BackIs being Bold the new Beautiful?
The latest Fasoos ad points to a wider trend among start-ups, which are getting bolder with their advertisements in trying to connect with the youth
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Mumbai: It’s your girlfriend’s birthday today. You’ve turned off the lights and lit the room with candles. You will prove you’re a loving boyfriend. Wait. You forgot to order food. If she says she is very hungry, the flavoured packet that you picked up from the chemist will remain in your pocket. A word beginning with F comes to mind? “We suggest another, Faaso’s. Download the app."
That’s the latest Faasos’s advertisement airing on radio in Hindi. Hinting about the condom, talking about the F word and finally suggesting food ordering. That’s quite a leap of faith apart from being corny. But the Fasoos ad points to a wider trend among start-ups, which are getting bolder with their advertisements in trying to connect with the attention deficit generation of young people today.
Playing around with the F word is not just what Faaso’s looked at. Myntra.com, the online retailer that was acquired by Flipkart in 2014, has Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh launch its new advertisement. GTFO- Get the F**K Out, Roadster. “Get out, before your pin stripes become your prison, every phone call becomes urgent and every deadline decides your future," he says in the ad in which he is talking about living life without being bound.
After Housing.com raised $90 million in a funding round that was led by Softbank in December it began its advertising campaign. Housing.com started with just the logo ^ but it quickly added “Look up" to it. All over billboards, newspapers, and bus stands. What was their first advertisement? A young live-in couple that was looking for a new place to live. These billboards have been all over Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and other cities. The live-in culture may still not be acceptable but is slowly finding acceptance in some urban areas. Later the company did create campaigns around family and other relationships.
For Housing.com a live-in couple is a small part of the campaign unlike for e-tailer Jabong.com. “Most of our neighbours don’t talk to us, we are supposed to be living in sin, but that’s their problem," is the opening line of Jabong’s new ad campaign, ‘Be You, Be friends, Be more’. The couple in the advertisement have redefined definitions of friendship, love and romance.
Women today are bolder. Most women earlier went to stores such as LaSenza’s and Amante’s to buy their lingerie. But there was still a class of women that was too shy to buy lingerie in the presence of strangers. With the e-commerce boom came the lingerie shopping online. Zivame.com came out with its television advertisement “explore yourself" last year. Women spoke about the kind of lingerie they would like to wear. Be it a police inspector, a new bride, judge, sportswoman or an old woman. All of them clear, frank and open about their needs.
Healthcare is universal and hence Practo.com, the online doctor appointments booking portal, released its new advertisement “life mein’ keeping in mind the young, old and youth. The advertisement almost ends with four male colleagues ( married or not) discussing something, when one of them suddenly asks “Do you know any gynaecologist,? Then one of them shows the speaker the Practo app.
“Start-ups have a lot of pressure to create a presence in a short time frame. The fact that these companies are run by young founders there is no hesitation in taking bold steps even when it comes to advertising," said Manish Bhatt, founder of Scarecrow Communications. The six start-ups referred to above in the last 6 months have collectively raised $142 million, with Housing.com leading the pack.
Bhatt also added that the new generation advertisements are grabbing eyeballs but whether these have a long-lasting impact cannot be determined. “Most start-ups are looking at the digital way of advertising, it is easier to measure impact,".
These start-ups have several rivals and in the battle for customer acquisition and expansion they are deploying tens of crores of rupees on aggressive and risqué marketing that may help differentiate them from rivals.
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