game compared to his peers who have already signed up with multiple brands. Most recently he became the face of myntra.com ’s new range of denim wear. “The same thing happened to me in films too. I got offers for a lot of lead roles after Band Baaja Baarat (2010), but I turned them down. I felt they weren’t seeing the value in me. I don’t look at myself as a commodity. The message carried in the ad is very important to me,” he says. Singh knows a thing or two about advertising. Before he began pursuing a career in films, he worked as a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather and JWT. Now he’s hoping to satiate his unfulfilled “advertising keeda ” by driving the creatives for all the brands he signs up with.

Every frame of the Durex ad has Ranveer written all over it — the over-the-top purple suit and his famously energetic dance moves. In fact, almost everything he does and says seems to turn heads. He claims that that is not deliberate, but it is just who he is.

As a new entrant to the industry, he says he was pulled up every 15 days for his exhibitionist streak. “I was always perceived as crazy. I was very confused about what to be because I hadn’t grown up amongst celebrities. I did try to conform but it is very taxing to be someone you’re not. I now just speak my heart and I think it is working.”

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