It has become a guessing game of sorts to see which brands will prank us on April 1. Several did but Manforce and Hettich scored, grabbing the April Fool’s day honours. The advent of summer also brought on AC and refrigerator ads aplenty.
Furniture fittings brand Hettich unveiled The Silent Mode Module, an offering from “Hetishh Silent Labs”. The name Hetishh should have been a give away but viewers did fall for the slickly made film that showed how the lab used the power of AI to block out and reduce select ambient sounds. The reveal film was equally witty and, of course, reinforced Hettich’s silent gliding action in modular furniture.
Mysterious bloom
For Colgate’s new campaign, its agency WPP@CP has come up with a whacky one. The TVC has visitors heading to Mumbai’s Botanical Garden to marvel, supposedly, at a new species of flower called “Indianis dentris”. Many enthusiasts contemplate this botanical enigma. Social media too is abuzz. Till the camera, which shows a close-up of what looks like flowering stems, zooms out to show, what? Not a full bloom, but an overused toothbrush, which has ‘flowered’ out — right from the base of the brush. By transforming the mundane into the mysterious, Colgate made a powerful point — one needs to change toothbrushes every three months for efficacy
Seeing clearly
Eye-care chain Centre for Sight launched a disruptive brand campaign featuring fitness icon and endurance athlete Milind Soman to reframe how India views eye health with age. In the film, Soman appears in a park, looking aged, grey-haired and slow — mirroring how most people think 60 years should look like. He then proceeds to surprise the morning walkers and other exercisers with his athletic workouts.
Removing his disguise, he says, “If you don’t see clearly, you make mistakes.”
The campaign highlights oft-ignored risks such as cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and gradual vision loss — reminding people that fitness includes eye fitness, and that timely eye checkups are essential, especially after 40.
Cool saas-bahu moments
Rediffusion’s three-film campaign for Liebherr Refrigerators is rather cool with plenty of light-hearted banter between a saas (mother-in-law), played to perfection by Neena Gupta, and her bahu (daughter-in-law). In one of the films, Gupta watches her daughter-in-law kneading dough, hands fully coated by the batter, and playfully taunts her, asking how will she multitask with those messy hands. The daughter-in-law rushes to the fridge and opens it using the hands-free feature — pressing a button with her toes. Similarly, the other films play up other innovative features of the fridge.