This ad speaks buckets

Addendum is a fortnightly column that takes a sometimes hard, sometimes casual, sometimes irreverent, yet never malicious look at some of the new or recent advertisements and comments on them.

If you had to express friendship through a bucket, what would it contain? Warmth, fun, affection and laughter, apart from material things. And that is what KFC’s latest TVC for its Friendship Bucket (full of fried chicken, of course), carries. The ad shows an exchange between two friends, one of whom uses sign language to speak. They are at a KFC outlet, and the latter wonders why his companion chose to go out with him and not with his other friends. “Why not?” asks the companion. “Well, I can’t speak, so you’d probably have more fun with them,” he replies. The companion, who’s been rather silent until then, wonders who’s been chattering away till then, him or his friend, who “cannot speak”.

It’s as much a moment of learning for the viewer as the character who quickly realises he need not think any less of himself for his disability as for the viewer. Not only does the ad, made by O&M, highlight the diversity element in the friendship, it does so with a light touch.

The soft touch

There’s a new TVC out featuring ITC Vivel’s aloe vera-and-Vitamin E soap. Tricky situations can be diffused with confidence and a soft touch, it says, saying women no longer need to compromise ( Ab Samjhauta Nahin ). There’s a group of young people, for some reason most dressed in the same shade of white (or was it the palest green?), enjoying themselves. A much older man comes up to one of them and leering, suggests she join his company. He would make sure she rises very fast, he says. “Oh, really? This is exactly what the lift man said to me yesterday,” she ripostes. Stung, the man slinks away. I enjoyed the ad, made by L&K Saatchi & Saatchi. It was a nice piece of entertainment, but it set me thinking about most advertising – to what extent a product can really empower. An old and enduring question, one supposes.

Under lock and key

Godrej Security Solutions has a set of three new TVCs out for its Goldilocks personal locker. One features a father and a son discussing spending money, the second a brother who needs to protect the keys to his car from his accident-prone sister, and the third, a woman who simply hates to reveal how old she is, so much so that her passport is stashed away in this locker. The way she delivers the unabashedly untrue and sardonic responses to questions about her age made this ad my favourite. And yes, the company’s claims about the locker’s effectiveness come through. Only, in real life, I can foresee much family turmoil if money and car keys were to be hidden, and in plain sight at that!

More empowerment

Wieden + Kennedy Delhi has made a video for Nike that also sits on the women empowerment train. It reflects the rise of female sportspersons in a male-dominated sports world and encourages ordinary women to go out and achieve. For it’s been proven that achievement provides a big ego boost. Apart from hockey player Rani Rampal, footballer Jyoti Ann Burrett, surfer Ishita Malaviya, and cricketers Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandana and Shubhlakshmi Sharma, Deepika Padukone, who played national-level badminton as a teenager, also features in the video. It’s almost three minutes long and features a peppy anthem Da Da Ding by American rapper Gizzle. Just get out there, women, and just do it, that’s a beginning, the video seems to say. Unlike many campaigns featuring a film star, the actor here did not overshadow the other players nor the other women who make up the rest of the supporting cast. That’s quite a message!

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