addendum. Wake up your money

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.

There are different scenes all involving angry men and women. They are visibly agitated and are spread across the country. They are emphatically saying they’ve had enough. They are calling for a revolution. No, this is not a bunch of unemployed politicians in “opposition mode”. This is a cross-section of intelligent small investors who do not want their money to idle in their accounts. And they are not planning on marching to India Gate or wherever protesters march these days. They are downloading the Active Money App of Birla Sun Life Insurance and just swiping to the right to empty idle funds into good investment opportunities, or swiping left to pull the money back into their account. That is the gist of the new advertisement from Birla Sun Life Insurance for its new app. It’s a simple, well-made film. (It helps when the client has been an agency guy earlier. Ajay Kakkar, take a bow!) It gets across the message in an interesting way.

The ease of this app’s use is demonstrated very well, and the nice part is that in the present scenario, if you can’t draw your money out of your bank account, heck, use it to earn something for you. Swipe to the right. And get your money to work as hard as you do!

The child within you

Regular reader Pratibha Pai sent me the film made by Paper Boat to commemorate Children’s Day. She said I might like it. Actually, I love it. How many times have you seen something that in your mind resembled a set of stumps, and wanted to bowl an imaginary “quicker ball” at it? And how many times have you felt the urge to suddenly play hopscotch on the road as you walked, or wished you could raise the container of food to your lips and lick that last tasty morsel? Or even get out of an empty elevator and give in to that urge to step back, press all the buttons and quietly walk off with that happily guilty feeling? And how many times have you actually done all this? Odds on you have had these childish urges and odds on again, you controlled them because you felt the need to ‘act your age”.

Well, Paper Boat, the company that makes those delicious beverages in the innovative packaging, has made this film showing adults doing all these and more. And a really nice song in the background telling you not to grow up but exercise your right to keep the child within you alive and well. Yes, there is a world of difference between acting childish, and behaving child-like. Here’s raising a Paper Boat toast to that child in all of us, which is dying to come out and do something child-like. May it never die!

Forget cash

A much more planned effort that makes wonderful use of the post-demonetisation scenario is the film for Paytm made by McCann. A couple is digging into a meal at what looks like a wedding dinner. They are discussing what an elaborate spread has been laid out for them. The husband comments that there must be over a hundred items on the buffet table including exotic fruits with unpronounceable names. The wife then suggests that in keeping with the generosity of the offering, they too should increase the amount of the cash gift they were planning to give the newly married couple. As she says this she pulls out the gift envelope and you see a neat wad of currency.

The husband is appalled. He remarks that it would be impossible to add more cash in these trying times when it so difficult to lay one’s hands on currency notes. And then the wise wife tells him to change with the times and forget cash. She puts the envelope in his jacket pocket, hands him a mobile phone and says “Paytm karo”. And that’s the mantra in these unique times. And that could well be the beginning of a relatively cashless society. The newspapers supported this topical offering with full-page ads on the fronts of major dailies that showed the ease of operation of the Paytm digital wallet. I was quite impressed with this. And more impressed at how quickly McCann came out with this film. You must have worked all night, guys. Well done!

Vox pop: Nagesh Alai comments on our McDonald’s review and says, “After a long time an ad of theirs which didn’t look like an ad … great seamlessness in execution” Coming from an ad veteran, that’s a great compliment.

Ramesh Narayan is a communications consultant. Mail your comments to cat.a.lyst@thehindu.co.in

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