BackSpot Light | Nothing of note
Spot Light | Nothing of note
PremiumConfusing: Prahlad Kakar.
Reviewer: Prahlad Kakar
Campaign
Rediffusion-Y&R’s television commercial (TVC) for stationery brand ITC Classmate’s notebooks shows a child scribbling a fictional story in her notebook during science class. “You want to be the next Shakespeare?" jeers the teacher. The child’s reaction is what plays out in the advertisement. Tag line: Because you are one of a kind.
Your first thought on the ad?
Does the ad stand out in the stationery category?
While there is an emotional connect with the girl, since she is a pretty face, the ad has no depth. The lifespan of this ad will be short as there is no layering. The other children are not interacting like how they do in a classroom.
The girl’s dialogue is an adult line. The ad should have shown her scribbling her name in the notebook so that one could relate that “Anahita Baruah" is her name or the teacher could have addressed her by her name. That leads to the confusion on who “Anahita Baruah" is.
Would you have done anything different with the ad?
I would have layered the ad more, given it more depth, probably shown different children and their personalities through the notebook. It need not be a classroom set-up. All this can be achieved in a 30-second commercial.
Which are the other ads in this category that have had high impact?
The Nataraj pencils ads, even after so many years, are ingrained for the manner in which each personality was reflected through the drawings.
Are creative people unable to think out of the box in the children’s category?
The creative teams seem to think and script storyboards as adults, which is where the problem is. The dialogues for the commercial’s characters are in an adult’s manner of speaking, unlike how a child speaks. It does not mean you give dumb dialogues to children in the ad; children are not stupid, they are not judgmental or hold a high moralistic ground. Spontaneity seems to be missing in children’s ads these days.
aminah.sheikh@livemint.com
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