Two outstanding ads made up for a month of mediocrity, most of it from telecom, which has given some very good work in the past. Airtel’s Shah Rukh Khan ads are full of faux introspection, Tata Indicom’s work is faux profound, Tata DoCoMo reeks of faux bonhomie, Reliance Mobile with Hrithik Roshan is just short of creepy and Idea is walking determinedly towards irrelevance.

Stop, breathe and appreciate

Parle Saint Juice

Creativeland Asia

This ad is a breath of fresh air, not just when compared with all the advertising on TV, but with all that appears on TV. In a hyper-stimulated, over-communicated world that is saturated with speed, here comes an ad that makes us unclench our fists and breathe with ozone fullness. Leaves unfurl, buds ripen and nature blooms moist with misty dew. We experience the glory of nature in a new, innocent way. Truly fitting for a new brand of juice. My only quibble lies outside the advertising—the name “Saint” carries no trace of the lushness of the world that the advertising creates.

Wickedly authentic observations, well-crafted script

Max New York Life

Ogilvy and Mather

Here’s a brand working determinedly to rescue the insurance category from ho-hum sameness with a canny combination of wickedly authentic observation and well-crafted scripting. The laadla beta (darling son) getting fawned over in public much to his embarrassment is familiar territory for most of us, and this ad has dead-on casting and exquisite scripting (the dirty underwear and the stomach-cleansing bananas being strokes of pure inspiration). Here is a brand that has created an extremely likeable canvas for itself and finds itself able to consistently extract engaging work from it.

Embarrassing, annoying, infantile

Hyundai I10

Innocean Worldwide

Now almost all car advertising is uniformly bad, so much so that pointing it out seems pointless. But one must still pay homage to the execrable, and this Shah Rukh Khan ad, with its cringe-inducing equating of women with cars, is truly a work of art. Embarrassing, annoying, infantile… I could go on.